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Show KNOCKING THE KNOCKERS That such a book at "Elmer Gantry," Gan-try," malngantly carcaturing the clergyman's calling, should be written writ-ten by such a man as Sinclear Lewis, is not surprising. Lewis is one of the king-pins of the world-wide revolutionary rev-olutionary movement. He is a propagandist prop-agandist against every institution assailed by the agents of bolshe-vism bolshe-vism throughout the world the church, the home and the ordered state. "The Daily Worker, national organ of the communist party, declares de-clares that his skill as a revolutionary revolution-ary propagandist is so subtle that it is not generally recognized. Among all those who hate America, either at home or abroad, and especi ally in Russia, his venemous assaults upon American institutions, ideals, characters and the mass itself, are cause for rejoicing and counted among the most effective means of destroying destroy-ing the United States. Lewis is an atheist who stood up in a Kansas City pulpit a few months ago and "dared" God to strike him dead, declaring, with characteristic modesty, when he failed to get prsonal service from the Almighty, that he had proved the non-extistance of the Deity. Lewis takes the case of an imaginary imag-inary fraud and liertine and paints him as a type of the American clergyman. clergy-man. It is not surprising, we say, that he should draw such a picture. The surprising thing is that such a book achieves any measure of popularity popu-larity a popularity which must be derived from the mean love of detraction, detrac-tion, since it is generally agreed that is a literary production it is badly blotched job. The American people : know the men who serve them In the ministerial calling, and they cannot help but know that the attempt to make o fthe vapid, dissolute Gantry a clerical type, is the result of a malicious mali-cious hatred of the clergyman and the faith he represents, rather than of any honest purpose to present a true picture of American life. While clever cynics of the Lewis type are lining their pockets through befoulment of the American nest, thousands of clergymen are giving their lives for inadequate financial compensation to altruistic effort quite beyond the comprehension of the supercilious su-percilious literary smart-alecks whose eyes are glued only upon the exceptional excep-tional faults in our civilization rather than upon its real values. These thousands of clergymen are comforting comfort-ing the sick, consoling the dying, helping the living. They are active in all movements for social betterment. better-ment. For a clergyman to go w-rong is so unusual that every case of this kind is sensationally exploited, whereas where-as the frailties of a literary Bohemian are taken for granted and passed unnoticed. un-noticed. The measure of a man is not the ability with which nature has endowed endow-ed him, but the use of which he puts his talents. When literary gifts are employed for destructive purposes only they become a curse rather than a benefit to society. Brilliancy appears in various forms; in the lightning bug's tail and the phosphorescence phosphor-escence of putridity as well as in the candle which "shines like a good deed in a naughty world." But a glow worm or a rotten log lights no , ' one along the way. |