The ring was kept by an ex-private of Balliol who, having eaten plum-andapple jam in the trenches for some years, was a bigoted anti-fruitarian. He assured me that none of them would be allowed to kill each other, because they were all wanted whole on the river next day; but even with murder barred there was no trace of toleration till exhaustion set in. Then somebody made a remark which I have had to edit it a little substantially as follows: 'Talking of natural resources, does n't it strike you that what we've all got most of is howling provincialism?'

ran

That would have delighted Rhodes. It was just the sort of thing that he himself would have jerked out, half aloud, at a Cabinet meeting, and expanded for minutes afterward.

I suggest this because when you move up into the line, and the gods who sell all things at a price are dealing you your places and your powers, you may find it serviceable, for ends outside yourself, to remind a friend on the far side of the world of some absurd situation or trivial event which parallels the crisis or the question then under your hands. And that man, in his station, remembering when and how the phrase was born, may respond to all that it implies also for ends not his own.

None can foresee on what grounds, national or international, some of you here may have to make or honor such an appeal; whether it will be for tangible help in vast material ventures, or for aid in things unseen; whether for a little sorely needed suspension of judgment in the councils of a nation as self-engrossed as your own; or, more searching still, for orderly farewells to be taken at some enforced parting of the ways. Any one of these

issues may sweep to you across earth in the future. It will be yours to meet it with sanity, humor, and the sound heart that goes with a sense of proportion and the memory of good days shared together.

For you will be delivered to life in a world where, at its worst, no horror is now incredible, no folly unthinkable, no adventure inconceivable. At the best, you will have to deal with, and be dealt with by, communities impatient of nature, idolatrous of mechanisms, and sick of self-love to the point almost of doubting their own perfections. The gods, whom they lecture, alone know what these folk will do or think.

And here, gentlemen, let me put before you the seductive possibility that some of you may end your days in refuges for the mentally afflicted not because you will necessarily be any more insane than you are at present, but because you will have preached democracy to democracies resolute that never again shall their peace be troubled by Demos.

Yet out of all this welter you will arrive at prosperity, as youth, armorplated by its own absorption in itself, has always arrived. In truth, there is but one means by which you can miss it, and that is if you try to get the better of the gods who sell everything at a price. They continue to be just gods, and should you hold back even a fraction of the sum asked for your heart's desire they will say nothing, but they will furnish you with a substitute that would deceive the elect― that will deceive even you until it is too late. So I would advise you to pay them in full, making a note that goods obtained for personal use cost rather more than those intended for the honor and advancement of others.

MAX REINHARDT, chief among German theatrical directors and, with the sole exception of Stanislavskii, the most famous of modern régisseurs, is at last comfortably installed with his actors in his new Theater in der Josefstadt, in Vienna, where three plays - besides a special prologue for the new venture, from the pen of the Austrian dramatist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal — have already won the plaudits of the critical Viennese audiences. Reinhardt and his distinguished company have often played in Vienna before, and some of the most remarkable of his recent productions - notably Hofmannsthal's miracle play, Das Grosse Welttheaterwere first seen in Salzburg, near by; but now Reinhardt has definitely turned his back on Berlin and comes to Vienna this time-in the words of a character in Hofmannsthal's prologue -'not on a visit but to make his home.'

The Theater in der Josefstadt, which is now Reinhardt's, has a tradition and a long history behind it. One hundred and thirty-six years ago a Viennese innkeeper- maintaining the ancient association between inns and the drama, and very possibly with a shrewd eye to trade - founded it for his son-in-law, the comedian Karl Mayer. It may be better not to inquire too closely into Mayer's pretensions to dramatic art. At least his old theatre has been the scene of notable artistic events: Beethoven once directed an overture there; the actors Nestroy and Schalz played their first rôles on its stage, and the dramatist Raimund appeared there in the first performance of his Der Verschwender.

Now, modernized and redecorated,

the old theatre starts on a new lease of life under the right German and mouth-filling official title of Die Schauspieler im Theater in der Josefstadt unter der Führung von Max Reinhardt. With his characteristic flair for odd and unconventional detail, Reinhardt has contrived a new device whereby, as the curtain rises, the huge candelabra lighting the pit are also drawn up to the ceiling, thereby - a delicate attention, appreciated by a much-neglected portion of the audience- giving the occupants of the upper balcony seats a clear view of the stage.

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Hofmannsthal, by adroitly combining in the Prologue his own lines with others brazenly and amusingly borrowed from Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters,Reinhardt's first production in his new theatre, gave the whole company a unique way of introducing themselves to Vienna. Hermann Thimig played Truffaldino and Helene Thimig the lady's maid, Smeraldina. Sybille Binder was the coquettish lady disguised as a man, who is Truffaldino's 'second master.' The dramatic correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt comments feelingly that Reinhardt's is the only theatre in Vienna where you can get anything hot to eat between acts!

The régisseur's artistic accomplishments are not yet, however, seriously overshadowed by his culinary achievements. Scarcely settled in his new house, he has produced two plays besides Goldoni's - a new comedy by Hofmannsthal, Der Schwierige, and Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, the latter so elaborately costumed that the Neue Freie Presse feels it desirable to

fashion section!

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Your true Viennese never lets his artistic sensibilities and his appreciation of creature comfort or personal adornment interfere with one another.

AN EXHIBITION OF FORGED ART

By way of an awful warning to art students and collectors, the Burlington Fine Arts Club has gathered together an exhibition of forgeries, counterfeits, and imitations. Possibly because it does not wish to give the intelligent individuals who manufacture these interesting objects any more aid than need be, the Club is granting admission only to members and their friends, who, presumably, are as far above suspicion as Cæsar's wife. A few genuine works are also included in the exhibition for purposes of comparison - and possibly also to give the beholder's weakening faith in humankind occasional refreshment.

Some of the counterfeits are said to be so extraordinarily perfect that all but the most expert are likely to be deceived. One of the exhibitions is a miniature reproduction by Ruchmovski, a Russian goldsmith, of the tiara of Saitapharnes, which he forged and sold to the Louvre in the early nineties. So perfect was his workmanship that the fraud was not discovered until 1903. There is also a collection of sculpture by Bastianini, the Florentine forger, who is supposed to have been one of the most successful of modern times and who owed much of his success to his extraordinary skill as a craftsman and to the real creative spirit which he possessed.

The exhibition is especially interesting because it shows the antiquity of faking. It was a common practice in ancient Rome for art dealers to keep Greek slaves, who produced artistic

parvenus. European collections of Chinese paintings are said to contain many examples of the skillful forgeries of the Chin family, and in Paris to-day the artist who cannot paint modern pieces supports himself by turning out old masters. In London there was once a small studio above a fried-fish shop in Drury Lane where two young painters made enough to live by painting masterpieces of the Dutch school for export to America, at the rate of fifty shillings a week, with a special bonus of fifty pounds every six months. The poor amateur collector may take heart, however, from the pronouncement of an anonymous English critic, that 'in the collection at the Burlington it will not be difficult for trained eyes to detect the forgeries and imitations.'

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, AT IT AGAIN! HAVING been out of the limelight for a long time, partly because Mussolini occupies so large a share of that desirable area, Gabriele d'Annunzio has set about collecting a about collecting a museum of war trophies, prominent among which will be such pieces of arms or equipment as have had the honor to be connected with his poetic self. Recently he requested the Italian air force authorities to present him with the old airplane in which he carried out his raid on Vienna during the war. The authorities obligingly complied and the plane has been sent to Gardone, where d'Annunzio has perched it upon his villa, Vittoriale, in which his collection has been housed. It is now proposed to send also an old destroyer, unfit for use, which d'Annunzio desires because of some naval exploit. The war vessel is to be taken to pieces and sent inland to the Villa Vittoriale, where it will be reassembled and set upon the hill truly an amazing spectacle,

Meantime Marquis Boltini, a friend of the poet's, has come to London with the manuscripts of d'Annunzio's most famous works. They are to be sold at auction and the proceeds will be used by the author to erect a monument to Eleonora Duse. It is rumored that an American collector recently offered d'Annunzio two hundred thousand dollars for these papers, but d'Annunzio did not care to sell them at that time.

A REACTIONARY BOLSHEVIST

PLAYWRIGHT

ONE of the fundamentalists of Bolshevism raises a shout of protest in the Moscow Pravda over the last play by Anatole Lunacharskii, the Soviet Commissar of Education. The indignant Communist is aghast at Lunacharskii's 'most reactionary' and 'dangerous' play, The Bear's Wedding, which was recently produced at the Little Theatre in Moscow, and demands its immediate suppression.

With his hair and probably his whiskers - vibrant in horror, the critic in Pravda exclaims:

At a time when even in all children's books and so-called fairy-tales the Department presided over by Lunacharskii has eliminated such words as 'God,' 'the Tsar,' 'a noble Count,' 'a horrible witch,' and so forth, the Commissar of Education himself has presented to the audiences of

our Soviet theatre a concentrated extract of all this reactionary rubbish.

Of the nine scenes of Lunacharskii's play, only two are played on a fully lighted stage. The other seven are acted in a mystical semidarkness or complete darkness. During

these same seven acts an unseen chorus of women is heard to sigh and wail behind the scenes, and is supposed to represent the moaning of the wind and the whisperings of mysterious voices. In three acts several of the members of the cast have fits of insanity. In the same scenes barefooted women

with lamps in their hands suddenly appear out of the darkness, and make various mysterious speeches. In one act a gipsy appears from behind a tree, and tells the fortunes of two of the people in the play who are contemplating marriage.

Then nearly all the characters are counts or countesses or members of the so-called

nobility. . . . The whole play is compiled of mystical nonsense from beginning to end. We are entitled to demand from a playwright who is also a Communist and from the head of the Commissariat of Education complete ideological purity in his writings, adequate clarity in conception, and the presence of a minimum of artistic taste.

ERNST TOLLER IN LONDON

MR. LOUIS UNTERMEYER's translation of Masse-Mensch which was presented as 'Man and the Masses' by the Theatre Guild in New York - has had a fairly successful production by the Stage Society in London. This subscription organization, however, is able to give only occasional Sunday afternoon performances, and so far there seem to be few prospects that Toller's play of protest will find its way to the stage at any regular London theatre.

The reviewers are not very favorable, though most London critics have formed the habit of roaring as gently as any sucking dove at almost everything the Stage Society attempts. The Daily Telegraph's critic finds some scenes 'powerful,' but complains that they are 'exceedingly lurid' and asserts that 'the work adds little or nothing to our understanding of the cyclonic forces of which the world has seen all too much during the last ten years.' He also complains of the play's lack of cohesion and its inconclusiveness, but praises the work of the British director who staged it. The Times suggests that the label 'Made in Germany' would be exceedingly appropriate and finds Masse-Mensch in general an æsthetic