The same apparatus which quickly transports men, transports with equal quickness the printed word. And the devices which carry speech across a continent to a listening ear, make it easy to put into print in thousands of towns and cities the message which the voice conveys.

The changes I have noted clearly demand changes in library methods. I have space to mention only one. When Naudé gathered a library for Cardinal Mazarin he aimed at completeness. His example is followed still by many libraries, in spite of these facts: that the growth of print has made futile the attempt to gather it all; that indexes and abstracts enable a student to name quite definitely, without examination, what he needs to see; and that methods of transport, communication and reproduction make it easy to put the specific print needed into the hands of those who need it, wherever it may be found. A few libraries may, with some propriety, continue to acquire all they can and keep all they acquire. But even among these few there should be set up a division of all knowledge and a coöperation which shall enable each to concentrate on a certain small part of the whole field. This coöperation in acquisition is already practiced by a few libraries, and, fortunately, some of these few are among the most important. But the tendency to gather and retain still prevails, and large libraries duplicate one another in many things, yet, lacking coöperation, allow many works of first importance to escape them all.

The growth of print and of its use, which has been briefly sketched, suggests a possible salvaging of our threatened civilization, and in this suggestion lies good reason for the existence of this paper. Civilization is a rare plant, brought to flower only at long intervals and only through happy combinations of climate, soil and peoples. The present civilization in Europe and America shows a decreasing birth rate of the more intelligent. Professor Conklin in a recent article says that the possibilities of continued progress rest on education, eugenics, and enlightened effort. In that growth of print and of the habit of using it which is roughly outlined in this paper lies a hint of the possibility of such extension of education as will lead to the checking of our civilization's movement toward decay. Although the probability that ad

vantage will be taken of that possibility is very slight, I venture to outline roughly a method of doing it.

Print is used more than ever, and we are forming the habit of depending upon it for a certain type of facts. Take, for a simple example, the boy who hears of radio apparatus. He straightway wishes to make one. He reads directions in books, newspapers and journals. He follows them, and gets the results he wishes. He now realizes the value of print as he never did before, andnote this particularly-he has subjected himself, with happy results, to the authority of experts. Are his mental qualities and habits such as to make it impossible for him to be led to read, and to trust in the words of experts in other lines in the lines, for example, of eugenics, education and enlightened effort? The question lacks an answer; but the wide-spreading, the superficially effective and the penetrating extension of the printed page and its use, open to us the possibility of an affirmative answer. We can take advantage of the possibility and make a serious attempt, through a skilfully directed distribution of carefully chosen print, supplementing it with movies, phonographs and radios, to give to all men that knowledge of our civilization's perilous state and that conviction of the importance of enlightened effort which will lead them to more reading, clearer thinking and wiser habits. The experiment would cost, let us say, a couple of billion dollars; a sum which the war's experience showed we can easily spare.

It is quite possible that my library experience leads me to overestimate the power of print. But students of society, and especially of the causes which lead to the decay of our civilization, seem, by their failure to discover factors which make for the permanence of that civilization, to be ready to accept the conclusion which I reached long ago—that the one element lacking in all other civilizations and present in ours is print and its use; and that if our civilization survives it will be because of the presence of that factor. I have tried to show that it grows in strength daily, and grows more rapidly every year. It would be wise to study it with care, and, by conscious effort, attempt to use its power as a savior of that civility which is now in flower.

JOHN COTTON DANA.

THE APRON STRING IN OUR THEATRE

BY STARK YOUNG

IF If you talk about an outside influence on an art, you must first be clear about the fundamentals of that art. To go very far into the relation of our theatre to the English, we must know first of all that the art of the theatre is an art to itself. It differs from every other art. We must know the sources from which it springs and the means-drama, setting, costume, acting, musicthat make it up and that contribute to its ends, which are the expression of human living. We must know that in entering into this art every element, such as drama, costumes, action, becomes something that it was not before; drama is not literature, architecture is no longer architecture but translated into another art, and so with everything involved. The importance of a country in the theatre depends on how far it is endowed with means and methods and resources by which the art of the theatre as an expression of life is furthered.

The necessity for such an understanding at the very outset was borne sharply in upon me last spring. In a discussion of the season in New York, in an article in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, I touched in passing on a subject that needs talking about at more length, the importance of our theatre's getting away from the influence of the English theatre. This statement, with a very brief indication of the reasons for it, brought from Mr. St. John Ervine a delightful reply and an invitation through The London Observer for me to discuss the matter in greater detail at some future time. In his article Mr. St. John Ervine says that in his judgment I am on safe ground when I ask America to discover a drama of its own. To that one can only say, obviously, we should hope so. Mr. Ervine wonders if I am merely repeating the anti-Anglo-Saxon theories of Mr. Mencken; to which I reply that even if I had such a prejudice I should not indulge it at the expense of art. Well, that point being settled, then, Mr.

Ervine would like to know just what there can be in the theatres of other countries rather than the English that I want our theatre, if it turns to any foreign stage, to follow. Mr. Young, he says, finds the drama in England valueless in comparison with Russia, Germany, Italy or Spain. He wishes me to stoop to particulars from the heights of airy generalities and oblige him by naming the drama in all those countries which reduce English drama to the level of the neglible. Shakespeare and Shaw, he says, are being played in many places on the Continent; what is there better in the drama of Italy or Spain or Russia? And Mr. Ervine makes some American comparisons.

Well, to that I might say I know nothing better in those countries than Shakespeare and Shaw. But that is not the point at all. When he talks like that Mr. Ervine is doing exactly what nearly every other writer on the subject does. He does not talk of the art of the theatre and seems unaware that there is such an art. He gets off on to drama, which is only one element of this art; and for all that what he says about drama comes to, he might as well be talking of literature. And when I talk of the influence of one country's theatre on another I have no competitive interest in whether these theatres are better or not than our own. That sort of contest can reach no decisions except on the grounds of mere personal taste and prejudice. And I am not exactly talking about the occurrence of admirable instances of plays. I talk of qualities, resources. A country that is significant for our theatre will be one where there is manifestly a talent for and an abundance of one or more of these essential qualities. The whole discussion turns on that. How much resource has the English theatre for the expression of English living, of all living if you like? In England how much of the abundance of life wells up and speaks through the forms of the theatre? As for dramas, I mean not separate plays so much as the gift or possibility of expressing life in terms of the theatre. I mean not so much single instances of acting, but the possession of those attributes that go to make acting a complete and significant art. I mean not the mere occurrence of excellent settings, but the gift for expressing our visual experience in terms of the theatre and for making that expression significant.

The relation of our theatre to the English is an important subject. We have in America now no small impulse toward a theatre of our own. From many lands and peoples we have brought magnificent stores of characteristics to draw upon and infinitely diverse dreams and ways of living. We have natural conditions unlike those to be found anywhere else in the world, we have our own kind of energy, our own development of society, our own hopes of the future and judgment of the past, waiting to be expressed in an art of the theatre. For influences, if we choose, we have the whole world to turn to. How far our turning in the theatre to England is profitable or cramping, a profound need or a mere hang-over of colonialism, is a question to think

upon.

In the first place there is no absolute necessity, of course, that the theatre of a country borrow anywhere. The primary need is that it develop out of its own kind. Soul is form and doth the body make, as Spenser said; the form of our art of the theatre will necessarily come out of what we have to express. In the end we shall have to find our own feet to stand upon. But the history of art is full of influences always; for that is the natural tendency of human art as of human beings. Influences, then, we have and shall have; and influences at their best may very well be our participation in the accumulated riches of the world. But an influence in order to count must come from a source dictated by our profoundest needs. It must not be a mere parental accident. We have leaned on the English theatre more because we chanced to be an English colony than because of any deep need of it.

Moreover, it does not follow that, because a race is gifted in one direction, it is necessarily gifted in another. The powers of a race, like a man's, may culminate in a complete expression of itself in one art and in another art may only stammer. The English race has, obviously, a talent for governing and for colonization, demonstrated the world over, and for developing a governing class. It has a talent for sports; and, I think, a talent for poetry, though I am aware that in saying so I should have to defend the racial conception of what the poetic is. But the English are not gifted to anything like the same extent in the theatre. And even if there were an adequate theatrical expression of Eng