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Said Dr. Reisner to a Herald Tribune reporter last fortnight: "New York's really big men are as sweet and gentle as kittens. . . . The other day I was visiting in the home of Owen D. Young—I know all the big men of New York and regularly visit them and talk religion with them—and he personally followed me to the door and put his arm around my shoulder and said: 'Things are going to come right, Dr. Reisner.' . . . I've written thousands of prayers in odd moments. ... I don't see why these prayers won't go over all right. . . .* "I get in the papers all I can, but it is not personal publicity I seek—I want my Christ played up. ... I talk straight out religion to men and they talk it back. Why, Owen D. Young was just saying to me the other day when I told him that my boy was going into the ministry. 'The day is coming when we will need our brainiest men in the ministry!' You know that list that Roger Babson got out of the 50 men who run this country?* Well, I know 27 of them and they are all from godly homes. "You take a man whom I converted— [District Attorney] Dodge—he's as clean and straight as a sugar plum! . . . What we need is more of the old-fashioned thrill of religion—the thrill that converted a drunkard in a minute."
*Sample prayer: Deliver us, Giver of Graces, from a proudly demeanor, a greedy ambition, a gingerly spirit, a gangster sociability, a glib egotism, a glittering, shallowness, a ghoulish sarcasm and a godless life program.
*Presumably Dr. Reisner had in mind the list of 59 rulers of the U. S. issued by James W. Gerard in 1930.