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DAVID WARFIELD (TO THE RIGHT) IN DAVID BELASCO'S PRODUCTION OF "PETER GRIMM" "When he encounters a great natural mimetic gift like David Warfield's, he is happy.... Nothing ever smacked of certain American scenes more than "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "The Heart of Maryland," "Peter Grimm," or "The Music Master"

Yet I suppose if you asked him what he is, he would promptly reply: "I am an American." It is true. Race manifests itself principally in his æsthetic predilections. For religious dogma he has never cared beyond putting into practice the Golden Rule. But he is a patriot, and from the moment he began to feel his vocation he has never ceased considering the problem of our native drama. And always optimistically. Not a propagandist with drums and trumpets, it will be found after the roll-call has been sounded that David Belasco's contribution to the American theater, both as producer and dramatist, has been of historical importance. He began with a Crummles and pump realism, as was the fashion of his day, but he is far from all that now. David Belasco had to submit to the law of growing organisms, he had to develop, and in his particular case it was either progress or a perishing of soul and body. He was cast out early on his own resources. A roving spirit, he was curious of life at all hazards, and this curiosity sometimes led him into dubious places. He knew the seamy side of San Francisco. There were moments when his mother despaired of him. But he was never dissipated. He frequented barrooms and did not fear other aspects of the underworld. In his juvenile way he tried to see life steadily and as a whole, but what he saw sometimes confused his reason.

He loved mankind because he had the semi-divine gift of pity. This transposition of his mobile personality was no adroit sentimental play-acting. David,

the would-be slayer of the Goliath of sin and sluggishness, has never lost his profound sympathy for his fellow-man. At times it amounts to sheer divination. It is his feminine side in operation. Sometimes it slips into mere sentimentality, and his art suffers thereby. And it is also the keystone to his success in training his artists; a sixth sense, that serves him infallibly as an agent of clairvoyance. In his art Belasco is clairvoyant. He has been called a wizard, but his wizardry deals with externals; his genuine distinction lies in his ability to comprehend character.

Consider the inevitable current of his career. "I, too, am an actor," he could have said, without parodying Correggio, after he saw Charles Kean. Though the road was obscure, he boldly ventured forth on its tortuous thoroughfares, and whether as clown, bareback rider, peddler, newspaper man, call-boy, "super," actor in small parts, or prompter, he assumed his devious tasks with a vim that singled him out as one of the foreordained. No doubt it was a will-o'-thewisp, this mad pursuit of an impossible ideal, but striving after the highest is the best intellectual gymnastic for a future artist. Nowadays, thanks to the debased ideal of the theater, the very mention of discipline revolts the soul of the beginner. Where, indeed, are the glorious examples of yesteryear? The only prize to be run for and wrested from an indifferent public is pecuniary success. Let art go hang!

In the days of Belasco's youth the American stage shone like a constellation. There were not only stock com

panies everywhere, but there were such men and women as Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. D. P. Bowers, Mr and Mrs. John Drew, Barrett, McCullough, Modjeska, Lotta, John T. Raymond, the elder Sothern (most incomparable of comedians), James A. Herne, Clara Morris, Genevieve Ward, Jeffreys Lewis, E. J. Buckley, Maud Granger, Harry Montague, Frederick Warde, Charles Coghlan, Rose Coghlan, Charles Thorne, F. F. Mackay, the two Western sisters, the lovely Adelaide Neilsonthe list might be prolonged for many pages. Young Belasco saw these people at close range. He studied them. He worked with that prodigal of talents, Dion Boucicault. He became acquainted with the classics of the drama. He heard Shakespeare where Shakespeare is best heard-on the stage. He was a student at first hand, and, not having the time, he did not trouble himself about the æsthetics of play-writing, but kept that task for his leisure later years, after he had learned more in the fire of the footlights than the professors of the drama can ever tell him. He has always been catholic in his tastes, always receptive to new influences, never rejecting novelty because it wore a repellent mask, instinctively knowing that practice comes before theory, that creation is the parent of criticism.

Let it be said, and it cannot be said too often: The theater is the theater; and if this is a platitude, then engrave it on your memory, for it is a golden platitude. In derision as well as sorrow, some Frenchman said that over the portal of every playhouse should be in

DAVID BELASCO

"There is in him a generous admixture of feminine sensitivity and intuition, a temperament that feels before it reasons; in a word, 'he resembles his mother,' the Irish phrase it. Now this responsive and sensitive nature of his presents a masculine surface"

scribed this legend: All Reality abandon ye who enter here! Precisely. Though it was meant in a subversive sense, this warning embodies the first law and last of the theater. It must not be real, for reality is a slayer of illusion. It may be divorced from life, divorced from literature, yet remain invincibly itself. The frame is quite rigid. There it is, that bald, cold, empty space which during the traffic of two hours you must fill with what seems like life, else fall by the wayside with those who cannot unravel the secret of the Sphinx. It is all so inviting, so hospitable to every form of literary talent; but the laws of the Medes and Persians were not more immutable than are the drastic limitations of the theater. Zola went further when he declared: The theater of the future will be naturalistic or it will be nothing. It is not yet and never will be naturalistic. You may reel off at the tip of your tongue the Three Unities and the Thirty-six Situations, but the knowledge of these and a thousand axioms besides cannot make of a sow's ear a silken purse. "How to Write a Play" lectures have never taught any one the art of play-making.

During our nocturnal promenades Mr Belasco opened his heart to me concerning his artistic aspirations. He had not Teen in New York long, though already

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recognized as a man of promise. Necessity pinched, for he had a family to support, and in him the domestic virtues had early blossomed. He was then at the Madison Square Theater; it was during the Mallory régime. He worked unremittingly. And not always in congenial surroundings. Theaterland is hardly territory where altruism is indigenous. The struggle for life therein takes on the ugliest semblance; at times buccaneering, with its concomitants, cutting throats, walking the plank, and plundering, seems more merciful. To be sure, there were some noteworthy managers-Lester Wallack, A. M. Palmer, Augustin Daly, Daniel Frohman, J. M. Hill, and a few others-who upheld standards, but then, as now, the rank and file were the same. Charles Frohman, a gentleman by the grace of God, was a close friend of David Belasco even during the time when divided by business interests, and the living manager speaks of his dead associate with unmistakable affection.

As a stage director he always achieved success. There was no disputing his mastery of his material. Years of adapting, rewriting, translating, had endowed him, coupled with his enormous experience, with swiftness in attacking any problem that presented itself and an inevitable tact in the handling of his

forces. The principal reason why he has been successful in his fashioning of raw material is that, apart from his technical training, he is an untiring student of human nature. The procrustean theory of training he discards. That way lies the arbitrary, the machine-made. He, if I may be allowed a slight exaggeration, fits his play to his actors. This simply means that he studies the instrument from the keys of which he extorts music. No two humans are alike. Belasco spies on souls. He makes his inferences; sometimes he goes on a wrong tack; not, however, often. He finds what he wants. A touch or two and the organism plays its own tune. He literally educes from his woman or man what is already in both of them. When he encounters a great natural mimetic gift like David Warfield's, he is happy. A hint to such an intelligence suffices. With lesser people he seldom fails, for he varies his procedure with each person.

My personal belief is that he hypnotizes his players-let us call it that for want of a better word-else how account for the many instances of actors and actresses who won success, artistic and otherwise, and have faded into mediocrity when they passed from under his personal domination? I know this has a Svengali flavor, but I am willing to let the statement stand for what it is worth-that under the intellectual supervision of this keen critic artists give out what is best in them. This much may be said without fear of contradiction: There is no precise Belasco method, no particular school; no actor or actress has ever lost his or her individuality; rather has that individuality been accentuated and defined. Mrs. Carter's case is a signal instance, as well as that of Blanche Bates. I have sat through rehearsals at the Belasco Theater when a full-dress rehearsal was as long and torturesome as an initial rehearsal. I have seen this impresario of accents, gestures, and attitudes go through an entire night, till morning found his guests pallid, nervous, irritable, while he was as fresh as his company; his enthusiasm kept every one vital, every one save the curious students in the stalls. David Belasco is the last of that old line of stage-managers who teaches by personal precept. And I don't mind telling you that I suspect there is concealed in him somewhere an autocrat.

I once wrote of him that if Richard Wagner had collaborated with him in stage management it would have been to the lasting benefit of Bayreuth. The first garish school of stage decoration was an ugly dissonance in Wagner's attempt at a synthesis of the seven arts. Primarily David Belasco is a painter. He wields a big brush and paints broadly, but he can produce miniature effects; effects that charm, atmospheric effects. Nothing so exotically beautiful has ever been shown as the décor of "The Darling of the Gods." Never mind the verisimilitude of the story. scenic surroundings were more Japanese than the play itself-an attenuated echo

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of Pierre Loti's exquisite "Madame Chrysanthème." But the stage was a marvel of evocation. "The River of Souls" brought into the theater a vision almost as mystical and melancholy as a page from Dante's "Inferno." Truly a moving picture. A proof before all let ters! One that since has been paraded abroad as a triumphant discovery of the New Art. In all the theaters I visited at London and on the Continent I saw nothing that had not been forestalled by the genius of Belasco; not the startling lighting effects of Gordon Craig, nor the atmospheric innovations of Reinhardt, nor the resonant decorations of Bakst, were novel to me, for I had watched the experiments at the several Belasco theaters, had heard the discoverer himself discourse his theme.

His fastidious taste in music he demonstrated by abolishing music during the entr'actes. The double-stage, an invention of the fertile Steele Mackaye, anticipated the Munich revolving stage by years, and was utilized by Belasco when at the Madison Square Theater. But credit for his innumerable devices, artistic and mechanical, has yet to be given him in many quarters; though the tendency to over-emphasize his abilities as a manager at the expense of his dramatic triumphs is deplorable. Mr. Belasco is not a theatrical upholsterer. He is more interested in the play than its setting. That he provides an adequate frame for his picture testifies to his disinterested love of perfection. If a period is to be illustrated, he illustrates it. The exact milieu is his motto. The sumptuous Du Barry epoch, the gorgeous exoticism of the Japanese, the American interiors in "The Easiest Way," the austere simplicity of "Marie

Odile"-four walls, a table, a few chairs, an image of the Madonna, a painting, two or three pigeons, and a small cast-to mention a few of his productions, testify to his sense of the eternal fitness of atmosphere. Nothing ever smacked of certain American scenes more than "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "The Heart of Maryland," "Peter Grimm," or "The Music Master."

His art has grown in finesse. He has become more impressionistic. He suggests, rather than states. The contemporary stage, thanks to the rather bleak decorative scheme of Ibsen and his followers, has become simpler in accessories. Despite the color extravagances of the Russian Ballet, the furnishings of the drama are more sober than, say, a decade ago. The picture itself has become simplified; formerly one couldn't see the forest because of the trees therein or follow the piece because of its mise-en-scène. I have watched plays in fear and trembling because of the cart-loads of things on the stage, among which the actors painfully threaded their way. And that, too, was a passing fashion. Everything changes in the theater except the theater itself. George Moore in a recent preface tells a story about Granville Barker. That ingenious manager, actor, and playwright was explaining to a friend the "mentality of his characters" in a projected play of his, when he was thus interrupted: "Get on with the story; it's the story that counts." In this anecdote is compressed the wisdom of ages as seen through the spectacles of practical Mr. Everyman. For David Belasco the

story's the thing.

He has written and collaborated in the writing of many plays. He has had

his failures. I recall his "Younger Son," an adaptation from the German, put on, if I remember right, at the Empire Theater. Something went wrong, though it had several fine episodes. The adapter was implacable; he it was who insisted that the piece be taken off. He was always his sternest critic. For nowadays this play would be a masterpiece. I remember, too, "La Belle Russe." It was merely sensational in the violent style of its day, and Gallic to the core. However, this is not a record of Mr. Belasco's achievements as a dramatist.. He fought hard for recognition and won his way slowly and not ungrudgingly. In his naïve and candid autobiography you may read the unique record of his climb to fortune. He is not without a touch of mysticism; was there ever any one connected with the theater who was altogether free from its harmless superstitions? He believes in his star. Why not? It has hung there on the firmament of his consciousness since he can remember. He won't admit the fact that he hung it himself. But there it is. And, call it his ideal or what you will, he has followed this glowing symbol from the wilderness into the promised land. Nor has it ceased to shine for him. He is as full of artistic projects as he was forty years ago. Happy man to grow younger in his heart though his head is gray! To-day the vivid-appearing young man of the late eighties looks like a French abbé in some courtly scene by a pastelist of the eighteenth century. His smile has the benevolent irony of a nature that will never become cynical.

During our walks and talks in those far-away nights often quizzed him about the Moderns. At that time, in

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A CHARACTERISTIC BELASCO STAGE PICTURE-THE WEDDING SCENE IN "THE SON-DAUGHTER"

"I must end these halting impressions summoned from the past by the sight of an old playbill: 'David Belasco presents Lenore Ulric in "The Son-Daughter"'"

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stead of writing books about Ibsen and Hauptmann, Maeterlinck and Becque, I was working in the critical trenches, throwing bombs at the uncritical old guard, which would die rather than surrender the privilege of calling Ibsen and the new dramatists "immoral, stupid, cynical, inexpert." Well, David Belasco knew all these revolutionists; he still reads them, as his library shelves show. He knows more about the practical side of Ibsen (for he admires the great Norwegian's supreme mastery of dramatic technique) than do his own faultfinders among the so-called amateur pocket playhouses. We discussed the entire movement-now a matter of history-till sometimes we were hoarse. The truth in the matter is this: David Belasco was literally born and bred in the great dramatic traditions of the golden age. Shakespeare is his god. romantic French theater. wonder. Sentiments more are the pabulum of his plays. He is unafraid of old conventions. He is an abnormally normal man. The New Movement is less a dramatic revolution than a filtration of modern motives into the theater. The Ibsen technique dates back

Then the And little

than ideas

to the inexhaustible Scribe; while the Norwegian leans heavily in the matter of the thesis play on Dumas fils. Characterization is his trump card.

Now, problems of a certain sort do not intrigue the fancy of Mr. Belasco. He dislikes the pulpit in the theater. While he willingly admits that in the domain of drama there are many mansions, he is principally interested in what the psychologists call the primary emotions; the setting is of secondary interest. A piece full of black class hatred and lust, like the extraordinary "Miss Julia" of Strindberg, does not appeal to his sensibilities. Why? Question of temperament. Its "modernity" has nothing to do with the matter. It is, with all its shuddering power, too frank, too brutal, for him. He demands the consoling veils of illusion to cover the nakedness of the human soul. If a man loves the classic English school of portraiture and landscape, the suave mellow tones of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the fragile grace and delicious melting hues of Gainsborough, the humid glory of the clouds in a Constable country scene shall we quarrel with him for not prefering Manet or Degas? Mr. Belasco

admires Ibsen, and he appreciates the skill and sincerity of Degas and Manet. But he sticks to his Reynolds and Constable and Gainsborough. Other days, other ways.

He has said: "The true realism is not to reproduce material things; ... it is to reproduce the realities of inner life." The theater, despite its obvious exteriority, has its inner life. I don't think that Mr. Belasco has cared to explore certain crannies of that "inner life," because the dwellers on the threshold are rather disquieting to behold. Ibsen still speaks in an unknown tongue to the majority. This is not an apology, but an explanation. For me the popular play of the day is no better, no worse, than it was years ago. It is for public consumption, and in the theater we Americans like to sip sweets, not to think. In the meantime let us rejoice in the possession of Belasco's rare artistic personality, for he has done so much for our native theater. And on this note I must end these halting impressions summoned from the past by the sight of an old play bill: "David Belasco presents Lenore Ulric in "The Son-Daughter."

GERMANY, UNSCATHED AND UNREPENTANT

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE, THE
PERSISTENT GERMAN PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE FRENCH,
AND THE CAUSE OF GERMANY'S PRESENT LACK OF A SENSE
OF DEFEAT, DESCRIBED IN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE

I-INTERVIEWING GERMANY

CABLE CORRESPONDENCE BY W. C. GREGG

HAVE visited the Rhine, the Ruhr, the Hamburg, and the Berlin districts, riding twelve hundred miles by daylight, and interviewing twentyfive people-manufacturers, merchants, and workers. We took long rides through the parts of Hamburg, Cologne, and Berlin where we could see the condition of the working people and their children. We got our information about prices from stores, and pay of labor from workmen and employers. I had visited Europe, including Germany, three times before 1914.

Germany bears no outward sign of having been at war excepting the stagnant harbor of Hamburg. The winter grain is green and the spring plowing is being finished with a sufficient supply of horses and tools, all in good condition. The farms are stocked with cattle, sheep, hogs, and chickens. Living is cheap in Germany. The pay of labor is low. The product of her factories can be sold much below the product of France, England, or of the United States.

People travel on the railways for onethird of what we pay. Trains were always well filled, sometimes crowded

Last Sunday morning hundreds of people at the Frankfort station took trains for outings. We noticed several companies of Boy Scouts.

Germany is as well dressed in wool and furs as the United States. The people are as healthy and fat as they ever were, not excepting the children. We visited two American feeding stations in Berlin, where we saw many anæmic children, who needed the attention of a diet expert; but I doubt if there are as many per thousand inhabitants in Berlin as in New York. A Berlin woman said that for two years during the war she was hungry, but added that for some reason she had gained in weight. On a train a very fat man with two double chins complained that he had lost fifty pounds from lack of food. I think there may be some loss of high living, but it has not reduced the weight of the average person perceptibly. We kept exclaiming at the number of fat people everywhere.

Measured by the dollar standard, an ordinary workman gets about nine cents, a skilled man fourteen cents an hour; a stenographer, eighteen dollars a month.

Food is cheap-potatoes, one cent; bread, two cents; margarine, seventeen cents; pork, twenty-five cents; chickens, seventeen cents a pound; eggs, thirtysix cents a dozen; rent, two rooms for a workman, one dollar a month; streetcar fares, less than two cents.

I had long talks with two manufacturers. I asked them if the laboring man was able to buy as many necessities now as before the war. They said, No. I asked why they did not increase wages. They threw up their hands, saying that is impossible.

I notice that that word impossible was a frequent answer of Germans to my many questions. The expenditures of the Government are many times its income; why doesn't it retrench? Impossible! Why doesn't the Government Bank stop printing so much paper money? Impossible!

I understand why they do not want to increase the wages of labor, because that would partly interfere with their plan to get back their export trade in manufactured goods. They are now quoting prices which figure about one-half what American manufacturers can sell at.

Americans could make cheap goods also if the prices of American farm products and American labor were as low as they are in Germany; but who wants that condition in the United States? It is not hard to keep German goods out of America by a tariff sufficiently high, but that is most objectionable; and we cannot protect our exports of manufactured goods by passing tariff laws.

Americans do everything possible, from feeding their children (this helps their argument against paying indemnity) to furnishing them raw material on credit to be sold to America's customers in foreign lands for cash.

Germany had a splendid trade in South America before the war. It has largely passed to the United States. Her great est hope lies in recovering it. If we help I asked one German what his country Germany do it, it will be a joke for the most needed.

"America," he replied, "should ship us food and raw material on fifteen years' credit; then we can get back our old trade."

There is a surprising amount of hatred of England. Two men said England would get us into a war with Japan, and when we were weakened she would jump in and finish us. I offended both men by laughing in their faces.

Their attitude toward the United States is quite different. They want to use us; so they commence by running down our allies. One man exclaimed at the cruelty of the French. I asked, "How?" He replied, "By their treatment of German prisoners, and their lying propaganda." I laughed again, for I had seen the way the French treated German prisoners during the war.

Germany would be glad to have the

gods.

We were dining in a large, fashionable café in Hamburg. A shabby little girl selling flowers stopped at each table, dropping a courtesy to the ladies and gentlemen. She was ignored or repulsed by seven or eight tables. Seeing we were foreigners, she moved around us; but we stopped her and bought. I did not see her make another sale-again a case of "Let America do it."

I may be interested in German children, but not until the American children, the French children, the Italian children, and hordes of other children are taken care of. The display of wealth in Germany is too great and too widely distributed to justify her accepting alms.

We visited the devastated area of France and some of the bombed factories in Belgium before entering Germany.

Perhaps we should not have done that. Perhaps we should not have noticed French people sadly wheeling away the crumbled brick walls so that their house might be built again on its old foundations. Perhaps we should not have seen Belgian cows sometimes hitched to plows and people to canal boats because their animals had been taken away from them by thousands and returned only by hundreds. But we did, and when we saw Germany untouched by shot or shell and with horses enough for all needs we could not suppress some indignation.

Germany is entitled to justice; we need not give her more. It is she who will have to work out her own salvation, mental, moral, and financial. I hope she can, for the world will not be at peace until she rids herself of the greed and vanity which filled her in 1914 and which has not been eliminated from her system in March, 1921.

I consider the condition of the workers the most important matter we observed in Germany. Neither labor unions nor political activity have obtained for them a fair deal. This seems to show that the old hard German aggression is still in control, whether in intrigue abroad or oppression at home.

Paris, France, March 2, 1921.

SPECIAL

CORRESPONDENCE BY

STÉPHANE LAUZANNE

OF THE PARIS MATIN "

WITH A STATEMENT BY FERDINAND FOCH MARSHAL OF FRANCE

II-THE BLACK TROOPS

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HERE is a question of black troops. Or, at least, the Germans are anxjous that there should be a question of black troops. For six months they have been saying repeatedly all over the United States: "France employs black troops in the occupied districts of the Rhine. These troops are. behaving most scandalously; they outrage women and murder children Our unhappy populations are submitted to a perfect reign of terror and atrocities." Strangely enough, these accusations did not take very long to cross the Atlantic and to reach America; but the echo of them took longer to recross the Atlantic and to spread in France. And France only came to know a few weeks ago that in America there exists a German campaign relative to the black troops. Let us see what the German allegations are really worth.

First of all, I felt it my duty to sub

(C) Keystone

TERDINAND FOCH, MARSHAL OF FRANCE, GENERALISSIMO OF THE ALLIES IN
THE WORLD WAR

Marshal Foch's statement prepared for publication in Stéphane Lauzanne's correspondence
is printed on the following page

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