means, and relying on that memory, need not himself feel so keenly. The greater the artist, the less keenly need he feel. The actor with no science must keep lashing his own emotions to get the effect a master technician would know how to express with his thoughts at the other end of the world. I suppose Paderewski does play a little better with his mind on the composition before him, but so skilled a virtuoso can afford to spare his own feelings." "And you?" I suggested. "Oh, I have found the tragic rôles wearing beyond my strength. Hannele, Rebecca West, Tess-such racking parts as these I shall never play again. Hereafter you will see me only in comedy. For, let me tell you something,"—and her voice dropped to a whisper,-"I have retired from the stage." As I knew perfectly well that she was at that very time embarking lightly on something like an eighty-weeks' tour of the country, I suppose I looked incredulous. "That's because no one ever withdrew so modestly. Usually, when an actor retires, the world knows it. I have retired, but nobody knows it. I am a little tired, and I must husband my strength. So from now on for me only 'play' in the theater. But this question of 'to feel or not to feel' which actors solemnly discuss until they are black in the face, it is all set forth here by a man who was not an actor at all." seem scarcely worth being said, and yet many reams of silly stuff about the stage would never have been printed if the writers had had these same obvious principles as a groundwork of opinion. For all the changing fashions, what Lewes wrote forty years ago and more holds good to-day. Thus fixed are the laws of science. I think," she said, "we 'll have to rename it "The Science of Acting,' and use it as a text-book for the national conservatory when the theater's ship comes in. "And see here," she said, turning to the introduction and reading aloud with tremendous solemnity : She extracted then from under my hat on the chair beside me a little green volume which I had just been rereading. Obviously she approved. It was George Henry Lewes's "On Actors and the Art of Acting." Indeed, it must have been some chance reference to this that started the whole conversation. "Here we have the soundest and most discerning treatise on the subject I have ever read, the only good one in any language. Every actor would agree with it, but few could have made so searching an analysis, and fewer still could have expressed it in such telling, clarifying phrases. Some of it is so obvious as to "A change seems coming over the state of the stage, and there are signs of a revival of the once splendid art of the actor. To effect this revival there must be not only accomplished artists and an eager public; there must be a more enlightened public. The critical pit, filled with players who were familiar with fine acting and had trained judgments, has disappeared. In its place there is a mass of amusement seekers, not without a nucleus of intelligent spectators, but of this nucleus only a small minority has very accurate ideas of what constitutes good art." "Dear man," said Mrs. Fiske as we gathered up our things to depart, "that might have been written yesterday or a hundred years ago. In fact, I imagine it was. Of course it was. I have never known a time when a writer of the stage was not either deploring the 'degradation of the drama,' as Mr. Lewes does here a little later, or else descrying on the horizon the promise of a wonderful revival. Do you know that they were uttering this same lament in accents of peculiar melancholy at a time when Fielding managed one theater, when Sheridan was writing, and when you had only to go around the corner to see Kemble or Garrick or Mrs. Siddons?" As we strolled up through Washington Square Mrs. Fiske became a little troubled about her admonitions to the imaginary would-be actor. "Of course," she confided to me, “we were a little toplofty with that nice young man. For his own good we said a great deal about the need of ignoring the audience, and so forth. When he is a little older he will understand that to try to please the audience is to trifle with it, if not actually to insult it. He will instinctively turn for judgment to the far less lenient critic within himself. But I wish we had told him he must go on the stage with love in his heart-always. He must love his fellows back of the curtain. He He must love even the 'my-part' actor, though he die in the attempt. He must love the people who in his subconsciousness he knows are 'out there.' He must love them all, the dull, tired business man, the wearied critic, the fashionably dressed men and women who sometimes (not often) talk too loud, and thereby betray a lack of breeding and intelligence. There are always splendid souls 'out there.' But most of all he will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most selfeffacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all." (The topic of the next article will be "Mrs, Fiske Designs a National Theater."-THE EDITOR.) The Blundering in Greece By T. LOTHROP STODDARD Author of "Rome Rampant," "The Economic Heresy of the Allies," etc. T long since became a truism that in has been the graveyard of Allied diplomatic and military reputations. From the hour when the Goeben and the Breslau dropped anchor in the Golden Horn down to the latest disasters on the Rumanian plains, the Entente powers have marched with uncanny regularity from disaster to disaster. Yet nowhere has this Balkan fatality wrought a more pathetic tragedy than in Greece. The result of Entente ineptitude has here been the temporary ruin of one of the most promising of European races, with no commensurate gain to the Allies themselves. How this came to pass will appear from the melancholy story. When the Great War broke out in the summer of 1914, the Allies, so far as Greece was concerned, held all the cards. For two of the Entente powers, France and England, the Greek people felt an al most filial veneration. Prime sponsors at the Greek birth and indulgent watchers over the rather trying crises of Hellenic adolescence, England and France had ever posed as Greece's best friends, and this traditional Philhellenism the Greeks requited by a warm affection for the great powers of the West. Lord Byron was one of Greece's national heroes, while French culture and French ideals were vital factors in Greek intellectual and social life. Toward Russia, it is true, Greek feeling was by no means so cordial, and this for many excellent reasons. Nevertheless, this coolness toward Russia was of slight moment beside Hellenic sympathy for the Western powers. But Anglo-French sympathies were not the only bonds which drew Hellas toward the Allies. The whole Balkan political situation as it then stood tended to range Greece on the Entente side. The upshot of the recent Balkan wars had been an Germany's actual or potential partners. For Austria-Hungary there was felt both aversion and fear. From the days of Metternich down, Austria had shown Hellas scant good-will, and for many decades the goal of Austria's Balkan ambitions was obviously Salonica, the apple of the Greek people's eye. With regard to Germany's probable Balkan allies, Turkey and Bulgaria, things were even worse. To the Greeks, heirs of the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox "elect," as they consider themselves, the Turk was not merely the hated conqueror of the Hellenic home-land, but also the infidel usurper of Constantinople and Asia Minor, both claimed by the Greeks as integral parts of their "Great Idea," a revived Byzantine Empire destined to win back the whole near East to Hellenism. As for the Bulgarians, the ferocious exterminations of 1913 were only the modern echo of medieval wars such as had given one Byzantine basileus his proud title of "Bulgar-Slayer" nearly a thousand years before. For all these reasons it is not surprising that the outbreak of the European War evoked a wave of pro-Ally feeling throughout Greece. From the first day of hostilities it became evident that the hearts of the overwhelming majority of the Greek people were with the Allies, and this feeling was patently shared by the Greek premier, Eleutherios Venizelos, a statesman whose recent triumphs had profoundly endeared him to his fellow-citizens. THE opening months of the European cataclysm had little direct effect on Greece. Despite Turkey's adhesion to the Teutonic side in November, 1914, the Balkan Peninsula was relatively untroubled. Serbia showed herself well able to repel all Austrian attacks, and since Bulgaria remained quiescent, Greece could view the situation with reasonable equanimity. It was with the Anglo-French naval bombardment of the Dardanelles at the end of February, 1915, that the woes of Greece began. It was this same event which also first clearly revealed Allied incompetence regarding the near East. Had the great Allied armada struck at the very beginning of the war it might have succeeded, since the Turkish defenses were at that time in by no means the best of shape. But six months' intensive work by skilled German engineers wrought a complete transformation, and in February the forcing of the strait by a mere fleet action had become impossible. Still, there was just a chance if the fleet was backed by a land army. Yet no such army was at hand, and no preparations had even been made for its sending. As soon as the full strength of the Dardanelles became apparent, the Allies turned to Greece. She was to furnish the army which the Entente powers had failed to provide. The Allied diplomats found Premier Venizelos in a thoroughly receptive mood, but their hopes were quickly dashed by the opposition of the Greek general staff. On March 4, King Constantine called a royal council, where the matter was thoroughly threshed out; yet despite all the prestige and eloquence of Venizelos, the majority of Greece's soldiers and statesmen declared the sending of a Greek expedition to the Dardanelles a practical impossibility. The king accepted this majority finding, and so informed the Entente powers. His reply ran substantially as follows: We are willing to join you on principle, but the circumstances make it impossible. Our general staff has long ago worked out this problem. Here are its plans. Look at them. You will see that the strait cannot be taken except by the immediate despatch of a great army. And such an army we cannot give. We have just come out of two wars. We are much exhausted. We need virtually every soldier to guard against an implacable Bulgaria ready to strike us down. at the first sign of weakness. We must protect our lives and homes first of all. This Greek refusal reveals clearly the basic factor in the Hellenic attitude toward the present war. Greece has often been pictured as a nation spurred by boundless ambitions and insatiate land hunger, and this is largely true. But in the present clashing of the Titans these promptings are sharply restrained by the adverse influence of a deadly, sickening fear. Her recent experiences in the Balkan wars taught her that in that seething caldron of elemental passions the penalty of defeat might be nothing short of national death. To live, tiny Greece must walk warily, with due thought for the morrow. And how frightful was her dilemma in those March days of 1915! The Allies were, indeed, prodigal of promises. They beckoned to the Ægean shores of Asia Minor, where a dense Greek population a million strong cried aloud for reunion with the Hellenic home-land. But to the north lay the dark cloud of Bulgaria, backed by the incalculable forces of a patently reviving Ottoman Empire. And behind these, again, rose the Teutonic powers. King Constantine and his generals were professional soldiers. Trained in the Berlin military schools, they knew the terrible efficiency of the German warmachine. They did not believe that marvelous mechanism could be shattered. In their opinion the war would end in some sort of draw. By quick and competent action, it is true, the Allies might crush Turkey before Germany could blast through Serbia to her aid; but was such Allied action to be expected? The Dardanelles fiasco had profoundly shaken Hellenic confidence in Entente understanding of the near-Eastern problem. Should Greece now throw in her lot with the Allies and then be left unsupported at the crucial hour, her doom was sealed. They dared not take the risk. They must remain neutral and wait. So reasoned King Constantine, the general staff, and most of the Greek statesmen. Venizelos thought otherwise. In his eyes the triumph of the Western powers was for Greece a matter of life and death. Even should the Teutonic powers win on land, England and France would remain masters of the sea. And for Greece, virtually an island, drawing her very life from commerce and trade, the favor of the sea powers must at all costs be retained. Greece must also on no account witness the triumph of her hereditary enemies, the Bulgar and the Turk. For both these reasons Greece must therefore throw herself unreservedly into the arms of the sea powers, trusting to their gratitude to reward her devotion, and chancing temporary risks. Thus reasoned Venizelos and his supporters. But they were a minority, and when their voices. did not prevail, Venizelos resigned. The situation was rendered still more tragic by the manner in which Greece's refusal was interpreted by the Entente powers. Both England and France had hitherto considered Greece as absolutely devoted to their cause, a sort of liquid asset to be drawn upon whenever required. The unexpected sequel was a blow to their calculations. Instead, however, of recognizing the natural consequences of their own shortcomings, they gave free rein to their angry disappointment and imputed Greece's decision to sinister motives. In their eyes fear of death became pro-Germanism, and to London and Paris King Constantine soon appeared the kaiser's lackey, dragged at his wife's apron-strings. The mental strabismus which could see in this big, self-willed, bluff-spoken soldier, for years past on exceedingly bad marital terms with his Hohenzollern queen, an uxorious puppet docile to curtain-lectures "made in Germany," is one of the roaring farces of the time. Unfortunately, war dulls the sense of humor, and this absurd misconception regarding King Constantine was to cost his subjects dear. Meanwhile the Allies were doing everything possible to justify Greek doubts of their capacity to solve the Eastern question. After two months' delay a mixed Anglo-French army made a land assault upon the Dardanelles. But the Turks had used their time well. The attack was delivered in exceedingly blundering fashion, and despite the splendid heroism of the Allied troops, it soon became evident that the Dardanelles were impregnable. This was just what the Greek general staff had |
