khaki; and a violent reaction is setting in against the crude
theatrical fare of the four terrible years. Soon the rents of
theatres will once more be fixed on the assumption that they
cannot always be full, nor even on the average half full week in
and week out. Prices will change. The higher drama will be at no
greater disadvantage than it was before the war; and it may
benefit, first, by the fact that many of us have been torn from
the fools' paradise in which the theatre formerly traded, and
thrust upon the sternest realities and necessities until we have
lost both faith in and patience with the theatrical pretences
that had no root either in reality or necessity; second, by the
startling change made by the war in the distribution of income.
It seems only the other day that a millionaire was a man with
ú50,000 a year. To-day, when he has paid his income tax and super
tax, and insured his life for the amount of his death duties, he
is lucky if his net income is 10,000 pounds though his nominal
property remains the same. And this is the result of a Budget
which is called "a respite for the rich." At the other end of the
scale millions of persons have had regular incomes for the first
time in their lives; and their men have been regularly clothed,
fed, lodged, and taught to make up their minds that certain
things have to be done, also for the first time in their lives.
Hundreds of thousands of women have been taken out of their
domestic cages and tasted both discipline and independence. The
thoughtless and snobbish middle classes have been pulled up short
by the very unpleasant experience of being ruined to an
unprecedented extent. We have all had a tremendous jolt; and
although the widespread notion that the shock of the war would
automatically make a new heaven and a new earth, and that the dog
would never go back to his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing in