Photo. by Otto Sarony, New York.

MRS. MINNIE MADDERN FISKE.

'As to the masterpieces, we, of course, must eliminate Shakespeare's from any comparative analysis; and outside of Shakespeare the good old plays and the good new plays are so different in almost all things that we necessarily would have to enter upon a long series of dissertations to differentiate them clearly. Respectively, perhaps, they represent the romanticism, the sentimentality and the artificiality, withal, of the older time, as against the practicality, the greater seriousness in all literary treatment of the better class with reference to the ethics of life and the liberalism of thought of to-day. One thing we may be sure of, how ever, that artificial and elementary as the lower forms of the plays of the older time were, they were greatly superior to the lower forms of plays of to-day, if titles and billboards may be taken as an index. Good acting of to-day is so different from the good acting of the days that are gone that a comparison of the acting of then and now is as difficult as a comparison of the plays."

Mrs. Fiske is recognized as without a peer on the American stage in the intellectual grasp and interpretation of the plays of Ibsen, Suder

mann and Hauptmann. Her view, therefore, on the intensely modern school of veritists are of special interest. "We have," she holds, "improved in the acting of plays that reveal modern life. We are beginning to be true, and in being true we are beginning to find a world of beauty hidden heretofore, a glorious new world opened to us by the new dramas of Ibsen and his followers and disciples." She holds, with Maeterlinck, that the old drama was exaggerated, artificial and untrue, and that the new drama, in which there are seldom cries heard and where blood and tears are rarely shed-the drama which reveals the crucial struggles of life "in a small room around a table close to the fire," is the true drama, because it reveals where the "joys and sorrows of mankind are decided."

"Have not many of our fiercest inward battles been fought quietly in our solitary room at night? Have not the most dramatic moments of our lives been lived out in silence and secrecy? There may have been no cries, no outburst, no noise, but the great moments have been lived just the same.

"We know that the great Norwegian has revolutionized the dramatic literature of every country. I do not know whether you are familiar with Maeterlinck's opinion of Ibsen. Very likely you are. Maeterlinck says: "The highest point of human consciousness is reached by the dramas of Björnsen, Hauptmann, and, above all, of Ibsen. Here we touch the limit of the resources of modern dramaturgy.”

Again, in comparing the artificial, exaggerated and superficial dramas with the great veritists' works, Mrs. Fiske has this to say:

"It is curiously interesting to study the differences between two such modern authors as Ibsen and Victorien Sardou Sardou, the high priest of tricks, theatricalism and artificiality. In a Sardou play, climaxes chiefly composed of sound and fury, meaning little or nothing of moment, are led up to with purely mechanical skill. The theatrical objective is the sole object and the sole value of a Sardou drama. The Sardou drama makes no demand upon the intelligence of the actor, beyond the purely superficial excitement of the moment. It induces no thought or reflection whatever in the spectator unless the spectator, after witnessing it, becomes ashamed that he has been so played upon without reason. There is no mental stimulus whatever

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for the actor in studying the parts of dramas like those of Sardou. How different with the dramas of Ibsen and the best of his disciples! To the student, the best of Ibsen do not appear upon the surface as all they are. properly conceive and perform one of the parts of Ibsen, the actor must study the part from the childhood of the character up to the time when it is revealed upon the stage. One need merely learn the lines of the objective playwright and, with some talent and temperament and a fair measure of technique, succeed, but the actor who thinks he can master an Ibsen rôle in this manner soon discovers his error. In nearly all the Ibsen plays you will observe that the drama reveals merely the final catastrophe. For example, take the plays, 'Rosmersholm' or 'John Gabriel Borkmann' or 'Hedda Gabbler.' In these plays we see the final moments in the lives of the principal characters. The whole mighty drama of 'Rosmersholm' has been enacted before the curtain rises on the first act of the play. The actors must of necessity have studied all that has, in the past life of these characters, led up to the final scene. In this way, the new psychological drama has been a wonderful stimulus. Ibsen and his worthy dramatic followers have made thinkers and students of those actors who, in the merely objective days, had little exercise of the brain. The old-fashioned 'emotional' or 'society' play seems, indeed, a very weak combination of milk and water to the actor who has once seriously begun the study of the Ibsen drama."

The address was worthy of our most finished and in many respects greatest actress-a woman whose serious, earnest and faithful work is doing much to redeem the stage from becoming little better than a Punch and Judy show in so far as stimulating fine, true or serious thought is concerned; for since the theatrical trust was formed the degradation of the stage has been more and more glaringly apparent. Men who are practically the masters of the dramatic field have placed the boxoffice above all other considerations. Therefore the high concern for art, education and moral upliftment has had little or no influence on their sordid natures, and the result is painfully in evidence on every hand. Against this degradation of the stage no one in the New World has fought so bravely, fearlessly and persistently as Mrs. Fiske, and for this brave action no less than for her own fine work she

Photo, by Barnett, London, England.

MISS EMILY HOBHOUSE.

deserves the high place she holds in the regard of discriminating friends of true dramatic art.

Miss Emily Hobhouse: Heroine of Peace and Humanity.

IN THE January ARENA we published an extended notice of the important humanitarian work inaugurated and being carried forward by the English heroine, Miss Emily Hobhouse. Through the kindness of Countess Evelyn Asivelli, of No. 8 Grand Pré, Geneva, Switzerland, we are enabled this month to give our readers a picture made from the latest photograph of this true exponent of the Golden Rule and leader of the civilization that civilizes. In a personal letter accompanying the photograph, Countess Asivelli, in speaking of Miss Hobhouse, says:

"When looking at her peaceful, determined, beautiful face, often have I thought of Byron's words:

"Around her shone The light of love, the purity of grace; The mind, the music breathing from her face; The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And oh! that eye was in itself a soul.""

HENRY GEORGE, JR.

Miss Hobhouse, as we have before observed,

has thrown her means and her life into the work of founding schools and teaching the Boer women and girls how to spin and weave the wool and silk of South Africa into all kinds of fabrics. Never did the parched earth more eagerly drink up the grateful, life-giving rain

than have the maidens and matrons of South Africa received this veritable God-send of opportunity made possible through this heroine of peace.

Miss Hobhouse has been warmly seconded and aided in her work by Countess Asivelli and a few other chosen spirits who have liberally contributed to buy spinning-wheels and looms, but the means at command are inade

quate for the proper pushing of the work which is instilling new hope and courage into the daughters of South Africa, and which will do more than can be estimated toward lessening the bitterness that is necessarily felt by the

Boers toward the English.

The Author of "The Menace of Privilege."

HENRY GEORGE, Jr., whose masterly and timely work, The Menace of Privilege, has recently appeared, was born in Sacramento,

California, in 1862. Like so many of our brightest and strongest men and women, he was educated in our public-schools. At sixteen years of age he entered a printing office and since 1881 he has been engaged in journalistic labors. After the death of his father he prepared an exceptionally able and satisfactory life of the great economist. Like the elder George, he has ever evinced a passionate love for justice, freedom and the rights of the people. In recent years he has been one of the most virile and influential members in that fine group of young American patriots who are faithfully working for genuine democracy based on equality of opportunities and of rights for all the people, with much the same moral enthusiasm as marked the action of Jefferson and the young Virginian statesmen during the stirring months that preceded the inauguration of the Revolutionary war and which was the key-note and motive power of Youny Italy in its memorable crusade for unification and constitutional government under the leadership of the exiled hero Mazzini. Mr. George's new book, The Menace of Privilege, will be given an extended review in an early number of THE ARENA. We will therefore merely say at the present time that tribution to the vital social, political and ecoin our judgment it is the most important connomic literature of America that has appeared within the past year a book that no friend of republican government can afford to ignore.

Upton Sinclair and His Powerful Work

"The Jungle."

to bring out his great book, The Jungle. The firm finally, however, refused to fulfil its contract unless he would permit the emasculation of his story. This the young author refused to allow, and as a result he appealed to the American public for advance orders that might enable him to publish the romance as it was written and in as fine a style as that which marks the best novels of the great houses. In fourteen days from the publication of his appeal he had received over one thousand dollars. It is expected that the book will be out the latter part of January or early this month. Of this story Thomas Wentworth Higginson

says:

"It comes nearer than any book yet published among us to being the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the social tragedy of our great cities."

From what we have read of The Jungle we believe it to be the most powerful novel written by an American since the appearance of The Octopus, by Frank Norris.

Jack London at Harvard and Faneuil Hall. DURING the latter part of December Jack London, the famous author of The People of the Abyss and other social studies, The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and other popular

fiction, delivered a notable address at Harvard

University. The hall in which he spoke, which holds 1,500 persons, was crowded to its utmost capacity. During the two-hour address not a score of persons left the hall. The effect of the lecture was quite marked and a deep interest in the study of Socialism has since been evinced by a number of students who before had but a vague idea of its philosophy.

On Tuesday evening, December 26th, Mr. London spoke at Faneuil Hall. Long before the meeting was called to order the hall was crowded and numbers were unable to gain access. Mr. London spoke for two hours, answering objections to Socialism which had been made since he reached Boston, and though the lecture was on the order of an informal talk, almost the entire audience remained throughout the address, a large proportion of them being compelled to stand.

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society. JACK LONDON's address at Harvard was given under the auspices of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. This organization was

Photo. by Marceau, New York.

UPTON SINCLAIR.

formed in pursuance with a call signed by a

number of well-known and earnest citizens

who deplore the policy of suppression and misrepresentation which is systematically employed wherever the articulate class comes under the influence of the plutocracy. It was felt that the time had come when it was important to foster a movement in our educaidea of frankly investigating every subject, and especially all political, social and economic problems and philosophies, not in the spirit of hostility, but with an earnest desire hand and what the philosophies offered on the to find out the underlying facts on the one other, should be promoted. The call for the formation of this society was signed by some persons not identified with the Socialist movement, but who were free from the trammels of the present arrogant plutocracy which seeks to suppress honest investigation and to inaugurate, in so far as social and economic philosophies are concerned, a Chinese stagnation or "stand-pattism" in educational institu

tional institutions where the old American

tions.

It was to be expected that the organs and mouthpieces of plutocracy would be offended

at a movement favoring free thought and honest investigation of social questions, and the expectation was promptly realized when Harper's Weekly, under the direction of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's man, Mr. George Harvey, savagely attacked the veteran patriot, soldier, educator and scholar, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for signing the call. Mr. Higginson replied in the following admirable words, which voice the true American and democratic sentiments so odious to corrupt and corrupting corporate wealth:

"To the Editor of Harper's Weekly:

"SIR-I observe in a recent number of your valuable journal an expression of surprise that my name should be united with others in the formation of an 'Intercollegiate Socialist Society' which aims to imbue the minds of the rising generation with Socialistic doctrines.' This last phrase is your own, for I at least am connected with no organization for the purpose you here state. As to the names with which mine is united I am not concerned; as Theodore Parker used to say: 'I am not particular with whom I unite in a good action.' As to the object in view it is clearly enough stated in the call itself; the movement does not aim to produce Socialists, but to create students of Socialism.

"It is based on the obvious fact that we are more and more surrounded by institutions, such as free schools, free text-books, free libraries, free bridges, free water-supplies, free lecture courses, even free universities, which were all called Socialistic when first proposed,

and which so able a man as Herbert Spencer denounced as Socialism to his dying day. Every day makes it more important that this tendency should be studied seriously and thoughtfully, not left to demagogues alone. For this purpose our foremost universities should take the matter up scientifically, as has been done for several years at Harvard University, where there is a full course on 'Methods of Social Reform-Socialism, Communism, the Single-Tax,' etc., given by Professor T. N. Carver. This is precisely what the 'Intercollegiate Socialist Society' aims at; and those who seriously criticise this object must be classed, I fear, with those medieval grammarians who wrote of an adversary: 'May God confound thee for thy theory of irregular verbs!'

"THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON."

Another alarmist cry was raised by Mr. Easley of the Civic Federation, who has been termed Mr. Belmont's "Man Friday." Mr. Easley's foolish fulminations remind one of Rojestvensky's panic in the North Sea, when he "saw things at night" and forthwith mistook the British fishing-smacks for the Japaese torpedo-boats which everyone else knew to be on the other side of the globe. Both these inane fulminations from reactionary sources, notwithstanding the industrious attempt of the plutocratic organs to give them circulation, fell flat, not being in keeping with the American spirit, and the work of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society for the sympathetic study of Socialism has gone steadily forward.