re gay, the
scenery almost magnificent. As a spectacle it would, I suppose, be
regarded as gorgeous. Apparently, too, most of the auditors enjoyed it,
although a look of boredom was on some faces. As to the revue itself,
while one could not help admitting that some of the songs were humorous,
and some of the repartee clever, the thing as a whole was cheap and silly
and vulgar.

I do not say there was anything positively wrong in it, but there were a
great many vulgar suggestions and unpleasant innuendoes. As a dramatic
critic said in my hearing a day or two later, when discussing the popular
entertainments of London, 'Most of these shows consist of vulgar,
brainless twaddle.' Still, the audience laughed and cheered, and when
the curtain finally fell, there was a good deal of applause. Certainly
the entertainment would be a great contrast to the experiences which the
lads who were home on leave had been going through. But as I reflect on
it now, and think of the great struggle through which the nation was
going, and the ideals for which it was fighting, I cannot remember one
single word that would help or inspire. Of course places of amusement
are not intended to instruct or to fill one with lofty emotions. All the
same, I could not help feeling that laughter and enjoyment were in no way
incompatible with the higher aims of the drama. In fact, what we saw was
not drama at all; it was a caricature of life, and a vulgar one at that.
Indeed, the author's purpose seemed to be--that is, assuming he had a
purpose--to teach that virtue was something to be laughed at, that vice
was pleasant, and that sin had no evil consequences.

Indeed, while I am anything but a puritan, I felt sorry that the hundreds
of lads home from the front, many of whom were wounded, had no better
fare offered to them. God knows I would be the last to detract from
their honest enjoyment, and I would make their leave bright and happy;
but after all, the nation was at war, life was a struggle, and death
stalked triumphant, and this was but a poor mental and moral food for men
who, for months, had been passing through an inferno, and many of whom
would, in a few weeks or days, go back again to see 'hell let loose.' If
those men had been merely fighting animals, if they were mere creatures
of a day, who went out of existence when the sun went down, then one
could understand; but they were men with hopes, and fears, and longings;
men into whose n