advice and never do that-never hurt a woman. Women, women give us everything, love and adoration and pity, and then we don't know how to treat them, and they go away crying. They lay their hearts in the road and we trample on them. Never do that, young sir, never do that."

The irony of it-the same old lesson-the same causes, the same effect, misunderstanding, misery, neglect all through the one agency-ignorance. “He didn't know he didn't know."

You must think that I have been appallingly serious, that after all, as the philosopher says, "Nothing matters half so much as we think it does." On the other hand, though, I grant you that at once it is equally true that everything matters a great deal more than we think it does.

There is light-hearted, full-blooded humour in every single one of these novels (with the exception, perhaps, of Conrad's) without it half the philosophy would be lost. These young men do not take themselves quite so seriously as I have perhaps led you to think, but I have only just time to touch upon the really salient features. I dare not pretend to offer you anything like a complete picture of (for instance) the sympathy with which they draw the very people who are the prime movers of all the evil--the parents, the schoolmasters, the parochial-minded advisers of their youth. They are all treated with a quite astonishing courtesy, their good points given full play; and they have, of course, any number of good qualities. They have their awful tragedies too; the only thing is that they are mercifully saved by their very blindness from ever realising them to the full extent.

Had I time I would press home the need for reading the humorists pure and simple, the inimitable Mr

Munro, Stephen Leacock, E. V. Lucas, James Stephens, G. K. Chesterton (who has, of course, as much of a serious axe to grind as any of them), and so on: they are as essential to our complete digestion and æsthetic enjoyment as hors d'œuvre, or sweets or succulent entrée, but they do not contain the body of the meal. I am constrained to dwell only on the soul-satisfying meat course and your objection, every man's objection, to meat is that it contains blood. Vegetarians and other anæmic people (I am striving not to be unfair) hate the thought of thinking of what I must, for hurry's sake, call the realistic, naturalistic school of meat. I am concluding on a general note.

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The realists, I reiterate, do not dwell on the sordid side of life out of a love of the sordid, nor on the ugly because they prefer ugliness to the beautiful. "We do not," in George Moore's words, always choose what you call unpleasant subjects, but we do try to get at the roots of things: and the basis of life being material, the analyst sooner or later finds himself invariably handling what this sentimental age calls coarse the novel if it be anything is contemporary history [I refer you to Dead Yesterday and Mr Britling for confirmation of this], an exact and complete reproduction of the social surroundings of the age we live in.

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Seen from afar all things in nature are of equal worth and the meanest things when viewed with the eyes of God are raised to heights of tragic awe which conventionality would limit to the deaths of kings and patriots.'

It is rubbish to suppose that the Realists adopted the idea of unhappy endings because they loved them; like Shakespeare, they observed that certain causes produce certain effects, and they refused to shut their eyes to a fact which the whole world

already knows. Conversely, or rather hence, neutral endings predominate in this school of writing because they also notoriously-predominate in real life. But all this talk of unhappiness does not detract from beauty; such an argument is only an illustration of the terrible way in which our minds get confused. Rather have the Realists discovered a new beauty in things, the loveliness that lies in obscure places, the splendour of sordidness, humility and pain. They have taught us that beauty, like the Holy Spirit, blows where it listsno true Realist but is an Idealist too.

T

VI

MODERN DRAMA

WO totally different factors have led me to try to elucidate exactly whither we are tending

in our stagecraft at the present time: (1) the hubbub caused by certain generals and bishops who see in "revue" nothing but "suggestiveness" and a vicious lure; and (2) the amazingly brilliant critical work of the late Mr Dixon Scott, published recently under the title of Men of Letters.

With regard to the theatre of to-day the most obvious criticism to make is that out of all the thirty or so plays now running in London, every one of which draws a full house every night, only two are by men of recognised standing in the dramatic world, and one of these is a revival. And yet only three years ago our most enlightened and unbiased historians were stating quite definitely that the novel had had its day and was immediately to be supplanted by a literary revival in drama which should astonish the world. The machine-made plays of Labriche and Sardou had been ousted by the freer, more naturalistic school of Ibsen. The stage had become a platform for the discussion of all the intricate problems of modern life, the emancipation of women, the crime of poverty, false romanticism, Home Rule, the struggle between labour and capital, the evils that arose from all forms of stereotyped conventions, and so on. Most of the leading geniuses of our time had contributed their quota to these polemical discourses, nearly always with brilliance, if not with an altogether satisfactory knowledge of craftsmanship and

technique. There were also meteoric flights of poetic geniuses who neither followed nor founded any school, but flashed brilliantly for an hour and then swept by.

Then the war came, and with it the cessation of all serious drama. All domestic problems vanished before the one great, overwhelming one of coping with the enemy, and this was scarcely one to brook being discussed on the boards. Moreover, there was no argument; the maximum output of energy directed into its best channels was the only theme of the ardent patriots. The nerves of the nation became tense, its muscles taut; we all went into training. The result was that we temporarily lost sight of art or its uses. Relaxation we understood to be necessary for all of us, else why should soldiers ever be granted leave? The point was: What sort of relaxation was best for the fighter and worker? We were not long left in doubt. America stepped into the breach left by the legitimate drama's decease and charmed us with revue." Musical comedy maintained a rather precarious hold on its conservative lovers, comedy and tragedy proper died, the music-halls, in order to save their lives, were compelled to abandon isolated "turns" for this new craze, and as a result we have now the choice between revue" and . . . nothing.

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..

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Men back from the front were supplied with the dishes for which their souls ached: lightness, prettiness, merriment, catchy songs, colour, youth, and, in moderation (because of its exceeding rarity), beauty. They found it possible to forget all the mud and blood, the horror of separation and death; for three hours they could laugh whole-heartedly, lose themselves in delight and carry away impressions of gaiety which would buoy them up in the dark moments which threatened their future.