Plymouth Brother who still regards the playhouse as one of the gates of
hell is perhaps the safest adviser on the subject of which he knows so
little. If I do not draw the same conclusion, it is not because I am one
of those who claim that art is exempt from moral obligations, and deny
that the writing or performance of a play is a moral act, to be treated
on exactly the same footing as theft or murder if it produces equally
mischievous consequences. I am convinced that fine art is the subtlest,
the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in
the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive
even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works
by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving
to crowds of unobservant, unreflecting people to whom real life means
nothing. I have pointed out again and again that the influence of the
theatre in England is growing so great that whilst private conduct,
religion, law, science, politics, and morals are becoming more and
more theatrical, the theatre itself remains impervious to common
sense, religion, science, politics, and morals. That is why I fight the
theatre, not with pamphlets and sermons and treatises, but with plays;
and so effective do I find the dramatic method that I have no doubt I
shall at last persuade even London to take its conscience and its brains
with it when it goes to the theatre, instead of leaving them at home
with its prayer-book as it does at present. Consequently, I am the
last man in the world to deny that if the net effect of performing Mrs
Warren's Profession were an increase in the number of persons entering
that profession, its performance should be dealt with accordingly.

Now let us consider how such recruiting can be encouraged by the
theatre. Nothing is easier. Let the King's Reader of Plays, backed by
the Press, make an unwritten but perfectly well understood regulation
that members of Mrs Warren's profession shall be tolerated on the stage