ss and the Stage is usually an
unfortunate one, as servants are frequently represented as comic or
flippant characters, and are held up to ridicule," a meeting of our
leading dramatists was hastily convened last evening by Lady
HEADFORT (who, it will be remembered, is all for calling her maids
"Home-birds") to engage their sympathetic co-operation in aid of
mistresses, housekeepers and employers generally. What the stage
has taken away the stage must give back: that is Lady HEADFORT'S
contention. Not that the domestic problem will even then be settled;
there will probably still be difficulty in persuading W.A.A.C.s and
Land Women and Munitioners who have tasted blood to descend below
stairs again; but perhaps a little help will be forthcoming. Hence
this influential gathering.

Sir SQUIRE BANCROFT, who presided, said that the domestic problem
was one of great seriousness. Personally he rarely descended to the
servants' hall, but he did not pretend to be unaware of the usefulness
of such regions and of our dependence upon them. There must be give
and take. If the stage had been guilty of too much levity in its
portraiture of domestic servants, then, in the interests of all of us,
it must make what our lively neighbours call the _amende honorable_.

Sir JAMES BARRIE said that no one could hold him personally to blame.
His plays had always exhibited domestic servants in a most favourable
light. Not only was a butler the hero of _The Admirable Crichton_, a
maidservant the heroine of _A Kiss for Cinderella_ and a charwoman the
heroine of _The Old Lady Shows Her Medals_, but the actual authorship
of _Peter Pan_ was given to the smallest nursemaid on record.

Mr. SOMERSET MAUGHAM also claimed to be on the side of the home-birds.
Had he not in _Smith_ written a part of strong parlour-maid interest
for Miss MARIE LOeHR?

Mr. G.B. SHAW said that there was no need for the meeting at all,
because he was just putting the finishing touches to a witty drama
which would settle the whole question. In this play, which, he could
tell them on the best authority in the world, his own, was a work of
surpassing genius, the Irish Question, which had baffled statesmen and
philosophers for centuries, is settled once and for all by the wisdom
and presence of mind of a Kerry kitchenmaid.

The Chairman said that perhaps the meeting might as well proceed with
its discussion, since there was always the possibility that the run
of Mr. SHAW'S pla