With the English eighteen-pounders and the soixante-quinzes of France!

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"Mrs. Pretty and the Premier."

I am not sure that I didn't find Mr. Bourchier's "Foreword" or Apologia
(kindly given away with the programme) rather more entertaining than the
play itself. As long as the dramatist (a New Zealander) concerned
himself with the delightfully unconventional atmosphere of Antipodean
politics he was illuminating and very possibly veracious. But the
relations between the _Premier_ and the widow _Pretty_, which promised,
as the title hinted, to be the main attraction, were such as never could
have occurred on land or sea. It was impossible, with this farcical
element always obtruding itself, to take the political features of the
play seriously, as I gather that we were intended to do; and we got very
little help from Mr. Bourchier's own performance, which was frankly
humorous. In his brochure he tells us with great solemnity that he is
"more than pleased to think that the play may help to demonstrate to
those of an older civilisation how truly the best of the so-called
Labour politicians strive to serve their country and their fellow
men.... Premier 'Bill' demonstrates vividly enough that, heart and soul,
the Australian politician devotes himself to the uplifting of the great
Commonwealth." Mr. Bourchier's tongue may or may not have been in his
cheek when he penned these lofty sentiments, but anyhow it seemed to be
there during most of the play.

He is on safer ground when he tells us that "in curiously vivid and
pungent fashion this little play outlines the breezy freshness and the
originality of outlook which almost invariably characterise the
politicians and statesmen of the Prairie, the Veldt and the Bush, and
which more than anything else perhaps differentiates them from the men
of an older land, hampered as these latter often are by long and stately
traditions." Certainly, in the matter of addressing its Premier by a
familiar abbreviation of his Christian name (an authority who has
travelled in these parts assures Mr. Bourchier that he is "quite right:"
that "people would call this Premier 'Bill' in Australia") the new world
differs from the old. I cannot so much as contemplate the thought of Mr.
Asquith being addressed by the Minister Of Munitions as "Herb," or even
"Bert."

[Illustration: FIRST LOVE; OR THE JEUNE PREMIER.

_Bill the Premier_ Mr. A