our New Arabia
more splendidly than it was ever painted before, with the real character
thereof, and no theatricals. This is just the kind of a town I hoped for
when I wrote my first draft of The Art of the Moving Picture. Here now is
literature and art. When they become one art as of old in Egypt, we will
have New Mexico Hieroglyphics from the Hendersons and their kind, and
their surrounding Indian pupils, a basis for the American Motion Picture
more acceptable, and more patriotic, and more organic for us than the
Egyptian.

And I come the same month to Denver, and find a New Art Museum projected,
which I hope has much indeed to do with the Acceptable Year of the Lord,
when films as vital as the Santa Fe songs and pictures and architecture
can be made, and in common spirit with them, in this New Arabia. George
W. Eggers, the director of the newly projected Denver Art Museum, assures
me that a photoplay policy can be formulated, amid the problems of such
an all around undertaking as building a great Art Museum in Denver. He
expects to give the photoplay the attention a new art deserves,
especially when it affects almost every person in the whole country. So I
prophesy Denver to be the Museum and Art-school capital of New Arabia, as
Santa Fe is the artistic, architectural, and song capital at this hour.
And I hope it may become the motion picture capital of America from the
standpoint of pure art, not manufacture.

What do I mean by New Arabia?

When I was in London in the fall of 1920 the editor of The Landmark, the
organ of The English Speaking Union, asked me to draw my map of the
United States. I marked out the various regions under various names. For
instance I called the coast states, Washington, Oregon, and California,
New Italy. The reasons may be found in the chapter in this book on
California. Then I named the states just west of the Middle West, and
east of New Italy, New Arabia. These states are New Mexico, Arizona,
Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. These are the states which
carry the Rocky Mountains north toward the Aurora Borealis, and south
toward the tropics. Here individualism, Andrew Jacksonism, will forever
prevail, and American standardization can never prevail. In cabins that
cannot be reached by automobile and deserts that cannot be crossed by
boulevards, the John the Baptists, the hermits and the prophets can
strengthen their souls. Here are lonely places as sweet for the spirit as
w