o provide star
acting parts, and that, since plays cannot be written in which all the
characters are star parts, drama is a poor sort of stuff of no great
interest. In his calling, of course, all are stars, though, perhaps, he
would hardly admit that all are of equal brilliance; and one fancies
that he regards as inacceptable any entertainment during which part of
the stage is occupied by persons receiving no greater salary than that
of a county court judge.

Of course, every man is entitled to his own point of view, and if Mr
Lauder considers that his turns are preferable to drama, he is quite
right to say so. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of
persons to whom his performances represent the summit of art; they, of
course, are entitled to their opinions.

There is no reason for supposing that his remarks are not uttered in
good faith. Indeed, it is their obviously complacent sincerity which
renders them so exquisitely comic. If he were half as funny on the stage
as he is in cold print, the whole world would be at his feet. From one
point of view his utterances are quite unimportant: to the world outside
the music-hall they only represent the unintentional humours of a man
without weight, save in his branch of his calling; but, so far as they
are the opinions of the variety stage, the matter is serious, since it
suggests that the modern drama has an enemy, not a friend, in the
music-halls, and an enemy which works under such unfair conditions of
advantage and is so powerfully organised that it may become the duty of
the theatre to wage a fierce war upon it.

No great change would be needed in the conduct of the playhouses in
London to enable them to cut into the music-halls. The sympathy with the
music-halls of those who have been advocating free trade in drama may
become exhausted, and, on the other hand, a system may be devised under
which the theatres take music-hall licences, and then the inflated
salaries which have led to swollen heads will soon shrink.

Double Entente

The correspondence provoked concerning Mr Harry Lauder and his views
about the drama and the music-halls was a little disappointing owing to
its onesidedness. The music-hall performer in one respect resembled St
Athanasius. A passage in a letter on the topic was surprising. Miss
Violet Vanbrugh said: "The English language, too, is so difficult; it
leaves so little to the imagination. It seems to come down definitely,
in a