from the stage ten years ago by men of all parties. The statesman of to-day may not be aware of his kinship with the man who pilfers goods from the London docks, but spiritually, he is his brother. And we who keep the statesman in power are responsible for continuing the reign of dishonesty, whose A is a lie spoken on the Front Bench and whose Z is a parcel sneaked from a goods train. There you have one of the chief problems with which men are faced all over the earth to-day to choose between a world of mutual trust and a world of mutual prey.

A world of mutual prey may afford opportunities for the adventurer, as life in the time of the robber barons did. But men discovered long ago that such a world made for the greatest misery of the greatest number and, rather than allow it to continue, they accepted even the drastic alternative of law and order.

To-day, the possessing classes are raising the cry of 'Stop, thief!' against the poorer traffickers in dishonesty. They They must go further, however, and restore the image of honesty in high places. Low standards of honesty in public life inevitably lead to low standards of honesty in private life. Hence the problem of 'pilferage,' as it is called, is to some extent a Cabinet problem. The Cabinet, had it the will to be honest, could do more for the country, by example, than the Archbishop of Canterbury.

him across the wall. The latter is off to see if he can bring down a big strange bird which several of the villagers have reported to have seen. The Vicar, who soon enters, is one of those gentle, rather helpless men. We gather that he has given shelter to a girl who has had a 'war-baby,' by employing her as a servant, thus irritating his curate, the curate's wife, and his housekeeper. They think 'a rescue home' is the proper place for her. He is badgered by the curate's wife about it, and inclined to give way on the point of farming out the baby.

Sleep overtakes him in the garden. The blue sky suddenly changes; lurid darkness descends, and out of the rhododendrons, twinkling with fairy lights, steps an androgenous curly-headed youth in a kirtle of silver and white silk, illuminated by celestial limelight. It is an Angel who has left the presence of the Father of Light to understand, if he can, this wicked world of ours, and sailing down from the spheres, he has been winged by a shot from a gun.

You know those pictures which arrest one, sometimes, in shop windows; pictures of golden-headed and concupiscible angels bending over dying soldiers; of maidens clinging in speckless nightgowns to rude crosses, amid angry billows; of a pretty Jesus laying a tender hand upon a griefbowed form. You know the accessories common in such pictures, the wintry solemn sunsets, the heavenly beams, the dazzling or shadowy crosses in the sky. You know the sentiment, these works convey. To such emotions The Wonderful Visit at the St. Martin's Theatre is addressed. Indeed, so direct an appeal to these emotions has not been made since Wilson Barrett wrote and acted The Sign of the Cross.

Of course, stage contrivances and stage lights have made progress since then. There is a tableau at the end

of the second act which would make Wilson Barrett jealous. In it, the housemaid, loosely robed in blue, her hair ringing out like wild bells upon the night, kneels at the feet of the Angel, whose lowered glance is itself a benediction, while his upraised arm and index finger bids her aspire. There is another such moment when Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks (a full-sized replica of which hangs in the Vicar's study) comes to life while the Reverend Benham in his tweed jacket, charmed, but still with a somewhat plaintive, cramped expression, kneels beside the frame.

But the quintessence of the play is expressed in the scene at the foot of the War Memorial Cross. Thither, Delia has come to replace her withered wreath. It is only a bunch of flowers she brings now, and we listen to her on her knees, communing with her 'Bert,' explaining she has had much work, and no time to change the wreath, till now. The squire, who has made money and a knighthood out of munitions, has already rasped our sensibilities by saying that such withered tributes should be cleared away; and, indeed, would have done it on the spot himself, had not the Angel, being endowed with finer sensibilities than are mortal, very properly stopped him. We are given the measure of the depth of Delia's devotion to the dead by hearing her refuse, at the foot of the memorial, a laborer whose heart of gold expresses itself in that kind of language which is beyond poetry, 'I want 'ee, Delia, so bad.'

After all this, you can imagine the quality of emotion which thrills us when the ogre profiteer attempts to seduce her, and the Angel, springing from behind the cross, breaks a hunting crop across his back. Yet that is not the climax. The Angel has already lost his wings; he wears

now the simple russet garb of a Canterbury Pilgrim. Though he had been only a week upon what Mr. Wells once called 'this round earth of ours,' contact with men has already modified his celestial nature, for human passions are infectious.

But do not think that this play is as solemn as The Sign of the Cross. It is rather one of those works which span the easy octave from laughter to tears, from tears to laughter. The Angel asks naive questions when he first arrives. Why are men so ugly? Why are they unkind to each other? Why are there any poor? Why must he wear trousers? How do babies come? Why are people married? Why did not so-and-so fight in the war? You can imagine the kind of comedy created by the replies. But now, he understands; and he has in fierce indignation actually struck a man. He has ceased to be angelic. After shuddering, and hiding his face in his hands, he glides behind the monument and ascending to the cross, he slowly stretches his arms upon it. At the same time, a strong light is thrown from the auditorium, and thus a large shadow of a crucifixion is cast upon the purple evening sky. Gravely, the curtain descends.

After that, the last act, a fire in the vicarage in which both Angel and mother perish while attempting to save the baby, is almost an anti-climax. The Angel, however, reappears again in his pristine glory, purged by self-sacrifice, to hold a last colloquy with the vicar, who has alone believed he was an angel. 'Believe in your dreams,' is his last injunction, a message which is, no doubt, intended to reach all of us. And by 'our dreams' is meant - what? If the vicar's dream is a specimen of the kind of visions we are to believe in, it is a rather debilitating gospel. There were, as usual, some cries of ‘Author'

on the first night; but to my surprise Miss Marie Corelli did not appear.

To return to those pictures which so closely resemble this play in inspiration. I have often wondered what sort of men or women painted them. Sometimes, I have imagined a jolly cynical fellow, the belt of his Norfolk jacket dangling behind him, pipe in mouth, at his easel, thinking, as he adds the last touches, of a holiday in the country, and muttering to himself, "That'ull fetch 'em,' and I have sympathized with him. Why should not a painter, who calls himself 'an artist' only when he fills in a census paper, boil his pot as best he can? True, it is not good for mankind, as Mr. Wells has pointed out in Mankind in the Making and elsewhere, that bad works of art should be encouraged by our commercial civilization. Still, men must live, and no one, even the most censorious, would be hard on a poor man of letters, or a poor painter without talent, who tried to meet the market.

But the cases to which Mr. Wells draws our attention are more serious; namely, those in which men who are artists, who can and have done good work, are compelled to over-production because their good work does not bring them in enough money. Here, the loss to society is obviously much greater; yet, although we respect and trust, much more, artists who never yield, or cannot yield, to that temptation, nobody blames the others much. It is the fault of our civilization. The case of a man whose good work has made him rich, but who, nevertheless, turns out cheap rubbish, he does not discuss. Perhaps, at that time, he had not come across an instance.

In books like Boon he has thrown almost a heavier responsibility upon the artist than human nature can bear. The writer is bidden to remember 'what a sacramental thing it is to

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lift up brain and hand and say, "I, too, will add"-to literature. 'We bring,' he goes on through the mouth of Hallery, 'our little thoughts, as the priest brings a piece of common bread to consecration, and though we have produced but a couple of dozen lines of prose, we have nevertheless done a parallel miracle.' All reading is

sacramental, is communion with the immortal being. We lift up our thoughts out of the little festering pit of desire and vanity which is one's individual self, into that greater self. . . . All you who give out books, who print books, and collect books, and sell books, and lend them, who bring pictures to people's eyes, set things forth in theatres, hand out thought in any way from the thinking to the attentive mind, all you are priests, you do a priestly office; - - and so forth, and so forth.

This doctrine of the inspired priesthood of authors is exaggerated and dangerous. Neither has it, you see, prevented him from writing The Wonderful Visit. Artists should feel, and if necessary be told, that they are on their honor to do their best. That will do. If they flatter themselves that they are messengers from the Father of Light whenever they put pen to paper, they are apt to take any emotional hubble-bubble in themselves as a sign that the Spirit has been brooding upon the waters, and pour out; though a short time afterwards they may let loose a spate flowing in a quite different direction. Sincerity of the moment is not sincerity; those who have watched England's prime minister know that.

The authors of this fulsome performance I have just described, which has the faults and debilitating sentiment of the cheapest, vaguest religiosity, are (it will come as a surprise to some distant readers) Mr. Wells and Mr. St. John Ervine; the one a pillar of the better sort of drama, the other the historian of the world, the prophet of society, the castigator,-in fiction and

essays, of morals, politics, and bad sentiment. The History of the World was a fine achievement. I am told it will bring Mr. Wells quite twenty thousand pounds. And who would grudge it him? It was a book we wanted, and no one else could have written it. There seems, therefore, to have been in his case no very pressing necessity for writing pot-boilers, and we must conclude that The Wonderful Visit is part of his message to the world as an artist. Indeed, judged by his own standard, both its authors would otherwise stand condemned as guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, though few would be so hard on them as that. I would not be, nor would, I think, all those who laugh cynically over his play. We would be content merely to say that it was a shameful piece of work to come from men of their gifts and intellect.

I have written, nevertheless, with some asperity, partly because I feel strongly that this play is an act of bad faith on his part, and perhaps also on the part of Mr. Ervine, against the fellowship of all who, in their different ways, try (without thinking themselves messengers from God or anything of that kind), to write their best; and, partly, because Mr. Wells has been going to pieces of recent years.

Though he may hate me for it, I should like to stop that if I could. When he sets himself a definite task like writing history, or describing Russia, his great gifts still tell, but when he speaks out of himself, or creates, a sort of slovenly humility or slovenly arrogance (for it has both aspects) seems of recent years to have taken possession of him. Because he has got a pulpit, he thinks he must never be out of it, no matter what he says. In the old days we knew when 'Wells' was speaking and reasoning, and when it was to an invented character the sentiments and opinions belonged. In fact, he wrote novels and

he wrote essays. Then, he discovered the method of ratiocinative fiction, and bashed the two forms together. Under the name of his hero, he could then express views with an emotional amplitude and conviction which, speaking as Wells, he would have required, in all honesty, to qualify. It had disastrous results. He confused us, but, worst of all he confused himself.

No man has done more in the past to free adolescence from silly notions, poor ambitions and trivial fears, but no man has also hit out more desperately at random, clubbing down those fighting on his side, embracing those on the other, then fiercely disentangling himself, or added more to the confusion of thought by passionately stated 'provisional thinking,' the results of which he holds himself free next year to discard. Can he get back to his old self? Yes, or this criticism of him would not have been worth writing; he can, by respecting himself as an artist, as an artist not in his own sense, which has permitted The Wonderful Visit — as a puddle reflecting a star- but as an imaginative creator and careful craftsman. If he does so, then, too, the publicist in him will be freed, and from that side of his talent we shall again receive books as well considered as Mankind in the Making, in addition to stories or plays as good as Kipps, Love and Mr. Mr. Lewisham, Tono Bungay, and The Country of the Blind.

It is so typical of the Western people, who, mind you, are as nearly aboriginal as may be, that it may stand instead of a long chapter of exposition. There is a ballad in it for who has the knack; Mr. Masefield, perhaps, if he would not overlay it with ornament. Its outstanding merit is its bare simplicity.

Two brothers, who, if not twins, were near in age, lived with their widowed mother and sister Annie in an outlying cottage some half-mile away from a village, perhaps twelve perhaps twelve miles from Sarum,- standing in a narrow valley folded into the downs. Call the brothers Steven and Robert, and know Robert as Bob. Bob was a steady, plain fellow who worked hard and kept the household going. He was a shunter in the goods yard at Sarum, on night duty as often as not. I never saw him, but if he were as true to type in appearance as he was in nature, he was short, sturdy, square-faced, longheaded, with ruminating gray eyes and a gentle voice. Steven, his brother, was a bad case. In a village with a drink tradition (very rare here, but yet to be found scattered about), he drank, and did worse. He lost money betting, and tried to find more by poaching. Frequently he failed to find it, or to find enough, and then he learned that his old mother was afraid of him, and could be intimidated. She was. Bob's money was handed out, florin by florin; and Bob must be deceived with tales of unexpected charges; and Annie must lend herself to the cheat.

Whether Bob was, in fact, deceived, you are to learn; at any rate, he said nothing, had no speech with his brother, and accepted skimped meals without comment. The two men seldom met, for Steven was out all day, and home late to bed, while Bob either left before he returned, or long before he was up, as his duty

might call him. It was, perhaps, as well. Bob was quiet, a still water, but stubborn, like all his race, and strong for his rights, once he knew they were in danger. Steven, in his cups and out of them, freely expressed his scorn of the 'mug,' as he called him; yet, it did not appear that the two had ever conflicted publicly. It might have been better if they had.

Things went on badly, and worsened. Steven's levies became more frequent, his menaces more positive; the two women were terrorized. They dared say nothing to Bob-and Bob said nothing to them. Then, one night, the blow fell.

Steven came to the house at about eight o'clock in the evening. He had been drinking, and was in a cold rage, they said. He asked for money,- - all they had. It was the second demand in a week, and there was nothing to meet it. So they told him, trembling. He said: 'You'll have it for me at midnight, or you'll rue it. I shall come back for it at midnight.' They lied to him in their fear. You'll find Bob here, if you do come.' He scorned them. "Tis a lie. I know where Bob is. Mind your business; have the money here, or I'll come up and fetch it.' 'You cannot fetch what I have not got.' But he swore. 'I know what you've got; maybe you don't know what you'll get. Have it ready, or I'll do for the two of you.' Then he went out.