red by laws
and yet more laws. He believes that most of the trouble is caused
by ignorance and urges education, public enlightenment and franker
recognition of existing conditions. All this may be needed, but still we
may well doubt its effectiveness as a remedy. The drunken Helot argument
is not a strong one, and those who lead a vicious life know more about
its risks than any teacher or preacher could tell them. Brieux also
urges the requirement of health certificates for marriage, such as many
clergymen now insist upon and which doubtless will be made compulsory
before long in many of our States.

Brieux paints in black colors yet is no fanatic; in fact, he will
be criticised by many as being too tolerant of human weakness. The
conditions of society and the moral standards of France are so different
from those of America that his point of view and his proposals for
reform will not meet with general acceptance, but it is encouraging to
find a dramatist who realizes the importance of being earnest and who
uses his art in defense of virtue instead of its destruction.

Other comments follow, showing the great interest manifested in the play
and the belief in the highest seriousness of its purpose:

There is no uncleanness in facts. The uncleanness is in the glamour, in
the secret imagination. It is in hints, half-truths, and suggestions the
threat to life lies.

This play puts the horrible truth in so living a way, with such clean,
artistic force, that the mind is impressed as it could possibly be
impressed in no other manner.

Best of all, it is the physician who dominates the action. There is no
sentimentalizing. There is no weak and morbid handling of the theme.
The doctor appears in his ideal function, as the modern high-priest of
truth. Around him writhe the victims of ignorance and the criminals
of conventional cruelty. Kind, stern, high-minded, clear-headed, yet
human-hearted, he towers over all, as the master.

This is as it should be. The man to say the word to save the world of
ignorant wretches, cursed by the clouds and darkness a mistaken modesty
has thrown around a life-and-death instinct, is the physician.

The only question is this: Is this play decent? My answer is that it is
the decentest play that has been in New York for a year. It is so decent
that it is religious.--HEARST'S MAGAZINE.

The play is, above all, a powerful plea for the tearing away of the veil
of mystery that has so universa