much from it in the coming time-an achievement the results of which cannot yet be estimated or even faintly imagined.

A NEW ATTITUDE

Towards such a conception our modern public attitude has been steadily tending. Particularly within the last decade there has been a notable change in the public mind, a new recognition of its responsibility for national amusements, an acknowledgment of the inevitable influence of the stage in shaping public character, in forming the National Soul. And out of this public enlightenment has come a great crusade to reclaim the theater, a many-sided democratic movement to reorganize it as a genuinely creative institution.

That there is a new attitude is being shown in many ways. Into the schools the new movement has found its way and is expressing itself in various forms, from the successful playwriting in the larger universities to the simplest dramatization of the reading or history lesson in the little rural school house. It has been cherished by the Drama League of America in a popular organization which has already gone far toward promoting a new dramatic taste by instructing the great playgoing public thru study classes, reading circles, and lectures, and by organizing audiences elsewhere for the support of wholesome worthy plays well produced. It has had an extensive manifestation in the revival of pageantry among us, a dramatic form seemingly well adapted to give the community an adequate outlet for its inborn yearning for expression. Again, the new attitude is suggested by the growing favor of such good repertory companies as the Craig Players of the Castle Square Theater of Boston, by the serious interest taken in the contribution of the so-called "Little" theaters, and by the various experimental stages of amateur and semi-professional players in a number of the leading cities of the country. These and other signs indicate an amateur renaissance in the theater the significance of which is as yet but little understood. In a later article I hope to inquire into the meaning of this new American amateur spirit and to suggest something of what we may expect from it in the future.

A MUNICIPAL THEATER

Most gratifying perhaps in the signs of our times is the demonstration at last of the practicability of the Municipal Theater idea in the United States. Municipal schools, libraries, bands, orchestras, parks, and playgrounds, have long been counted a legitimate part of a good civic equipment. Municipal auditoriums, constructed to accommodate occasional traveling companies, have been estab

lished and operated with more or less success (often less, because of the lack of intelligent initiative and experience in such matters) in a number of American cities ond towns, among them Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Ogdensburg, New York; Stoughton, Wisconsin ; Red Wing, Minnesota; Bismarck, North Dakota (where the municipal auditorium has given the city first-class theatrical attractions not available before it was established); Denver, Colorado, and San Francisco, California.

But it remained for the staid old New England town of Northampton in Massachusetts, a community of approximately 20,000 persons, the elm-shaded seat of Smith College, with Amherst College and the Massachusetts State College of Agriculture not far away, to be the first in America to own and operate successfully a municipal theater-"The Only Municipal Theater in America," as is announced with jutifiable pride.

The Academy of Music, which is the home of the Northampton Players, was presented to the citizens of Northampton by Mr. Edward H. R. Lyman, in 1892. But like many another "one night stand," possessing an adequate auditorium, (in the words of Mr. Frank Lyman, son of the donor and President of the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Music), "Each year it became more and more apparent that we were not getting the class of entertainments we wanted, and to which we felt entitled." Finally, about four years ago, at the suggestion of Professor Baker of Harvard University, a resident stock company was established, under the competent direction of Mr. Bertram Harrison of New York. The first season of the Northampton Players opened in October, 1912, and continued for thirty-two weeks with a repertory of plays well calculated to appeal to the factory workers and townspeople in general quite as much as to the college students and professors, with a predominating proportion of such wholesome light farces as George Cohan's Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway and such good melodramas as Augustus Thomas' Arizona, but including also Katrina Trask's lovely Christmas piece, The Little Town of Bethlehem, and and even Molière's classic, The Learned Ladies. The season closed with $5,000, of the $6,000-fund guaranteed by Mr. Lyman to meet a possible deficiency, absorbed. A considerable portion of this amount was expended, however, in preliminary alterations and for necessary scenery. In the second season, 1913-14, including such good popular attractions as Charles Kleine's The Lion and the Mouse, Zangwill's The Melting Pot, Barrie's The Little Minister, Mrs. Burnett's The Dawn of a To-Morrow, and Echegaray's The World and His Wife,

side by side with such high comedies as Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, Henry Arthur Jones' The Liars, Shaw's brilliant The Devil's Disciple, and Maeterlinck's poetical Sister Beatrice, between $3,000 and $4,000 of the $6,000 guarantee fund (repeated for that year) was untouched, while a considerable part of the money drawn was expended for new scenery. With the close of this season, in April, 1914, 'the Municipal Council decided to take over the Northampton Players as a civic enterprise, and last season, 191415, (the first under the municipal regime), was by far the most successful in its history, there being an actual profit of $4,000, which will be used in improvements on the theater.

The Northampton plan does not by any means preclude the occasional visits of such high-class companies as may be available for single engagements, and such artists as Sothern and Marlowe, George Arliss, Grace George, Margaret Anglin, and others of equally high standing, have appeared at the Academy since the new order was established. The management encourages co-operation with the citizens in every conceivable way. The program includes a space for play requests, and the committee which finally chooses the plays to be given (being made up of three members of the Smith College faculty, one from Amherst, and five of the townspeople), is really representative of the best interests of the community. A special committee solicits ticket subscriptions, and the citizens take pleasure in loaning from their business places and homes such furniture, pictures, and other properties as they can to add to the effectiveness of the stage settings.

So the first Municipal Theater in the United States is estabIished; and it has brought to Northampton, Massachusetts, such notable visitors as Lady Gregory, Eugene Brieux, and Granville Barker; it has received well-merited recognition from the press, as it should, for it has demonstrated that a comparatively small town of moderate wealth and intelligent initiative can, with the co-operation of a director of executive ability and worthy aim, provide itself with theatrical entertainment which is at least clean and wholesome, and may reach the highest intellectual and artistic plane.

Perhaps the key note of Northampton's success is to be found in the civic appeal of the management to the community, printed on the first page of the attractive Academy program:

"We should realize that the Academy exists for our enjoyment-that it will grow and prosper in exact proportion to the way it receives the support and co-operation of all.

"The Directors and the Associate Committees are doing their best the Players are doing their best. Now, then let us do our best, so that there can be no possible doubt of the permanent success of The Only Municipal Theater in America." Surely such fine community spirit should guarantee it increasing

success.

Sir Johnstone Forbes-Robertson well exprest the case for the municipal stage in America in a conversation last year when he visited us in his farewell tour: "I think the hope of the American stage lies in it. The people have municipal schools and libraries, and a few thousand dollars for the municipal theater would mean so much for the education of everybody."

Little Northampton has made a brave beginning toward the future Municipal Theater, a theater which will cherish at once the best traditions of the Past together with the plastic dream of a New Day in which the profession of the actor will be that of an artistcitizen, an institution of the theater-not a building, or a place, or a company of players, or a play merely-but a spacious House of Life, where the people may come to interpret again and again the continuing mystery, where they may reincarnate for themselves the infinite shapes of "the old, proud pageant of Man,"-a theater truly socialized, a stage emancipated for beauty and joy, a House of the Imagination for the spiritual education of everybody.

The Value and Necessity of a College Education to the Practising Lawyer'

I

ANDREW ALEXANDER BRUCE,

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, North Dakota

VENTURE to say that in no country in the world does the

lawyer and the judge-for the judge of today is but the lawyer of yesterday and the lawyer of tomorrow-occupy a more important position than in America. Ours is a great cosmopolitan nation which not merely stretches from ocean to ocean but embraces within its boundaries people of every nationality and every creed, with no common history and no common traditions, often without any common language, divided by social and geographical differences, but bound together by a common hope, a common humanity, and a common democratic law. In no country in the world can the lawyer have a greater opportunity or a greater influence-in no country in the world are high qualifications for the profession more necessary. De Tocqueville said that the lawyer belongs to the natural and only aristocracy that can exist in a republic, and this because, to use the language of ex-President Roosevelt, he alone "knows the rules of the game." He stands upon the mountain peak and he has the leadership in his hands if he will only assert it and will only be worthy of it.

We are, however, in danger of losing that leadership, and not because the order of things does not give it to us but because we are ourselves throwing away our birthright. We need to take count of stock, to find out where we are and to consider the reasons which are leading the public to lose their respect for us as they undoubtedly are. Above all we need to reassert our position as the members of a profession. We have a crowded bar and there are men in the ranks who will do almost anything for bread and butter. We have in our ranks the ambulance chaser and men who are incompetent for the practise of the profession. We have great firms whose leading men bid for trade and whose work is done by clerks and underlings. We have lawyers of great talent and attainment, but who are merely hired men. Technically they are officers of the court but practically speaking they are employed on a salary by great corporations and often feel that they must do practically what the corporations dictate. A man cannot serve two masters, and this is as true today as in Bibical

Remarks of Justice Bruce, formerly Dean of the College of Law of the University of North Dakota, at the 1915 meeting of the American Bar Association, before the Section on Legal Education.