States without reference to land settlement projects, and was quite active during 1915. Work of the second class, however, seems to have been overdone in recent years, notably where large reclamation schemes in North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri have been undertaken. These projects were engaged in 1915 in efforts to colonize and utilize the lands reclaimed, and in the meantime few new projects were being undertaken.

Drainage reclamation work in the United States is done very largely under drainage district organizations quasi-municipal corporations which have the power of eminent domain, the power to issue bonds which are a lien on the lands reclaimed, and the power to levy and collect taxes for meeting the cost of constructing, operating, and maintaining drains. Most of the States have such laws. In 1915 Alabama passed a drainage district law, and surveys for the first district to be organized under this law are in progress. The drainage district laws of Georgia and South Carolina have been passed upon and declared constitutional by the Supreme Courts of those States during the year, while the Utah district law is now before the Supreme Court of that State. The Colorado district law is also before the State courts.

The purpose of the drainage district organization is twofold: (1) To make it possible for the owners of wet lands to condemn rights of way for outlet ditches, and (2) to raise funds for the construction of drainage works. In the latter purpose the organizations have been only partially successful. In the reclamation of lands wholly unproductive, the value of the bonds issued depends upon the successful settlement of the reclaimed lands, and these bonds are therefore speculative in character, while the laws usually prohibit their sale below par. Investors are unwilling to assume the risk of such development without the chance for profit made possible by buying the bonds below par, and consequently the bonds are not readily marketable. This condition has led to proposals that the States in some way place their credit behind drainage district bonds, but so far none of the States has done this.

The most notable work of the year in drainage for flood protection is that being done under the Ohio Conservancy act, passed after the disastrous floods in that State in 1913. This law has been tested in the courts of the State and declared constitutional, and districts to carry out the objects of the law have been organized, plans have been made, and assessments for defraying the cost are being levied. Construction has not begun, however. The large drainage enterprises in the Florida Everglades almost ceased activity because of controversies between the State of Florida and the companies carrying on the work, and because of difficulties of selling land and of utilizing the land which had been sold but not completely drained. The reclamation enterprises in the vicinity of New Orleans were proceeding very slowly because the lands were not being taken up and utilized.

In the arid region of the United States there has been considerable activity in the drainage of lands injured by over irrigation and the rise of the ground water due to irrigation and seepage losses from canals. In many of the large irrigation projects begun but a few years ago the ground water has risen so rapidly that large

areas are already unproductive, and the continued use of these lands requires that the surplus water be removed and the ground water level lowered. This is noticeably the case in Western Colorado, Southern Idaho, Northern Wyoming, and many parts of Utah. On many of the government irrigation projects drainage has become necessary, and provision for this is being made. The drainage of irrigated lands presents many new problems, and the United States Department of Agriculture is giving considerable attention to the solution of these problems. During 1915 extensive observations and experiments have been made in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, and in the Snake River Valley in Idaho.

FOREIGN COUNTRIES. As has been stated, the European war has brought drainage reclamation work in the Eastern Hemisphere almost to a standstill. In the irrigated sections of Egypt and India the same trouble with rising ground water and the accumulation of harmful salts, so apparent in the United States, is being experienced, and drainage works have become necessary in connection with most of the large irrigation schemes. In Australia, the states of Victoria and New South Wales are continuing their irrigation work. In New South Wales this work consists of continued construction on the Burrinjuck scheme, while in Victoria the state is engaged in settling and reclaiming the lands supplied with water in former years.

In the Western Hemisphere Argentina is beginning the reclamation of her wet lands, but other than this there is little activity outside of the United States.

DRAMA, AMERICAN AND ENGLISH. The great war cast a shadow over the theatre season of 1915, not only in England, but also in America. In England, creative activity in the drama was brought almost to a standstill. Most of the London theatres remained open, but the majority were given up to the lighter types of entertainment. The most popular plays of the London season were American farces and melodramas, written cheerfully in American slang, and acted with verve and gusto by companies imported from America. With one notable exception, no new plays were brought out by the acknowledged leaders among British dramatists. The Big Drum, by Sir Arthur Pinero, which had been begun before the war, was produced early in the autumn by Sir George Alexander. It dealt satirically with the means employed to work up artificial reputations for current novelists by publicity campaigns in the newspapers. The play, as originally produced, ended unhappily; but the author soon substituted a different last act, which ended happily. He stated, as the reason for the change, that he had decided that the war-time audience needed optimism in the theatre even more than logic.

Several war plays were produced in both countries; but none of them really rose to the height of the occasion. One of the earliest of these was called in England The Man Who Stayed at Home, and in America The White Feather. It was written by Lechmere Worrall and J. E. Harold Terry, and dealt with the discovery of a nest of German spies in a seaside hotel on the east coast of England. A somewhat better play of the same type was Inside the Lines, by Earl Derr Biggers. The scene was set at Gibraltar. The hero, an officer in British uniform, was sus

pected to be a German spy, until in the end he turned out to be a British spy who had merely pretended to take orders from the Wilhelmstrasse in order to controvert a German plot to blow up the British fleet in the harbor. More entertaining still was Under Fire, by Roi Cooper Megrue, a traditional war play of the secret service type, made alluringly up to date by a skillful localization in Belgium and Northern France. A one-act play, entitled War Brides, by Marion Craig Wentworth, which dealt tragically with the misery inflicted on the women of a war-ridden country, was acted with great suc cess by Mme. Nazimova throughout the leading vaudeville theatres of the country. A sombre play, entitled Moloch, was written by Beulah Marie Dix. It depicted, in terms a little too abstract, the horror and futility of war. It set forth a powerful appeal for peace; but it failed in the theatre, both when it was produced in Chicago in the spring, and when it was produced in New York in the fall. More ambitious still was Armageddon, an attempt by the dramatic poet, Stephen Phillips, to deal with the subject of the war in a large Miltonic manner. This piece was not produced in America, but it was published in both countries. In December, Stephen Phillips died, at the age of 47, and England lost her one poetic dramatist of unquestionable talent. Early in the spring, the American novelist, Justus Miles Forman, hastily wrote a war-play called The Hyphen, which dealt with the menace of the German spy-system in America. The play was produced by Charles Frohman; but it had been both written and rehearsed without sufficient preparation, and it failed in the theatre. Shortly afterward, the author and the manager sailed together for England on the Lusitania, accompanied by the wellknown dramatist, Charles Klein; and all three were killed when the ship was destroyed by a German submarine on May 7th. The loss of these three men was the greatest tragedy of the year in the theatrical world of England and America.

In the American theatre, the most important event of the year was the advent of Granville Barker as a producing manager. Invited to New York by the Stage Society, and backed by the founders of the New Theatre, Mr. Barker installed himself in Wallack's Theatre in January and produced a repertory consisting of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, by Anatole France, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion and The Doctor's Dilemma. All four plays were admirably acted and beautifully produced; and the repertory ran successfully until April 30th, when it became necessary to vacate Wallack's Theatre because arrangements had previously been made to begin the demolition of the building on the following day. The last night at this historic playhouse was celebrated with appropriate ceremonies. The Barker productions brought the American public face to face with that new stagecraft which, initiated by Gordon Craig, has been gradually developed, in the last dozen years, in Russia, Germany, and England. The purpose of this movement is to make the modern theatre as hospitable to romantic and poetic plays as it is to realistic plays. The essential principles of the new stagecraft are the following: First, a return to the inner and outer stage of the Elizabethan theatre; second, the abolition of foot

lights and the substitution of overhead lighting; and third, the treatment of scenic backgrounds in a summary and decorative spirit, instead of in the detailed and photographic spirit of the preceding period.

The leading American stage-director, David Belasco, was immediately influenced by these innovations. In the early spring, he produced a romantic play, Marie Odile, on an apron-stage devoid of footlights; and in the late summer, he produced a contemporary comedy, The Boomerang, on a stage lighted wholly from the top and from the sides. These two pieces, incidentally, must be counted among the very best American plays of the year. Marie Odile, by Edward Knoblauch, was a lovely and exquisite work of pure poetic fancy; and The Boomerang, a light and slight comedy of love and jealousy, was written with great artistic delicacy by Winchell Smith and Victor Mapes.

The beautiful decorations designed for Granville Barker's productions by the American artist, Robert E. Jones, and the English artists, Albert Rothenstein and Norman Wilkinson, started a new fashion in America, which has been continued by the Viennese, Josef Urban, and the American, Robert McQuinn. The work of the Chicago artist, William Penhallow Henderson, should also be mentioned. Mr. Henderson's chief contribution was the investiture of Alice Gerstenberg's charming dramatization of Alice in Wonderland.

Late in the spring, Granville Barker turned his attention to the production of two plays by Euripides, The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris, both translated by Gilbert Murray. These plays were given out of doors, in the Yale Bowl, the Harvard Stadium, the Princeton Stadium, the Stadium of the College of the City of New York, and in other large open-air auditoriums. Each performance was attended by from 7000 to 10,000 people; and the enthusiasm of these enormous audiences afforded ample proof that Greek tragedy is still a living art. During the summer, Margaret Anglin was no less successful in producing certain plays by both Euripides and Sophocles in the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, Cal.

Next to these events, the most interesting undertakings of the year were still of the sort that is usually called irregular. The eminent German actor and stage-director, Emanuel Reicher, came to New York early in the year and organized a society called The Modern Stage for the production of several masterpieces of the modern drama. During the course of the season, he exhibited Hauptmann's Elga, Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, Björnson's When the Young Vine Blooms, and Hauptmann's The Weavers. In acting the part of Borkman, Mr. Reicher made his first appearance in the English language.

A very interesting movement was initiated at the Bandbox Theatre in New York by an enthusiastic group of amateurs calling themselves the Washington Square Players. Their policy is to produce a repertory of one-act plays, four plays to each bill, at the small charge of fifty cents a seat. Their plays are adequately acted, beautifully decorated, and well produced; and their repertory includes already such interesting items as Maeterlinck's Interior, Schnitzler's Literature, Bracco's The Honorable Lover, and Helena's Husband, a delightful satire by an American author, Philip Moeller. The work of

the Washington Square Players is symptomatic of a movement that is being taken up in many other cities of America.

In the commercial theatre, Grace George successfully established a repertory company at The Playhouse, in New York. Her first two offerings were revivals of The New York Idea, by Langdon Mitchell, and The Liars, by Henry Arthur Jones. These were followed by the first American production of Major Barbara, by Bernard Shaw, a very witty comedy that had been written as long ago as 1905. Mention should also be made of the installation of a Théâtre Français, at the Berkeley Theatre in New York, where excellent performances of standard French plays were given, in the French language, under the direction of Lucien Bonheur. Comparatively few new plays of English authorship were presented in America during the course of the year. The best of these were a Lancashire comedy by Harold Brighouse, entitled Hobson's Choice, and a comedy of Yorkshire character, entitled Quinneys', by Horace Annesley Vachell. Both of these were excellent examples of that racy type of realistic comedy that has been growing up, in recent years, in the British provinces. Alfred Sutro was represented by a clever satiric comedy, The Two Virtues, developed from the theme that charity is no less to be desired in a woman than chastity, and by a less successful satire, The Clever Ones, which discussed the same theme as Les Femmes Savantes of Molière. A new comedy by Henry Arthur Jones, entitled Cock o' the Walk, received its first production in America. The material was rather thin, but it was handled with the author's customary skill. It poked fun, in an airily satiric spirit, at the conduct of the theatre-system in London at the present time, with special reference to the coming tercentenary celebration in honor of Shakespeare.

The most serious, and perhaps the most important, American play of the year was Children of Earth, by Alice Brown, which won the prize of $10,000 which had been offered by Winthrop Ames. It presented a profound study of New England character, and was extremely searching in its psychological analysis; but it failed to interest the public, because its atmosphere was rather gloomy, and because it lacked rapidity of action. The Shadow, by Dario Niccodemi, was not of American authorship, but it received its first and only production in America. It was made memorable by the very impressive tragic acting of Ethel Barrymore. Louis K. Anspacher, in The Unchastened Woman, presented a very interesting study of a woman of the Hedda Gabler type, who took delight in devastating the lives of all with whom she came in contact. An earlier play by the same author, entitled Our Children, was much less valuable. A new writer, Cleves Kinkead, achieved a great success with Common Clay, a play more notable for its evident sincerity and earnestness than for its structural development. It discussed the theme that society, in reference to sins of sex, is harder on the woman than on the man, and harder on the poor than on the rich. In The Eternal Magdalene, another new writer, Robert McLaughlin, pleaded for greater sympathy toward those unfortunate women who have been required, by the constitution of society, to adopt the oldest profession in the world; but his play was unimaginative and was poorly written.

Considerable delicacy of art was displayed by Charles Kenyon in Husband and Wife; but the play failed because the subject-matter was lacking in novelty. Herman Sheffauer's The New Shylock, which had been previously produced by Miss Horniman in Manchester, was brought out in New York under the title of The Bargain; but, despite the fact that it presented an interesting characterization of a patriarchal Jew, it failed because the plot was badly proportioned. Paul Kester contributed a slight but charming comedy called Beverley's Balance, which was delightfully performed by Margaret Anglin. Edward Locke came forward with two plays-a very agreeable comedy of character, called The Bubble, and a rather unpleasant study of a runaway wife, entitled The Revolt. In Sinners, Owen Davis returned to the manner of the cheap melodramas of his earlier career. The House of Glass, a successful melodrama by a new author, Max Marcin, developed with considerable skill the conventional story of an innocent woman hounded and haunted by the police. Jules Eckert Goodman, after failing with The Trap and Just Outside the Door, came forward at the close of the year with an admirable dramatization of Treasure Island. In fact, the thoroughly suc cessful transference of Stevenson's great story to the stage was one of the memorable events of the

season.

Among the lighter American plays of the year, the most original was Young America, by Fred Ballard, a charming comedy of the juvenile court, in which a naughty little ragamuffin was reclaimed by his love for his dog. James Forbes displayed his usual humor in a merry farce about the theatre, entitled The Show Shop. Somewhat analogous was a sentimental comedy that dealt with life in and about a metropolitan opera-house: it was entitled The Great Lover, and was written by Leo Ditrichstein and Frederic and Fanny Hatton. The successful campaign of the evangelist, Billy Sunday, was turned to the uses of farce by George M. Cohan in Hit-the-Trail Holliday. In Rolling Stones, Edgar Selwyn added another to the long list of American plays in which a penniless hero makes a fortune in two hours. Avery Hopwood, a deft and witty writer of entertaining farces, scored a great success with Fair and Warmer, and was only a little less successful with Sadie Love. In Abe and Mawruss, Montague Glass and Roi Cooper Megrue wrote a successful sequel to the earlier play of Potash and Perlmutter, which had been written by Mr. Glass and the late Charles Klein. Abe and Mauruss was not only, like its predecessor, rich in characterization; it was also a well-made play. So much, however, could not be said for Our Mrs. McChesney, a somewhat analogous comedy taking up American business-life, by George V. Hobart and Edna Ferber.

The year was marked by a notable increase in the number of published plays: and most of these were real plays-that is to say, plays devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience-instead of closet-dramas, merely written to be read. The institution of the Drama League Series of Plays and the Modern Drama Series appears to have stimulated the further publication of good translations of the best European dramas, and also of good plays of native authorship. An especially useful book was Thomas H. Dickinson's collection of 20 com