AT THE PLAY.

"LOYALTY."

If you are a pernickety intellectual (_soi-disant_) you may really
permit yourself to be faintly amused at the fiery zeal of the
mystery-wrapt author of _Loyalty_ for his (or, quite possibly, her)
country's cause in this difficult hour. If you are cast in the common
human mould that nowadays is seen for the glorious thing it is, you will
respond to many single-minded, wholesome thoughts in the impassioned
statement of his thesis. And if you happen to belong to that simple
discredited breed, the English, so long overshadowed by the nimbler
Britons, you may have quite a nice little private thrill of your own,
a thrill of pride in your precious stone, and begin to think with
seriousness of the advantages of "home rule all round" in an
England-for-the-English mood, and of the value of a nationalism that is
as irrational as conjugal or mother love--and as fine.

The author's hero is an Englishman of the wandering type, assistant
editor on a crank paper. The play is a protracted debate in four
sessions, June, 1914; July, 1914; August, 1914; September, 1916. And
here the author makes his most serious mistake, the mistake made by Mr.
HENRY ARTHUR JONES in his recent squib. If he had contrived his Little
Navy folk, the proprietor, editor and revolving cranks as something
more than mere caricatures, brands of straw prepared for his consuming
bonfires, he would have strengthened, not weakened, his excellent case.
He has quoted his enemies' mistakes without their excuses, their texts
without their contexts. And that is a form of propaganda which can only
touch the converted, or such of them as are not stirred by a sporting