cates of a corporate state, a socialist state, a nationalncommunity more abundantly than did the tracts andntreatises from Europe on these matters.nIt is interesting to see how synchronously the literary andnthe philosophical sections of the 20’s cultural efflorescencenworked together in the quest for national community. It wasnalmost as though an invisible conductor presided with batonnover the scene. Dewey, Lippmann, and Croly offerednphilosophical arguments to the effect that all older forms ofncommunity were moribund, thus making national communitynimperative. With a wave of his baton the invisiblenconductor brought such mighty literary talents as SinclairnLewis, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, EllennGlasgow into action. They, in novel, short story, and poem,nin Main Street, Winesburg, Ohio, and Spoon River Anthologynconcurred enthusiastically with the philosophical section.nYes, the American small town and its family, church,nand neighborhoods were all moribund, suffocahng, tyrannizing,nover their Carol Kennicotts and George Babbits.nEcrasez I’infdme.nAnd, almost as though activated by a baton, came annanswering, or conjoining, threnody of how bad things are innthe city too. The city was the place of broken dreams, ofnfrustrated pilgrims, of empty lives, of vast financial networksnof power engaged in rebutting individuals of talent, sentencingnthe whole population to anonymity bordering on death.nDreiser, Dos Passos, Hart Crane were among those whonpainted the great cities in these lines and colors, but therenwere many others in the 20’s, and of comparable genius.nThe individual was, as Dewey and others iterated andnreiterated. Lost; Lost in either the stupefyingly dull andnbanal small town or else lost in the thoroughfares ofnMetropolis. Lost, alienated, estranged, in need of—andnnow our invisible conductor has called for the horns of thenpolitiques which respond instantly in a timely diapasonnrepresenting the answer: community, but the Great Communitynof the entire nation; nothing intermediate, nothingnless!nOne wonders whether a single reader of the best-sellingnliterature in the 1920’s on the tyrannical, mindless village ornsmall town, on the frightening anonymity and soullessnessnof the city — say, San Francisco, St. Louis, or even Chicagonand New York — and the Lost Individual as well as the LostnGeneration, ever stopped in his or her reading long enoughnto wonder whether or in what measure there was any realnverisimilitude in the author’s stereotypes? Probably not.nSuch is the power of a plausible ideal type; and such is thenpower of the writing classes over the reading classes.nThe political clerisy I describe was, through the 1920’s atnleast, remarkably free of the party ideologies which wouldnbecome clamant in the 30’s and thereafter. Before the onsetnof the Depression, Herbert Hoover had the high respect ofnmany who wanted to see the state, with the help of thenlearned and the administratively wise, become a community.nReading the Deweys, Mumfords, Chases, and Lippmannsnas they wrote in the 20’s, one is not particularlynstruck by the ideology in the ordinary sense. The clerisy innthe beginning sought to be transideological if not quitentranspolitical.nThe New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt helped changenmuch of that. But it also brought out in sharp relief thennncontinuing theme of the national community and alsonmemory of the Great War. It is generally agreed thatnMarxists, Keynesians, and Fabians had little if any influencenon the structure and theory of the New Deal. There was,nafter all, never a theory of the New Deal to be influenced.nThe New Deal was an exhumation of World War Instructures in the first place and thereafter helter-skelternadaptations, readaptations, and patchings-up of the variousnstructures brought into being. Nothing worked so far as thenessentials of the Depression were involved. After a flicker ofnhope in 1937, there was a recession that put things back tonalmost 1932 status. In the end it was World War II thatnended the Great Depression.nWhat did succeed, more or less, though, in a pragmaticnway, was the creation by Roosevelt and his aides of a warncommunity without armed war and sedition acts. Withoutnloss of time, the New Deal began in the resurrection of thenold War Industries Board, the Labor Board, the variousnagricultural and pricing commissions of World War I. Somenof the principals of the Great War came back to man thenNew Deal boards and commissions, among them BernardnBaruch, Hugh Johnson, and Herbert Bayard Swope. Abovenall, the centralization that had characterized Wilson’s warngovernment characterized FDR’s depression government.nRoosevelt used the imagery of war often in his speeches andndidn’t hesitate to liken himself to general and the Americannpeople to an army. Everywhere, he suggested, discipline wasnneeded. As William Schambra of the American EnterprisenInstitute has noted in an illuminating paper, Rooseveltnspecifically likened his work to that of making the nation thensubstitute for the old and now archaic community of thenvillage and the neighborhood. Said FDR: “We have beennextending to our national life the old principles of the localncommunity . . . the many are the neighbors. . . .nNationally we must think of them as a whole and not just bynsections or by states.” Or, Roosevelt might have added, bynfamilies, towns, churches, cooperatives, and mutual aidngroups. For in practice he disdained them too.nAs the New Deal endured, it became more and morendirect and unmediated in its thrust. New agencies forndealing with one or another aspect of the Depressionntended not merely to bypass state governments and localncommunities, not to mention churches and other voluntarynassociations, but actually weaken these intermediate groupsnand governments. As in World War I, there were postersn(the Blue Eagle!), parades, and evening marches throughnneighborhoods, all signaling at one and the same time thenwar against the Depression and the ever-present prospectsnof victory soon. FDR remained insouciant and also commandingnin presence throughout, personalizing handsomelynthe centralization of state.nThe Great Depression was Crisis No. 2 in the saga ofnAmerica the Great Community. It meshed nicely withnCrisis No. 3, which was the Second World War and which,nat long last, ended the Great Depression. Roosevelt said justnafter Pearl Harbor that it was now time for Dr. New Deal tonbe replaced by Dr. Win the War; but in truth both doctorsnworked together throughout. In no appreciable respect wasnthe crisis machinery created by the Depression dislodged bynthe onset of World War II. A continuity of crisis machinerynis one of the more notable aspects of the story of thenJUNE 13881 15n