SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleton IT WAS NATURAL that the performance of Brieux's celebrated play Les Avariees', under the English title Damaged Goods, should have attracted...
...Born and bred in Ohio, a graduate of Michigan University, Miss Coman, through all her long service to Wellesley College as professor of history and then of economics, has never lost her love and comprehension of the West...
...She saw not only what the snow-clad mountain ranges above the Columbia see...
...As I have said, when we will all be able to overcome our inherited feeling of reticence we will then have a better heritage of protection to give the children with which to fight the world...
...Brieux is primarily concerned with social problems, and while the reformer in him often hinders the artist, still he is a force for tremendous good...
...And now Katrina Trask comes forward with her play In the Vanguard, which deals in an entirely differ-ent fashion with the same subject...
...Step by step, perhaps with some exaggeration, the result of contamination works out into the next generation...
...And it is along this line that Brieux' play points...
...Literary Notes KATHARINE LEE BATES gives in the Boston Transcript an interesting account of the growth of Miss Coman's new book, Economic Beginnings of the Far West...
...But libraries were, in a sense, the least of it...
...He shows how the government is more concerned with protecting property than health and he indicates above all things the necessity of free discussion in the family so that the children will learn from the parents themselves the dangers of promiscuity...
...The eugenic ideals which are beginning to exert such a dominating influence in the better types of marriage can only find an outlet where the two people concerned voluntarily offer up the facts of their physical health to each other and use wisdom to keep their passion beautiful...
...Her Far West experience dates from 1902, when in preparation for her Industrial History, of the United States she crossed the Continent to see the salmon-fishing of Puget Sound and the Columbia River, the wheat fields, cattle herds and lumber crops of Oregon, the vineyards and orchards of California, the sugar plantations of Hawaii, the canneries and gold-fields of Alaska...
...But the hopeful side was that two or three capacity houses sat through the play with absorbing interest...
...The country was her document...
...It is not great drama at any point but, save for some Gallic sentiment, it is gripping to a degree...
...and we are gradually breaking through the crust of convention which bids us be silent about the social diseases...
...The time will come when we will treat many diseases of this sort, with which the play deals, as we treat other contagious diseases: we will then cease to look upon them with shame since they are often caught through innocence and many of their victims have violated no social law but have suffered from ravages none the less...
...Everything possible was done to stimulate interest in its performance by having it produced under the auspices of The Medical Review and making all of the spectators members of a club...
...This journey, as Professor Bates relates, took Miss Coman all over the West, not only over the well trod ways, but into the bypaths in which so frequently many interesting items bearing on the early history of this country were found hidden away...
...Louis, where she looked up the relics of the fur-traders and the French occupation, Miss Coman set out on her western journey...
...Morality cannot be enforced by law...
...My criticism is that such means should have been necessary...
...But other aspects of the Far West impressed her even more...
...Aside from that, Brieux makes throughout a strong plea for certain reforms...
...THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE theme would seem to be a very popular one with writers just now...
...When we once learn to speak of things they lose their horror...
...IN THE PROSPECTUS of a course on Social Ethics in the extension series of a western college, there are listed six "books of value" for the student...
...Ignorance can never be good armor against disease...
...A few months ago Frank Barkley Copley used it in The Impeachment of President Israels, which is the story of a president who refused to sanction war...
...but I prefer to believe it is a healthy seeking for the great fundamental truths of sexual health...
...The libraries," Professor Bates says, "that served Miss Coman best in her study were the Crerar Library of Chicago epecially good for the Mississippi Valley, and the Bancroft collection, that treasure of original journals, in the library of the University of California...
...After brief visits to St...
...These all the output of the Mac-millan Publishing Company, are Social Adjtist-ment by Scott Nearing, The Approach to the Social Question by F. G. Peabody, Social Aspects of Christianity by Richard T. Ely...
...The whole silence which cloaks the intimate facts of our sex life must give way to an honest freedom of expression before we can hope for a higher morality founded upon knowledge...
...she saw what they remember—the canoe of the Indian, the pirogue of the voyageur, the frail crafts of Lewis and Clark making their way down the swift current to the Pacific, Aster's-trappers paddling their winter catch of skins to the palisaded trading fort, Astoria, at the mouth of the river...
...The theme of the play deals with the terrible tragedy which lies in the store of a marriage where the husband has been tainted with a venereal disease and has violated the doctor's injunction not to marry till he is cured...
...It is a biting and terrible conclusion which the author paints of mock modesty and timidity that prevents a dissemination of the facts which life itself must inevitably present sooner or later...
...Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleton IT WAS NATURAL that the performance of Brieux's celebrated play Les Avariees', under the English title Damaged Goods, should have attracted considerable attention...
...But there is an awakening all over the country and this play will no doubt do much to force people to think...
...Set free from academic routine in 1908 by that blessed institution, the Sabbatical year, again Miss Coman gladly struck the trail for the Pacific coast...
...but through subjective education we can reach for the ideal home relation where the wish for children of health may be born...
...This play is obtainable in an English version published by Brentano (New York), and I understand it has had a very remarkable sale...
...Paul, where she had interesting talks with lumber and railroad magnates, and to St...
...It would be idle to claim for this play the same power and quality which lies in his Blanchette or La Roube Rouge for example...
...Its energy, its initiative, the scope of its projects, its buoyant courage, all the big, bold youthfulness of it, command her whole-hearted allegiance...
...The Industrial History was no sooner off her hands than the urgency of this new book was upon her...
...It would be easy to sneer at those who read it, claiming for them merely a morbid interest...
...but it shows him one of the most thoughtful of the French dramatists...
...For all the characters—father, husband and the other victims—"did not know...
...Misery and Its Causes by Edward T. Devine, The New Basis of Civilization by S. N. Patten and Democracy and Social Ethics by Jane Addams...
...though it is a sad commentary upon our modesties and conventions that the facts of life must be sneaked upon our stage...
...And thinking is the first step to rightful speech...
Vol. 5 • April 1913 • No. 15
