reating ideals.

The intelligent theater-goer to-day, as never before, will therefore
note with interest the change in the notions concerning this popular
amusement that is yet so much more, based upon much that has happened
within our time; the coming back of plays into literary significance and
acceptance, so that leaders in letters everywhere are likely to be
playwrights; the publication of contemporary drama, foreign and
domestic, enabling the theater-goer to study the play he is to see or
has seen; and the recognition of another aim in conducting this
institution than a commercial one looking to private profit: the aim of
maintaining a house of art, nourished by all concerned with the pride in
and love of art which that implies, for the good of the people. The
observer we have in mind and are trying to help a little will be
interested in all such experiments as that of the Little Theaters in
various cities, in the children's theaters in New York and Washington,
in the fast-growing use of the pageant to illuminate local history, in
the attempts to establish municipal stock companies, or competent
repertory companies by enlightened private munificence. And however
successful or unsuccessful the particular ventures may be, he will see
that their significance lies in their meaning a new, thoughtful regard
for an institution which properly conducted can conserve the general
social welfare.

He will find in the growth within a very few years of an organization
like the Drama League of America a sign of the times in its testimony to
an interest, as wide as the country, and wider, in the development and
maintenance of a sound and worthy drama. And he will be willing as lover
of fellow-man as well as theater lover to do his share in the
movement--it is no hyperbole to call it such--toward socializing the
playhouse, so that it may gradually become an enterprise conducted by
the people and in the interests of the people, born of their life and
cherished by their love. Nor will he be indifferent to the thought that,
thus directed and enjoyed, it may in time come to be one of the proudest
of national assets, as it has been before in more than one land and
period.

And with the general interests of the people in mind, our open-eyed
observer will be especially quick to approve any experiment toward
bringing the stimulating life of the theater to communities or sections
of the city which hitherto have been deprived of amusement