I HAVE long been very anxious to come here to Fiume. It seemed like my duty as a good Italian, and I am happy and contented now that I have arrived.

The person who travels here by land, as I did, coming from Venice, finds his mind prepared for a more exact estimate of the sentimental value of this territory blessed by nature and by its own beauty and fertility.

During the few days since I arrived, I have made the acquaintance of several local residents, patriotically devoted to their homes. I have witnessed the proud madness of the Arditi, alert in their task of defending what they have won for us; but first and foremost, I have tried to ascertain the sentiment of the common people, who prove themselves in a thousand ways thoroughly Italian at heart. So strong are their feelings on this point, that one receives the impression of being in a country whose destinies are settled once for all. This attitude is most inspiring for ourselves, and should surely weigh heavily with our government in its negotiations.

For the people of Fiume the city is

already Italian and never can be anything else. The city has given Italian names to its streets, and it is deeply interested in everything that occurs in what it considers its fatherland. Its soldiers are from our own army and are, by natural selection, those most passionately devoted to their country. Otherwise, they would not have defied discipline in order to come here to fight another battle where our cause still seemed endangered. These soldiers, led by valiant officers, symbolize Italy. They live like brothers among the citizens, who, far from accusing them of the excesses with which they are slanderously charged, admire their discipline and good order.

Fiume has demonstrated its desire to be Italian in its system of government and of private law. It is particularly interesting for an attorney to study the judicial procedure and legislation. Justice is administered in the king's name as if this were unquestioned Italian territory. Judgments are delivered and sentences imposed in the name of His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III. It makes no difference that the Italian government has not deemed it fitting to grant the request of the National Council here, addressed to the President of the Court of Cassation in Rome, asking it to hear and appeal cases which it was not desired to send to the Supreme Court in Budapest. When this request failed, a local court was organized to deal with these cases. All the courts employ Italian law and procedure. How foundly significant this is may be indicated, perhaps, when we recall that the Austrian code is still in force at Trieste, although for a year and a half the judges have issued their decisions in the name of Italy.

VOL. 19-NO. 943

WE learn from Messrs. Macmillan that a second impression of Mr. Festing Jones's Life of Samuel Butler will be shortly ready for publication. The book is undoubtedly one of the most interesting biographies published in our time. The second edition will contain portraits of Miss Savage and Alfred Cathie; those who, like ourselves, possess the first, will be glad to hear that they can obtain these additional portraits from the publishers.

THE great 'hit' of the London season has been the performances of the Guitrys. An interesting review of the art of this famous French family is to be seen in the Observer. We reprint the greater part of it.

'Once Guitry meant Lucien. To-day Guitry means Sacha. Most distinguished sons of distinguished fathers complain that they are handicapped by their ancestry. Lucien Guitry, who is in the opinion of many people the greatest French actor of his time, may well complain that he is handicapped by his too-brilliant progeny. Instead of the fame of the father overshadowing the fame of the son, the fame of the son overshadows the father's fame.

'Sacha Guitry is the enfant gaté of the French public. No playwright ever wrote with such apparent ease as he does. He gives one the impression of having dashed off a drama in a fit of exuberance. The effect is one of delightful spontaneity. He knows no laws. The Grecian rule of the unity of time, place, and action, is vieux jeu for him. He is absolutely untroubled by

theatrical conventions. It is precisely his waywardness which has won the public.

'Whether he expresses himself in prose or in verse, his pen seems to babble, sometimes inconsequentially, always with a naturalness which astonishes. Bernard Shaw, who had only a week in which to construct a play out of 'Cashel Byron,' pretended that he chose Shakespearean blank verse as his medium, because it was so much easier than prose. Undoubtedly French verse may be facile, and when Sacha Guitry chooses to use it, he does so without the smallest obvious effort. In prose, too, he often seems to be merely amusing himself.

Although he may not be so rich in ideas as Shaw, there is much in his fluency, in his esprit, in his total disregard for the prejudices of the theatre, that recalls the British playwright a younger, more cynical, Frenchified Shaw. Often he seems to be laughing at his audience, but his audience will accept anything from him. Perhaps it is a pity that so early in life he became the spoiled darling of the Boulevards. Magnificent as some of the scenes in such plays as Béranger and Pasteur are, they are somewhat loosely strung together.

'He seems now to have turned definitely toward the form of biographical play which he invented. He takes a great man, and, like a Landru of the theatre, cuts him up into morceaux. We have a series of tableaux, each of which is wonderfully effective, though the play as a whole is disconnected. It

would seem impossible, for example, to relate the history of Béranger from the cradle to the grave on the stage, but Sacha Guitry does so with incomparable skill. It is said that he has the intention of presenting in the same fashion episodes in the life of Napoleon. He is certainly capable of this audacity. Who but he would dream of reducing the crowded career of France's greatest hero to the three hours traffic of the stage? But he has adopted as his playwright's motto Danton's famous phrase: "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!"

'Sacha Guitry is thirty-five. He was a mere boy when he wrote his first play, but it is during the last eight years that he has captured the imagination of the French theatre-goers, and has succeeded to some extent in making the world forget that for nearly forty years Lucien Guitry has, by the most solid and remarkable qualities of interpretation, been regarded as second to none on the French stage. From the days of his association with Sarah Bernhardt, to his wonderful impersonation of Talleyrand, Lucien Guitry has gone from triumph to triumph. It is perhaps only necessary to recall that it was he who took the leading rôle in 1910 in Edmond Rostand's Chantecler, the mosttalked-of play of our time, which was promised for seven years before it was actually presented at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.

'What is a young man who is conscious of his genius to do when he has a Lucien Guitry for father? Sacha Guitry decided that there was only one possible thing: that was to break away from parental control and to strike out for himself. Whether there was a quarrel or whether this step was purely a matter of policy, may not concern the public. It belongs to the private life of the Guitrys. But the public was intrigued by this separation and we were

regaled with all kinds of anecdotes, most of which were probably untrue. The young playwright, who is incidentally a fine actor, did not complain of this interest in his domestic affairs. It proved to be a capital advertisement. He worked in his own way, and that way led to success. It was a triple success a success as actor (for he was quickly playing the leading part in his own plays), a success as author, and a success as journalist. He worked enormously and yet always preserved the air of a flaneur. His output was tremendous and his technique, in spite of his apparent rejection of technique, prodigious; and yet he affected an amusing dilettantism.

'It was not until he had shown that he could conquer Paris without the aid of his father that he rejoined his father. It is not material whether this irresistible combination of the most brilliant playwright and the actor with the best established reputation should be called a reconciliation or a business partnership: it was inevitable. Certainly he recognized that for interpretive skill his father was his superior. For the occasion he wrote one of his most sparkling plays, full of ingenuity and esprit, Mon Père avait Raison. The title itself is a masterpiece of audacious wit. For the public believed that he really meant to discuss the family affairs on the stage.

'If plays are to be produced en famille, it is necessary to marry the leading lady. Yvonne Printemps is the third member of this brilliant family; and the wife of Sacha Guitry, contrary to what may almost be regarded as the rule, is an actress of real talent. Paris follows the fortunes of the Guitry family father, son, and son's wifeactor, playwright, and leading ladywith a perpetual interest in their private lives as well as in their public performances. The trio is its own

manager, in its own theatre, with its own plays, in which it is its own players.'

MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL has appeared in Philip Moeller's Madame Sand. The title rôle was played in America by Mrs. Fiske.

In the gymnasium of University College a performance of Nicholas Udall's comedy, Ralph Roister Doister, was given in practical illustration of some lectures on early English comedy which Dr. F. S. Boas has been giving to some London teachers of English. In such a course of lectures Ralph Roister Doister must needs play an important part. It is the first extant English comedy; it is the first English play earlier even than Gorboduc which has an organic plot divided into acts and scenes; it gives the first example of the influence of Plautus and Terence on the early English comedy, yet betrays the author's desire to do more than imitate to make an English play.

M. JEAN COCTEAU of Paris has recently tried an interesting experiment. He has tried to make the décor and action of a circus serve as a vehicle of artistic expression. The novelty was called Le Bœuf sur le Toit, or The Nothing-Happens Bar. The performance was thus reviewed by Arthur Johnson:

'Lastly came Le Bœuf sur le Toit, which the author describes as a "farce in the mediæval manner." There were no words but, throughout the entire performance, a continuous orchestral accompaniment. The scene was an American bar in which several persons were drinking whiskey. The actors all wore immense masks, or rather complete false heads of gigantic proportions, which gave them an amus

ingly top-heavy appearance,—and costumes of ingenious design. After a short pantomime, rendered entertaining by the grotesqueness of the figures, the arrival of a policeman was mutely announced, the whiskey bottle replaced by a milk jug and the tumblers by bowls. The policeman, who was extremely tall, entered, and was shortly after decapitated by an electric fan that hung down from the ceiling. An actor in woman's dress then mimicked a savage dance about his head. After the departure of the other characters, ~ the barman succeeds in resuscitating the policeman's body by pouring gin down his neck. He then replaces his head on his shoulders and presents him with a fabulous bill.

'All of this sounds, and was, quite foolish and, as M. Cocteau himself warned us, altogether unimportant. Without describing it, however, it would be impossible to convey any idea of the spirit of the performance. Such action as there was served merely as an excuse for the décor, the music, and the gestures of the actors. Any merit that the experiment could be said to have lay just in the fact that it represented an effort to modify or adapt a popular décor in such a way as to render it more artistically pleasing, and in that it was successful.

"The masks and costumes were ingenious, suggestive, and full of novelty; but the modern music by Francis Poulenc and Erik Satie which accompanied the performance was the chief factor in the general effect. Of its qualities as music we are unfortunately not qualified to speak. At least it seemed admirably fitted to the expression of the farcical spirit in which the whole production was conceived. For us it constituted a sort of revelation of all the fun which, with a little ingenuity, even a grown-up person could get out of a combination of sounds.