had the larger diameter), there was a certain dignity of pathos in his exit, a late amende by an otherwise remorseless puppet-maker.  Mr. SYDNEY PAXTON as a pillar of Nonconformity offered a clever study in the unctuous-grotesque; Mr. VINCENT STERNROYD sketched a portrait of a nut-consuming impenitent disarmamentist.  The author is the first, so far as I know, to give public emphasis to the queer fact of natural history that there is some connection between extreme opinions and the prominence of the Adam’s apple of the holder of them—­a fact on which I have often pondered.

Mr. M. MORAND, the aggressive Scots member of the election committee, inspired to great heights of insobriety by the return of his London-Scottish nephew from the Front, sounded a welcome human note, as did Mr. SAM LIVESEY, the Labour Member of the committee, shaken out of his detachment into an extreme explicitness of language by a Zeppelin raid experience.  Mr. GEORGE BELLAMY’S Welsh Disestablisher and Mr. GRIFFITH HUMPHREYS’ exuberant German press-agent of the pre-war period were both really shrewd studies.

Of the right sort there were but five—­and one of these, the editor’s secretary, at heart an honest patriot, but in fact eating the bread of shame, was perhaps not altogether of the right sort.  Still he did get off his chest at last the pent-up passion of years, and very well he did it, with the help of Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, whose subtle little touches, building up a picture of a disheartened hack, were very adroit indeed.

Then there was young Henry Craig, at the beginning an undergraduate in his last term, at the end a V.C. in his last resting-place.  Mr. PERCIVAL CLARKE’S was an adequate pleasant study.  So also was Mr. PHILIP ANTHONY’S of a Canadian, full of strange idioms, who butted in to just the wrong corner of Fleet Street to put the editor wise about the intentions of a Germany in which he had spent his last two years.  And then there was splendidly English Frank Aylett, exile returned, unspoilt by the cynicism of party and paper, whose fortune came to him just at the psychological moment, enabling him to give his proprietor notice and fight and win a by-election in the astonied man’s own constituency, besides carrying off his daughter (Miss VIOLA TREE), who was the fifth of the right sort.  What more plausible English hero than Mr. C. AUBREY SMITH, except that he had to talk a good deal more than seemed appropriate to his type?  There was a well-managed post-election scene when he was at his best (as was the author).  And all through there was good and sometimes glorious sense for those to hear who had ears.

The programme promised us about a month’s interval between Acts I. and II.  It was actually less than that; but if Mr. J.H.  SQUIRE’s musicianly orchestra had not been there to charm us we might conceivably have been bored.

T.

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[Illustration:  THE LIGHTER SIDE OF EDITORIAL LIFE.