publican sentiment in England, but it is important to notice the difference there will be between this movement and that of sixty or eighty years ago. Formerly, people wished for an elected President instead of an hereditary Monarch because they were so pleased with the idea of elected representative government that they wished to use this method for all branches of the executive. In the future they will demand a President, because they will be so displeased with the representative system-they will find a thousand elected tyrants less easy to control than one and they will require one man elected by themselves, secure for a period of years from control by caucus or Cabinet, as a counterpoise and check to the thousand representatives, nominally elected, actually selected by two or more Caucuses. They will feel not only that one man is more easily accountable to the people than several hundred, but that he will be more human and personal than a Parliament, in the same way as an individual employer of labor is generally more human, more accessible, more in touch with his employees than the hundreds of shareholders of a limited liability

company.

Such a prospect must fill with dismay those who (like the writer) value all tradition and believe in the system of an hereditary Monarchy; and it would be well to consider in ample time before the danger threatens what alternative remedy exists, whether some system is possible which will maintain the Throne above politics and yet check and control the representative chambers.

In considering this matter we must note that it is only in those countries where Democracy has entirely or almost entirely entrusted government to elected chambers that the demand for a powerful Head of the State has arisen. There exists one Democratic The British Review.

country in Europe where every symptom of such a demand is absent. That country is Switzerland, the oldest and most genuine democracy of Europe. In Switzerland representative chambers exist, but they are not given uncontrolled power, they are checked and curbed directly by the people by means of the Referendum, including both the Veto and the Initiative. There is no need for a powerful head of the State to control the elected representatives when the people themselves retain full powers of control; and because there is no need, there is no demand.

Therefore, our way is clear, and it behooves all who value tradition and hold the Monarchical system in esteem to work unceasingly for the establishment of the Referendum, of the Poll of the people, as an integral part of our system of politics, for it would appear that we can only retain the Monarchy by establishing the Referendum.

This much is certain-that there is a feeling among people of all classes of distrust of our caucus-made politicians, of disillusionment with representative government, and there exists to-day a demand which year by year will increase for some means of control, some check on the absolute supreme power of the elected chamber, and this feeling and demand will become intensified when the Upper Chamber is also an elected body.

We dare not call on the Throne to exercise this control and enter the sordid arena of Party politics. We can give the people the power to do so by means of a poll of the people, including not only power of veto, but ultimately power of initiative, and unless we give the people this power we shall be face to face with a formidable Republican movement in Great Britain.

Referendum or Republic-that will be the issue of the future.

Pierse Loftus.

III.

Why do we speak of a new school of dramatists? And in what sense do they exhibit novelty, as compared with their predecessors? Many of the conditions for the production of drama are, we know, fixed and constant-the conditions, for instance, which are involved in the presentation of a concentrated story or episode, carried out by living personages, moving and talking before us. The dramatist cannot explain to his audience, he can only illustrate: he reveals character not by description but by action and dialogue: he has only a short time to produce his effect, and therefore he must hit hard and hit early. All these things we know, for they constitute the difference between writing novels and writing plays. But there are other conditions or perhaps we ought to call them traditions or prejudices which are inessential, variable, dependent on mere custom and fashion. If a man ignores such as these, which his predecessor respected and of which very likely he made a fetish, then on this ground he might be called a "new" dramatist. There are, for instance, the prejudice for a happy ending, the use of soliloquies and asides, the necessity for "situations" at the end of each act, the idea that you must not introduce fresh personages in the last act, but gradually allow the course of your story to strip off the unessential characters and leave you towards the close with just the two or three vital characters who matter. These are all temporary and accidental fashions, so to speak, and a play is not necessarily better because it retains them, or worse because it chooses to ignore them. Even Scribe's sedulous care for a pièce bien faite has now be* The Living Age June 28 and August 2, 1913.

come an outworn game-at all events, with some of the moderns. Dramatic construction, though still considered a counsel of perfection, is not recognized among our contemporaries as absolutely necessary to dramatic salvation.

The

But there are much more subtle differences than these between the newer and the older school. It is a question of temper, a question of manner, a question of preferred subjects. attitude towards the world has changed, the attitude, in special, towards moral problems and social questions. Those doubters and agnostics who in the 'sixties and 'seventies were sealed of the tribe of Matthew Arnold and Arthur Clough were more than a little sad about their obstinate questionings. Their scepticism was not audacious: it was diffident, humble, melancholy. They were very sorry that they could not agree with the orthodox-it was their misfortune, not their fault. They ought to be condoled with, not reprobated. The more modern attitude is not so much daring as incurious. Why should we bluster and say with John Stuart Mill-"and if such a Being condemn me to Hell, to Hell I will go"? Really there is no reason for any fuss. All the fighting is over and done with. We need not brandish our sceptical steel in the face of opponents whose opportunities for offensive attack are so strictly limited. Therefore the new school neither strives nor cries because it is persuaded that belief or unbelief is mainly a matter of temperament or of ancestry, for which the individual cannot be held responsible. If he is born a religious mystic, he will write poetry like Miss Evelyn Underhill or Mr. Francis Thompson; and if his nature is to be an agnostic, he will

poems compose like Mr. Thomas Hardy. Things are what they are and they will be what they will be. Why should we allow ourselves to be disturbed?

One result of this temper or attitude is that all the ethical and social problems which our fathers fondly and foolishly thought to be solved are regarded by their sons as entirely open questions. There are no moral laws of the absolute character which Kant delineated: there are a set of conventions, some of them of considerable authority, but many of them merely transitory and more or less accidental, depending on time and place and associations. Did you think that it was wrong for a girl to run away from her home? On the contrary, it may be a sign of a fine independence, as in the case of Janet de Mullins in Mr. Hankin's play, The Last of the De Mullins. Did you suppose that when a prodigal returned to his home, he came back in a chastened and a repentant state of mind, having sown his tares and very grateful that there was a home to welcome him? Oh no! He comes-as in The Return of the Prodigal, also by Mr. Hankin-to make what terms he can with his outraged father and secure for himself a further period of indolent wastefulness at the paternal expense. Did you imagine that a woman naturally preferred wedlock to a looser bond of connection, in order, among other things, that her child should be legitimate? You are wrong. The man she chose for her lover might not suit her for a husband, as in the case of the heroines of Hindle Wakes and Mr. Galsworthy's The Eldest Son. Indeed, when the instinct for maternity is very strong, a woman will not care who may be the father of her child. Let him fulfil his temporary function, and she will fulfil her lasting one. On this point read again Janet's views in the very illustrative play already re

ferred to, Mr. Hankin's The Last of the De Mullins. The classic instance is in Maxime Formont's novel Le Semeur (translated as The Child of Chance); but also some suggestion of the same spirit is found in Mr. Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. I am not concerned, of course, to pass any ethical criticism on these things; I merely note them as remarkable signs and evidences of a modern temper.

And this naturally leads me to consider the kind of subjects with which the new dramatist prefers to deal. The great phenomenon of our time is the Revolt of Woman, and it obviously affords a splendid opportunity for the dramatist. One of the most constant qualities in all dramatic work is the implied antithesis between the human being and some great force, or forces, with which he is in conflict. These forces may be envisaged either as a great impersonal fate or necessity; or as the heritage of a particular kind of character bequeathed from generation to generation; or, once more, as the great mass of social prejudice and convention, accumulated through many ages. The individual feels himself cribbed, cabined, and confined by these forces which seem to be outside himself-—or, at all events, outside his Own instinctive impulses-and the course of the struggle in which he engages to free himself from restraints and live his own life is of the essence of drama. Men have been all along more or less in revolt, and in the struggle have proved themselves either heroes or villains. But it is a more delicate and interesting thing when woman dons her armor and goes into opposition, because her revolt touches, in a very immediate fashion, sacred institutions like home and family. Ibsen was one of the earliest to understand the significance of this woman movement, and because he regarded woman as the born anarchist his

plays gave a powerful incentive to feminism and set the example for many dramatists. A characteristic example also is to be found in Sudermann's play Heimat, which we know as Magda. In this the heroine turns her back on her home, and seeks an independent career outside. On her return she has some very bitter things to say of the conditions which made her home life so intolerable to her, as -for that is the assumption-they would to any other girl of spirit. Within recent years we have seen, of course, several examples of plays based on this insurgence of womanhood, many of them written by female authors.

It would, in consequence, hardly be too much to say that the nineteenthcentury frame of mind was built up on ideas with which the more modern mood is glaringly at variance. A woman's life, so the older notion ran, should be more or less a secluded life; her girlhood should be under the tutelage of her father and her mother; her marriage should not so much emancipate her as put her under another guardianship. Having accepted her husband, she was bound to make the best of him, whatever his mental or moral deficiencies. For marriage was an institution intended to protect the woman, and keep her in a safe position, free from the soul-harassing competition of ordinary commercial and professional life. One of the drawbacks of this theory was found to be the large predominance of women, and the consequent impossibility of their all finding a home. Hence, when the daughter began to revolt, she was able to plead in self-defence that, although she was apparently educated for matrimony, matrimony was not likely to come in her way. It was not mere wilfulness, therefore, but rather a duty that she should

look out for herself and take her own chances in the rough and tumble of things. But when once a revolt begins you never know to what it may lead. As a matter of fact, the revolt of the daughter was mixed up with a much larger revolt of women as such, whether daughter, wife or mistress. What is the value of laws which enjoin domestic privacy on the female? Apparently they were made by man for his own convenience, and they have no other sanction except the tyrannical verdict of the male. Thus marriage is one of the institutions first assailed. Why should a wife go on living with a husband whom she despises? Why should marriage unions last through the whole life? Why should not the instinct of motherhood be treated quite separately from the usual environment of a legal husband and a recognized home? Remember that woman is the born anarchist, because in certain senses she is more of an independent individual than the average male. Men are more or less alike: women are often, perhaps always, diverse. And thus all so-called ethical laws, moral ordinances, social conventions, are put into the meltingpot and, as we have seen, women, as treated by the new dramatists, do many strange and unusual things in the pursuit of their ideal freedom. Ibsen, perhaps, started the business; Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. St. John Hankin, Miss Elizabeth Robins, Miss Netta Syrett, and many others, joined in the cry. The worst of it is that sometimes in their hot-headed enthusiasm the apostles of freedom get on the wrong scent.

Probably many of us have read recently Miss Elizabeth Robins' so-called novel, to which she gives as a title Where Are You Going To? The point of the tract, for it is more of a tract than a story, was to support the agitation against the White Slave traffic,

But

and a lurid tale was told of how two innocent girls living in the country were trapped on their arrival in town and taken to a house of ill-fame. the story, as one read it, struck one not only as paradoxical, but also as a revival of a somewhat ancient legend. The average observer of life wondered whether such things could be. And now I observe, from an article in The English Review, that so impartial and unprejudiced a writer as Mrs. Billington-Greig has set herself to investigate the available facts. The result of her exhaustive inquiry is that there is not, and apparently has not been in recent years, a single well-tested case in which a girl has been trapped into the White Slave traffic in this country against her will. Obviously, there are, of course, cases of seduction, and insidious advertisements are sometimes published enticing girls abroad; but the lurid accounts of compulsory detention and outrage appear to be entirely baseless. So, at least, Mrs. Billington-Greig thinks, and to a large extent proves, in her extremely careful study of the whole question. The true reformer must not be in such a violent hurry, or he may do damage to his own cause. Qui va piano, va sano.

Personally, I hardly realized how great was the change that had come over, not only the topics with which the modern dramatist chooses to deal, but also the temper in which he approaches them, until I saw one of the performances of the Stage Society in November, 1907. It was a performance of Mr. Granville Barker's play, Waste. It is true that it was a "prohibited" piece, but sometimes one can understand these matters better when one looks at extreme cases. Here, at all events, was a fine and serious piece of work, full of drama, keenly interested in psychological analysis, with the issues of the story carried out in a most unflinching and

remorseless fashion. The very title gave one an indication of the plot. In a modern world there is a great deal of wastefulness. Women are sacrificed, children are sacrificed, above all, men of light and leading are sacrificed. The hero is a politician of something more than mere cleverness, for Henry Trebell is a man who has become a considerable personage in the politics of his time, a statesman whom everybody imagines as a possible member of the ministry of all the talents. Suppose that such a man in a moment of madness, in a moment which he describes as a "drunken fit," compromises a married woman with fatal effects. Is the whole of his political career to be blasted, not only to his own damage but his country's? That is one of the most serious and also the most obvious of the problems which Mr. Granville Barker put before us in Waste. Henry Trebell's special line of work is education, education such as every citizen ought to be able to command for himself and his children, education, not so much secular-with all the damaging associations of that term-as national, and neither religious nor irreligious. This is the sphere in which Mr. Trebell excels. He has the art of conciliating the High Church party; he has won over Lord Charles Cantelupe, who represents the ecclesiastical interest; he is equally happy it appears in his management of the Nonconformists and Dissenters, and he has his own scheme for dealing with ecclesiastical funds. Such a man is a valuable acquisition for any administration in our modern England, and when, after some dallying with the Liberal camp, he transfers his services to the Conservative ranks, the Earl of Horsham, the Tory Prime Minister, determines on the bold stroke of including him in his Cabinet.

And now we come to more delicate problems, concerned with the relations