the experiment in democracy since the the krone is only about one-hundredth feet long, they move immense quantities armistice has been tragic.

of its pre-war value, and one-fiftieth of of material at low costs, especially fuel Austria has been slaughtered by im- its value on armistice day.) So this and building material. They are genperialism, dismembered by Allied com- petit bourgeoise had to work or starve. erally pulled by horses, but occasionally missions, and looted by democracy, but If he had a hand-cart, he was lucky, be- men and women hitch themselves to the other two were as nothing compared cause then he could go into the delivery what seems an impossible load and move to the plague of democracy.

business and add some income to the it for miles. Yes, I know I am writing about trans- rent from his houses.

There is no question about the cheapportation. But the wheels in the heads Wages have increased in Austria, but ness of such transportation, especially of the well-intentioned democrats must not in proportion to the cost of living; when the canals are already built and be visualized in order to understand hence the social distress—almost all no burden of modern bonded debt is the why people have to make dray-horses of caused by experiments in social govern- penalty of their use. themselves in Austria now. ment since the war.

The small freight car may also give After the armistice the popular Gov.. The United States seems thousands of Europe an advantage over us. ernment took over the food business, miles away from these European condi- There are generally two sides to questhe railways, and too many other things tions, geographically and socially, yet tions. The large United States standard to mention here. There were jobs for many a half-baked leader among us has freight car requires a minimum of, say, all, and a low cost of living. Inci. said: “The old order has passed away, thirty tons. If an American shipper has dentally, the Government lost money. a new day has dawned, and the people that much material, the car is loaded They paid the deficits promptly in new are to come into their own." This is and goes a thousand miles or more with paper money. This worked so well that what the politicians said in Austria be- no rehandling of the load. But what the business increased; so did the fore election. They tried to make good about the shipment of ten tons? In deficits and the paper money. It was after election.

Europe that represents their car-load unfortunate, but the value of the paper The resulting burdens on the people minimum, and they send it anywhere kronen went down about in proportion can be duplicated in this country. We without rehandling and at the car-load to the increase of the quantity printed. already pay more taxes per capita than rate, but the shipper in the United People with fixed incomes found they any country in Europe.

States who wants to forward ten tons were in trouble. Rents were not allowed This discussion of what Europe can must do it as local freight, at local rates. to be increased, so a man who had a teach us would not be complete without It must be rehandled at junction points monthly income of five hundred kronen a reference to their large canal boats and at terminals, causing great delay (with a pre-war value of one hundred and small freight cars.

and great labor cost. dollars) found prices of necessities so Their canals were developed centuries I am not advising any change here. high he couldn't live more than two or ago, long before railway problems were I am merely showing where Europe has three days, because his five hundred known. They form a network all over cheaper costs, and why. We may learn kronen were worth perhaps not more Europe, and with the standard canal many lessons, including a larger use of than one dollar. (The present value of boat between two and three hundred hand-carts and wheelbarrows.

So have the sisters found delight
In doing fireside tasks aright:
Together they have come to see
The meaning in mahogany,
Which now they rub that there may pass
A pageant in its looking-glass;
They shine the windows that the bloom
Of earth be brought within my room;
The lamps are gladly filled and trimmed,
And•virgin wisdom goes undimmed;
They polish the piano keys
In readiness for harmonies;
In bolting doors they've learned as well
To throw them wide for heaven and hell,
That all who will may enter there
To be the guests of grace and prayer.

The Mary-in-me did not stay
At home, as Martha did, each day:
She held aloof like some wild bird
Whose music is but seldom heard.
My Martha felt a little shy
Of Mary as she passed her by,
And one day hid the cloth and broom
With which she garnishes my room.
When Mary saw, she paused and pressed
A hand of Martha to her breast,
And whispered, “We must learn to do
Our labors side by side, we two."

Mary and Martha in sisterhood
Dwell in me as sisters should;
They fashion a garment and kiss its hem,
And my house is in order because of them.

THE PAGEANT AT

AT PLYMOUTH

BY HERMANN HAGEDORN

A

1

as

a

NEW and notable piece of Ameri- have grown wary of pageants, seeing end, sure-footed and lucid in developcan dramatic literature has come visions of wearisome processions, of ment, swift in action, crisp in dialogue,

out of the celebration of the ter- conventional dances, of undramatic and a deeply moving play of human conflict centenary of the landing of the Pilgrims. unconnected tableaux, of symbolism and sacrifice, tied as closely to the It is by George Pierce Baker, Professor which failed to symbolize, and tangled America of to-day and to-morrow as to of Dramatic Literature at Harvard Uni- allegory which no one could unravel; the America of three hundred years ago. versity; it is called "The Pilgrim admitting the virtues of the pageant in The play was produced after nightSpirit;" ' and it was performed a dozen stimulating community feeling, but re- fall on a piece of land, adjoining times during July and August by the garding it, in spite of Mr. Percy Mac- Plymouth Rock, recently reclaimed to people of Plymouth, Massachusetts, be- Kaye's brilliant adventures in that field, form part of the National Pilgrim Reserfore audiences which aggregated about

form of human activity more vation, a permanent memorial to the one hundred thousand persons.

closely related to sociology than to art. Pilgrim Fathers to be established jointly It was called a "pageant," which was Professor Baker's work is not a pageant by the State of Massachusetts and the perhaps a little misleading and discon- at all if by the word pageant we define Federal Government. The great oval certing. Over-enthusiastic amateurs those spectacles, some of them involved stage, some five or six hundred feet have in recent years been producing and tedious, some of them childish and across, with a depth of four hundred rather too many pageants. History has tedious, and some of them only tedious, feet or more, had only the night sea been unfolded a bit too liberally by which have bored millions of honest under a night sky for back-drop; and eager, half-trained people celebrating citizens who did not have the courage on it, here or there, picked out by powerthis or that centenary; and wise folk to confess how bored they were. It is ful lights, or moving across it in brill.

no more specifically a pageant than any iant masses, the dramatic scenes swiftly 1 The Pilgrim Spirit: A Pagear in Celebration of the Tercentenary of the Landing of the Pil

of Shakespeare's chronicle histories. It succeeded one another. The actors were grims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 21, is a historical drama, built about an without exception amateurs--men, wo

By George Pierce Baker. The Marshall Jones Company, Boston. idea, with a beginning, a middle, and an men, and children of Plymouth and the

1020

the praying figures. An instant later the stage is flooded with brightness. It is 1603. King James is on his way from Edinburgh to London to be crowned King. The procession is gorgeous to the last detail in brilliant color and group ing. Town dignitaries advance to do honor to the monarch; the Sheriff of Nottingham comes with his men. Scarlet and gold and glittering helmets, champing horses and the stately music of a triumphal march, emphasized on the one hand by the obeisance of the citizens and on the other by the rasping voice and lordly gesture of James, make vivid that here is the Divine Right of Kings at the peak of arrogance and pomp. Confronting it, drab and altogether insignificant, stands a little group of Puritans presenting the Millenary Petition. The voice of the King (in real life a mechanic of Plymouth) is extraordinarily convincing. "A Puritan is a Protestant scared out of his wits!" he exclaims to his retinue and the

words are authentic history. “I shall THE NORSE GALLEY

make them conform or I will harry them out of this land—or else do worse."

The bagpipes skirl, the crowd huzzas. neighboring villages of Kingston, Dux- Sieur de Champlain, with his men in Brilliant, powerful, arrogant, the procesbury, and Marshfield, twelve hundred of capes of brilliant purple and vivid sion moves off, leaving the little group them all told. In the list of them the green, comes to learn of fish in the har- of petitioners alone. As they gaze helpold illustrious names recur-Delano, bor and corn on the land. The Dutch lessly at the departing King an unseen Bradford, Howland, Brewster; but the Admiral Blok is shown in a brief chorus breaks forth in a glorification of majority have a different sound. O'Brien .scene, then the Englishman John Smith; absolutism. Through it, first faintly and McClosky are there, and Stegmaier then another Englishman, Thomas Hunt, and uncertainly, comes the voice of the and Birnstein and Rodrigues and Bor- who ruthlessly slaughters the Indians new order. The two forces grapple, and ghesani and Siebenlist and Kaplowitz and carries several off to captivity. gradually the new order becomes domiand Nordstrom and Scagliarini. Over Thomas Dermer comes in a friendlier nant: half the Americans joining thus actively spirit and lays the foundations for the

Thunder and cry out! to celebrate the coming of the Mayflower friendship between the English and the

Not with the flash of a sword, three hundred years after the event Indian chieftains Samoset and Massa

Not with a shout will ye turn and were, in fact, of foreign birth or parent soit, on which the statesmanlike John

rout age, in the main Italians and Portu- Carver is later to build a valuable alli- A host whose captain is the Lord! guése; a matter which might be a sub- ance. Swiftly and with extraordinary Harry, imprison, pursue! ject for gloomy meditation except for variety of grouping and incident the

Your foe is not what you deem. the fact that they re-enacted the old pre-Pilgrim background is revealed; and

In the black night, face to face with

you, scenes with such extraordinary fervor. the First Episode is over. In them too, perhaps, some of the "pil- There is no intermission. As dark

Behold, not men but a dream! grim spirit" burned. To some of them ness falls on the preceding scene there Not the downfall of King James, but surely those scenes of persecution and is a distant sound of men's voices chant- the downfall of all kings, is presaged in exile and bitter trials in a strange land ing, and the second act, entitled "Pil- the triumphant climax. The pomp and must have appeared painfully real. grims of the Soul," begins.

We are

the arrogance are dust under the feet of The play moves swiftly. At the open. back a hundred years, in England, in the irresistible dream. ing, across a dark stage, from the direc- 1523. A group of religious pilgrims is The familiar Pilgrim figures are now tion of Plymouth Rock comes the Voice revealed crossing a field where a boy is revealed — Brewster, Carver, Robinson, of the Rock, stating the theme: “I, the plowing. To them comes William Tyn. Bradford, Standish. At Scrooby they rock of Plymouth, speak to you, Ameri- dale, telling of his labors in translating decide secretly to emigrate to Holland; cans. ... Of me, a rock in the ooze, the Bible. The leader of the group is on the shore at Haltonskittershaven they have made a corner-stone of the menacing. “If God spare my life," cries they are for the moment foiled and Republic.” The voice dies away, the Tyndale, "in not many years I will driven back. The second act ends in orchestra begins the Prelude, and sud- cause a boy that doth drive a plow shall defeat. denly, as the lights flash on the water, know more of Scripture than thou dost." In a rapid succession of scenes the they reveal, moving toward shore, a It is the opening gun in the battle whose story of the Pilgrims is unfolded. The Norse galley bringing the first of the end is not yet.

various characters stand clearly outhalf-dozen "Pilgrim Adventurers," who Darkness is over the scene. A slender lined; the dialogue, based to a large expreceded the actual Pilgrims to Cape shaft of light reveals a little group of tent on words recorded by Bradford in Cod. Out of the darkness glide a half- three, pathetically insignificant and his history, has dignity as well as the dozen Indian canoes. There is a sharp desolate on the wide expanse of dark carrying quality of drama. The scenes skirmish, the Norse chieftain is borne and empty stage. It is Greenwood and are stirring—first, the momentous decisaway, dead, on the shoulders of his men, Barrow in the Fleet Prison in 1593, con- ion to leave the comparative security of the lights go out, the scene is over. fined for reading that Bible which Tyn- Leyden, then the departure; the pro

The lights fall on another part of the dale has revealed to them, and now foundly significant signing of the Comstage. The English mariner Pring is sending directions through Greenwood's pact in the cabin of the Mayflower; the shown in friendly intercourse with the wife to brethren in Holland. A jailer landing, first at Provincetown, then at Indians. Darkness. A third group of comes with the order that they are to Plymouth. The Pilgrims establish themIndians stands revealed, to whom the be hanged at dawn. The light dies on selves, and in their dealings with the

in

Indians present what has remained the ideal of the best American statesmanship-frankness, justice, and good will backed by force. “We are so few," cries Mrs. Brewster. "But prepared," answers the valiant Standish. “If it comes time to strike, we shall strike first and strike hard."

Pestilence comes to the Colony; half the settlers die; but it is youth which survives. Gradually the Colony finds it. self. Government by the consent of the governed proves stable; but foes appear, not without, but within. Some of the newcomers to the Colony come merely for selfish gains; they seek to sow discord. When communism proves impractical and is given up, they still insist on reaping where they have not sown, refusing either to work or to pay taxes. They spread lies at home and in Eng. land; they seek to turn the Indians

THE SIGNING OF THE COMPACT against the colonists. “Return to England, whoever wishes and can," cries

A little in the grasp—more to achieve. factorily either delicate beauty or volGovernor Bradford sternly. “But let

I wonder what the Pilgrims if they ume of sound. The notes, lacking any. him who remains know this: No man

came

thing in the nature of a sounding-board who works shall starve, but he who has, Would say to us as freemen? Is our

or a canopy, went astray. Orchestra and must work for what he gets, and must freedom share in the common defense."

Their freedom as they left it in our

chorus sounded remote and a little thin.

The production itself was admirable The malcontents, after attempting to

keeping-
Or would they know their own in

in every detail and moved with the preset fire to the storehouse, are brought

modern guise?

cision of clockwork, directed from a to trial. The evidence against them is

tower behind the bleachers by Professor overwhelming.

There is a clash of cymbals. Up the Baker himself. It would be difficult to There is something very stirring to

steep slope out of the sea, literally “over praise too highly the skill of the stage twentieth-century American ears

the top,” leap, as if in answer, the flags management which conducted twelve Governor Bradford's charge: "Coming

of the Allies and are borne forward. hundred totally inexperienced actors in among us as 'friends, this man Lyford

Once more the Voice of the Rock is a bare two hours through some twentyand his fellow Oldham have plotted to

heard: “The path of the Mayflower four scenes without the semblance of kill that for which we left England, for

must forever be kept free;" and as two confusion or hurry. The composition of which we crossed the Atlantic, which we

hundred voices ring out, singing the the scenes themselves was extraordi. have enjoyed these last four years-gov

words of the Chorus, the thousand or narily varied and rich, for the costumes, ernment by and for ourselves in town

more participants march and counter- designed by Rollo Peters and made by and church. Accepting of us, pretending

march in a final review that is a delight the women of Plymouth, were full of to be of us, they have plotted against

of dazzling color, the lights go out, and blazing color, even the sober garments that which is dearer to us than our the pageant is over.

of the Pilgrims revealing more exquisite lives. (Rising.) John Oldham and

Professor Baker's "Pilgrim Spirit" has shades of gray and brown, of lavender John Lyford, you are expelled from the

the sincerity, the simplicity, the beauty, and deep green, than one entranced settlement of Plymouth."

and the imaginative quality which we spectator knew existed. There was of One wonders what sympathy would

associate with lasting literature. It is course no scenery, and no attempt even the doughty Governor have had with the

American to the core in its glorification to suggest scenery. The episodes lived radicals who in 1919 appealed to the

of the principle of religious and political altogether by their own inherent vi. memory of the Mayflower when they

freedom. Mr. Baker evidently conceived tality, and in the sincerity and imagiwere "expelled from the settlement."

the play as a nation's, and not an indi- native quality of the dialogue estab"Let this be for a warning," Bradford

vidual's, tribute; for he invited com- lished about themselves an atmosphere concludes, “that what we established

posers representing different parts of of authenticity which no painted canvas here for personal liberty and self-govern

the country and different schools of could ever create. ment, that will we hold as a heritage for

musical expression to compose the inci- It was the play which was the thing. our children and our children's chil

dental music, and a number of poets, of Everything else was incidental, and to dren."

whom Edwin Arlington Robinson, Jose- one spectator, at least, unimportant. The voice of Washington is heard, the

phine Preston Peabody, and Robert The play could be given in any theater voice of Lincoln; then two youthful

Frost are the most distinguished, to figures in modern dress appear, speaking write the choruses. The composers rep

or in any schoolroom, and so long as it

were given with reverence and sincerity the first lines of the final chorus, writ.

resented practically a cross-section of the quality which made it deeply movten by Robert Frost:

contemporary American music, Edward ing on the great stage beside Plymouth FIRST SPEAKER

Burlingame Hill, Edgar Stillman Kelley, Rock would make it deeply moving This was the port of entry for our Frederick S. Converse, George W. Chad- there. It is a striking thing that the freedom.

wick, and Arthur Foote representing the man who more conspicuously and more Men brought it in a box of alabaster, older tradition; Henry F. Gilbert, the successfully than any one else in AmerAnd broke the box, and spilled it to middle group; and Chalmers Clifton, ica has for a generation been training the west

Leo Sowerby, and John Powell the modHere on the granite wharf prepared

young men and young women in the for them.

erns. Bellini is said to have remarked making of plays should have written a

on one occasion, "La musique en plein play himself which is not only finer, perSECOND SPEAKER

air n'existe pas," and to some extent the haps, than any play which his students And so we have it.

music at the pageant justified his dic. have written, but is almost the only

tum. Not even an orchestra of ninety American historical drama worthy to Have it to achieve:

pieces could in the wide spaces of even stand beside Drinkwater's “Abraham We have it as they had it in their day, a windless night convey altogether satis. Lincoln.”

FIRST SPEAKER

The Gonds, our informant writes, are the original inhabitants of India, who have been driven into the forests by the inroads of civilization. They retain their old customs and language and continue a life of complete isolation from the cities. In these pictures they are seen in their wedding costumes. On such occasions the guests, in their full regalia (which indicates that, as with other wild tribes, decoration is with them more important than dress as such), take an active part in the dancing. The music is of a primitive type, made with drums and bamboo pipes. A marriage festival is the occasion of great rejoicing and the Gonds are then to be seen

at their best

From M. A. Hasan, Nagpur, India