ABSTRACT
The people who inhabit the towns and cities are a heterogeneous multitude whose prevalent modes of association are those of the Elk, the Moose, the Mason and the other totemic fraternities. There is no clear recognition in American morality of the true implications of sex. The freedom of association among the young, again, which means courtship without consummation, necessitates a balancing by consummation without courtship. Sex life in the United States is in a state of arrested development. The life of the pioneer, the psychology of the immigrant, the interest of big business, all serve to invest the United States with the temper of lawlessness. This lawlessness is enhanced by the fact that American law is antiquated and thus irrelevant to American life. Poetry alone would seem to be relatively untainted by the fatal inadequacy or deformity which besets the elements of American civilization.
