ness, in developing the resources of the land and in the upbuilding of the nation. Numbers of them, among whom the late Carl Schurz was a distinguished example, have become eminent in the national councils; but it cannot be denied that in recent immigration are contained many elements that give but remote promise of successful assimilation as useful components of the body politic. Without proper regulation of immigration and greater restrictions upon naturalization, the time may not be far distant when that portion of the population which by inheritance and tradition is devoted to the principles of American government and American liberty will constitute a minority of the whole electorate.*

The "dependencies" acquired as a result of the war with Spain also present grave problems as to how a republic is to exercise imperial authority over subject races in remote quarters of the earth. These dependencies in the Orient have already cost vast sums of treasure, while the chief results consist of the imposition of a demoralizing service upon a portion of the army, and the necessity for ever-increasing vigilance against the introduction of "old shapes of dread disease" from which the western continent until recent years enjoyed a happy immunity.

Some causes of social unrest, such as those pertaining to the mutual relations of capital and labor, are old as well as new and world-wide in their operation; but the subjects which have been mentioned above, the tariff, the trusts, immigration and imperialism, present problems which are peculiarly our own. They are the products of the legislation and the policies of the past, and therefore the resulting conditions are artificial in character. Evils which have been created by vicious or unwise legislation it is the function of wise and sane legislation carefully and judiciously to correct and remove.

But for the solution of these problems there is need for statesmanship of the highest order. They cannot be successfully dealt with by politicians whose chief aim is party supremacy and the spoils of office; and they cannot be successfully dealt

*In 1910, according to the Census reports, the native white persons of native parentage constituted less than one-third of the population in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In Connecticut and New York the proportion was but little greater (about 35 per cent.).

with by shallow demagogues unable to distinguish between an intelligent public opinion and ignorant popular clamor, but who, always listening to the latter, will advocate without regard to ultimate consequences any political nostrum that promises popularity for themselves.

The solution of social and political problems can only be worked out by the scientific study of humanity and of human political, social and industrial institutions. It cannot be discovered either in the laboratory or the hospital. But it lies with those who have learned in political science to look beneath the surface for the cause, and to recognize that, as in medicine, a cure can be wrought, not by treating the symptoms with palliatives, but only by attacking the disease. Agitators who, whether unduly alarmed through ignorance, or consciously acting in the spirit of the demagogue, seek by dilating upon existing evils to set class against class, merely aggravate the conditions and so make the removal of their causes, which is the work of real statesmen, more difficult.

It has been recognized that little more than a third of a century has elapsed since "systematic research in every department of human knowledge gradually became a fully recognized function of our universities." If within that time circumstances have led to a greater measure of attention being given to the exact sciences, it may now well be that those universities will best serve the public interests in the immediate future which are first and best in historical investigation and in the study of the science of law and of government in its application to the vital questions affecting the well-being of human society and of this commonwealth, and now awaiting solution; from whose halls will come forth men qualified to help in the formation of an enlightened public opinion and to take a guiding part in public affairs; men who, speaking above the strife of tongues, can say with an authority which commands attention: "This is the way, walk ye in it."

4

JOHN DRINKWATER

T. JOHN EMILE CLAVERING HANKIN died in

ST

1909, at the age of thirty-nine. To discuss the circum

stances of his death would be an irrelevancy that could serve no useful purpose. The only word that need be said in this connection is in answer to an ill-considered suggestion that the event was hastened by some sense of disappointment, an unsatisfied hunger for recognition. All artists of real distinction. are alike in being proud of their work; they differ only, for temperamental reasons, in the manner of expressing their pride. Reserve in this matter is not necessarily the virtue of modesty, nor, on the other hand, do we think the less of the makers who have foretold that their rhymes should be more durable than marble monuments. St. John Hankin was proud of his work, and made frank avowal of the fact. "You always think so well of your own plays, Hankin," said a colleague. "Of course I do," was the reply, "otherwise I shouldn't continue to write them." The statement implies no undue self-satisfaction. He was not easily content with the thing he had written, and was a finely conscientious workman in revision and the search for rightness in balance and form. But the task done, he was glad to stand by it, and said so. It is, however, It is, however, a deep injustice to his memory to suppose that this frankness sprang from any overweening concern for his immediate reputation, and mere folly to add that it affords any clue as to the cause of his last act. In the first place, artists do not die of wounded pride. Keats was not "snuffed out by an article," but by an organic disease, and even Chatterton's tragedy might have been averted by a few shillings a week. Secondly, Hankin had already received a large measure of the only kind of recognition that he valued. He was not forced to write for money, and he neither expected nor wished his plays to be readily accepted by the general public. He was deliberately in the camp of the pioneers, and did not look for the rewards of conformity. But his work had won the approval of progressive audiences, and had been acclaimed by the

most liberal critical opinion. The new repertory movement in the theatre, upon which he himself exercised so important an influence, was in turn recognizing him as one of its most notable products. His name was one of credit among the people who were seeking to quicken a stage that had grown moribund, and the knowledge that this was so gave him just and genuine pleasure. He was working with a clearly-defined aim, and he was achieving his purpose as rapidly as any man can hope to do. St. John Hankin the neglected and disappointed dramatist is a myth. At the time of his death he was winning and enjoying the best kind of success, and his end was one of those untimely accidents of temperament and physical circumstance that we are wise to accept without too curious analysis. Nor would it be profitable to speculate as to what might have been added to his achievement had his life been prolonged. We have to consider his work as it stands, and examine the grounds upon which its claims to permanence may be established.

The decadence of English drama, that began with the passing away of the Elizabethans and has been arrested only in our own day, has commonly been supposed to have been the penalty paid for the neglect of life. By decadence we do not mean a lack of superficial and momentary success. Every age has produced its harvest of plays that would attract and hold large, if uncritical, audiences, and they have not always been wholly bad plays. The great mass of them have, indeed, been radically deficient in true dramatic sense, and, by substituting violent events and action for ideas and character focussed into action,

have vulgarized a great art. But a substantial minority have been the product of sincere observation and some feeling for character. And yet, the plays written in England between the end of the Shakespearian age and the beginning of the present generation that are of indisputable excellence when put to the test of the stage and also survive the processes of time, might be numbered at a bare dozen; certainly no more. The Restoration dramatists would contribute two or three between them; Goldsmith claims one, perhaps two; Sheridan two, possibly three. The list is not easily to be lengthened. On the other hand, most of the poets of high rank have written plays, and

in many cases plays that are immortal, but only by virtue of qualities that are not stage qualities. Action is not essential to the stage, but in its absence there must at least be some direct progression of idea or spiritual conflict that shall perform its office of holding the attention of an audience. The poets have, justly, thrown action from its usurped station in drama, but they have failed either to use it in proper measure or to substitute its equivalent, and for this reason their influence has been deflected from the theatre. We have, then, the few plays that have held the stage and still live; the poets' plays that are imperishable but do not fulfil the requirements of the stage; the large number of plays that sought only a momentary and sensational success and could not, by reason of their essential abuse of dramatic art, achieve more. And there are left those plays, cumulatively through the generations a large number, that had in them some sincerity and conscience and also a measure of fitness for the stage, and have yet passed into oblivion. If we ask ourselves why these plays have perished, we find that the suggestion that the stage had divorced itself from life leaves the question unanswered. The truth is that the stage fell upon evil days not because it divorced itself from life, but because it divorced itself from literature. Literature means style in the expression of life, and if we look at those plays that paid some heed to life and adjusted it with skill to the theatre, we find that the one supreme quality that they lacked is style. The poets have always brought this quality to the drama, but they have neglected the rightful demands of the stage in other things. Drama that shall succeed in the theatre and also be a permanent addition to the art of the world can only spring from the union of an understanding of stage-craft and the faculty of at once seeing and apprehending life and character, or at least manners, and bringing to their expression that discipline of language which is style.

The loftiest style is employed in the service of poetry. When the impulse to express the thing seen passes beyond a certain degree of urgency the expression takes on a new quality of rhythmical force, shaping itself generally into verse. The difference between fine prose and fine verse is fundamentally rather one of