[Footnote 6: "Dramatic" has recently become one of the most overworked
words in the vocabulary of journalism. It constantly appears, not only
in the text of the picturesque reporter, but in head-lines and on
bulletin-boards. When, on July 20, 1911, Mr. Asquith wrote to Mr.
Balfour to inform him that the King had guaranteed the creation of
peers, should it prove necessary for the passing of the Parliament Bill,
one paper published the news under this head-line: "DRAMATIC ANNOUNCEMENT
BY THE PRIME MINISTER," and the parliamentary correspondent of another
paper wrote: "With dramatic suddenness and swiftness, the Prime Minister
hurled his thunderbolt at the wavering Tory party yesterday." As a
matter of fact, the letter was probably not "hurled" more suddenly or
swiftly than the most ordinary invitation to dinner: nor can its
contents have been particularly surprising to any one. It was probably
the conclusiveness, the finality, of the announcement that struck these
writers as "dramatic." The letter put an end to all dubiety with a
"short, sharp shock." It was, in fact, crisp. As a rule, however,
"dramatic" is employed by the modern journalist simply as a rather
pretentious synonym for the still more hackneyed "startling."]

[Footnote 7: As a specimen, and a successful specimen, of this new
technic, I may cite Miss Elizabeth Baker's very interesting play,
_Chains_. There is absolutely no "story" in it, no complication of
incidents, not even any emotional tension worth speaking of. Another
recent play of something the same type, _The Way the Money Goes_, by
Lady Bell, was quite thrilling by comparison. There we saw a workman's
wife bowed down by a terrible secret which threatened to wreck her whole
life--the secret that she had actually run into debt to the amount of
£30. Her situation was dramatic in the ordinary sense of the word, very
much as Nora's situation is dramatic when she knows that Krogstad's
letter is in Helmer's hands. But in _Chains_ there is not even this