four-year-old, whom some one had togged out with breastplates. Again darkness, and slowly a blue-green light from on high, and in the midst of it an apache and a girl. It needs no curb, no lamp-post, no brick corner, to make the ring a moonlit street.

After light there comes the human body. The Medrano as a circus does nothing to show how the actors themselves can make a setting. Why should it? But I remember the project of Robert Edmond Jones, in 1914, to put "The Cenci" upon the stage of a prize-ring, and I remember how the sketches showed a chorus of human figures, in costumes and with staves, circling about the people of Shelley's play and forming a dozen frames to the drama within.

After light and a setting of bodies, comes just as much of the ordinary plastic scenery of the stage as you need, and just as little as you can get along with. If you care to dig a bit under the ring, and instal machinery that will lower the floor in sections, pile up hills in concentric circles, or even lift a throne or a well-curb or an altar into the middle of the circus while the lights are out-well, there is nothing to prevent you. But you do not have to have machinery. Juliet's balcony may hang over one of the entrances, or throughout the whole action of "Les Fourberies de Scapin" the treteau, or block, which Copeau makes the center of the action at the Vieux-Colombier, may stand in the middle of the stage. Scenically, the problem of the Medrano is the most fascinating problem of the stage artist, the creation of a single permanent structure, large or small, which can stand throughout a play and give significant aid to the various scenes.

It is no difficult task to imagine productions in the Medrano. Take "The Merchant of Venice." The four entrances for the public are entrances for the players as well. Below each gate is a double stair, railed at the top with Venetian iron. Between the stairs are benches. The railings become the copings of the Rialto. The casket scenes are played in the center of the arena, while Portia and Nerissa watch the proceedings from a bench; another bench serves as a seat for the judges in the court-room. Jessica leans out from an entrance to flirt with her lover, and the carnival mob chases Shylock up and down the stairs, over the benches, round about and out one of the two lower gates to the ring.

The ghost scene in "Hamlet"? Imagine the sentinels moonlit in the ring, imagine a high gallery behind the arches lighted with a dim and ghostly radiance, and imagine Marcellus suddenly and fearfully pointing to the figure of the dead man where it moves above the last row of spectators. No mixing of actors and audience, but what a thrill to see the ghost across a dark gulf of turned and straining faces, what a horror to see him over your own shoulder! Later Hamlet climbs, stone by stone, to speak with the ghost from a platform above one of the great entrances.

It would be foolish to deny that the Medrano is not a theater for every play. It could not hold the conversational realism of the last thirty years, but it could house all that the Grosses Schauspielhaus is fitted for Greek tragedy and comedy, Shakspere's greatest plays, dramas like "Florian Geyer," "The Weavers," and "Danton." Some of the scenes of such

pieces, the intimate episodes which Reinhardt's circus balks at, could be done excellently in the Medrano. The limitations of the Medrano are not those of size, emotion, or period. The plays that it could not do would be the plays least worth doing; at their best, they are plays which give to a reader almost all that they have to give. The thing that impresses any one who studies the Medrano from the point of view of play production-it may even impress the reader who tries to understand and sympathize with

these attempts to suggest how plays might be produced there is the great variety which such a theater offers, and always the sense of unity which it creates. From every angle relationships center upon the actor, or cut across one another as he moves about, makes entrances or exists, or appears in the back of the audience. All these relationships work to a fine natural unity. There is the actor in the center, with the audience about him; there is the actor on the rim, drawing the audience out and across to him.

There are three circles of action within one another in a single unity. And there is the quick sense of all this which the audience has as it looks down, Olympian, from its banks of seats.

Something of the vision of the aëroplane invades the Medrano. We see life new. We see it cut across on a fresh plane. Patterns appear of which we had no knowledge. Relationships become clear that were once confusion. We catch a sense of the roundness and rightness of life. And in the Medrano, while we win this vision in a new dimension, we do not lose the feel of the old. Such a theater establishes both for us. It gives us the three unities of space in all their fullness. They cut across one another like the planes of a cube. The deeper they cut, the deeper grows the unity.

The Medrano seems to solve two problems of the modern theater. These arise from two desires in the leading directors and artists. One is to throw out the actor into sharp relief, stripped of everything except the essential in setting. This motivates a production like "Masse-Mensch," with black curtains blotting out all but the center of the stage, and a theater like the Vieux-Colombier, with the actor placed amidst a formal background. The Medrano supplies a living background-the background of the audience itself. It is the background of life instead of death, a fullness of living things instead of the morbid emptiness of black curtains. It is a background more enveloping and animating than the Vieux-Colombier. It is a background that accords with every mood, and is itself a unity.

The other problem is a psychological and a physical problem-the problem of life principles in art. In the begin

ning the theater was masculine. Its essence was a thrust. The phallus was borne in processional ritual at the opening of the theater of Dionysus every spring, and its presence was significant. The greatest and the healthiest of the theaters have always plunged their actors into the midst of the audience. It is only decadence, whether Roman or Victorian, that has withdrawn the actor into a sheath, a cave, a mouth, and has tried to drag the spirit of the spectator in with him. The peep-show is essentially evil. I will not say it is feminine, but I will say that the art of the theater is a masculine art, that it is assertive and not receptive. Its business is to imbue the audience. It is not too difficult to see in the proscenium-arch the reason for the barrenness of the realistic theater. Directors and artists who have felt this have tried to find a playhouse that lies nearer to the masculine vigor of Eschylus and Shakspere. I think they can find it in the Cirque Medrano.

Of course many friends of the drama are genuinely and sincerely distressed at the inconstancy of the jade. Why should she desert the home that is properly hers to go galavanting in the circus? But what home, we may ask, was ever properly hers, and to what home has she long remained true? She adopted the altar in Attic Greece, and spoke her piece beside it. In the Middle Ages she turned to the chapels of the church. She took to the innyard in England and to the tenniscourt in France. She has always been distressingly fond of the streets. It is just a little foolish to bid her stay in the proscenium of what was once an Italian opera-house if she prefers the circus ring.

AST month I tried to suggest the mood in which I approached the study of China. In this paper I purpose to take, as far as I am able, the point of view of a progressive and publicspirited Chinese, and consider what reforms, in what order, I should advocate in that case.

To begin with, it is clear that China must be saved by her own efforts and cannot rely upon outside help. In the international situation China has had both good and bad fortune. The Great War was unfortunate, because it gave Japan temporarily a free hand; the collapse of czarist Russia was fortunate, because it put an end to the secret alliance of Russians and Japanese; the Anglo-Japanese alliance was unfortunate, because it compelled us to abet Japanese aggression even against our own economic interests; the friction between Japan and America was fortunate, but the agreement arrived at by the Washington conference, though momentarily advantageous as regards Shan-tung, is likely, in the long run, to prove unfortunate, since it will make America less willing to oppose Japan. For reasons which I have often set forth, unless China becomes strong, either the collapse of Japan or her unquestioned ascendency in the Far East is almost certain to prove disastrous to China, and one or other of these is very likely to come about. All the great powers, without exception, have interests

which are incompatible, in the long run, with China's welfare and with the best development of Chinese civilization. Therefore the Chinese must seek salvation in their own energy, not in the benevolence of any outside power.

In

The problem is not merely one of political independence; a certain cultural independence is at least as important. The Chinese are, I think, in certain ways superior to us, and it would not be good either for them or for us if in these ways they had to descend to our level in order to preserve their existence as a nation. this matter, however, a compromise is necessary. Unless they adopt some of our vices to some extent, we shall not respect them, and they will be increasingly oppressed by foreign nations. The object must be to keep this process within the narrowest limits compatible with safety.

First of all, a patriotic spirit is necessary; not, of course, the bigoted anti-foreign spirit of the Boxers, but the enlightened attitude which is willing to learn from other nations while not willing to allow them to dominate. This attitude has been generated among educated Chinese, and to a great extent in the merchant class, by the brutal tuition of Japan The danger of patriotism is that, as soon as it has proved strong enough for successful defense, it is apt to turn to foreign aggression. China, by her

resources and her population, is capable of being the greatest power in the world after the United States. It is much to be feared that, in the process of becoming strong enough to preserve their independence, the Chinese may become strong enough to embark upon a career of imperialism. It cannot be too strongly urged that patriotism should be only defensive, not aggressive. But, with this proviso, I think a spirit of patriotism is absolutely necessary to the regeneration of China. Independence is to be sought not as an end in itself, but as a means toward a new blend of Western skill with the traditional Chinese virtues.

The three chief requisites, I should say, are: first, the establishment of an orderly government; second, industrial development under Chinese control; and, third, the spread of education. All these aims will have to be pursued concurrently, but, on the whole, their urgency seems to me to come in the above order. The state will have to take a large part in building up industry, but this is impossible while the political anarchy continues. Funds for education on a large scale are also unobtainable until there is good government. Therefore good government is the prerequisite of all other reforms. Industrialism and education are closely connected, and it would be difficult to decide the priority between them; but I have put industrialism first, because, unless it is developed very soon by the Chinese, foreigners will have acquired such a strong hold that it will be very difficult indeed to oust them.

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1-The establishment of an orderly government. At the moment of writ

ing the condition of China is as anarchic as it has ever been. So far as I can discover, Chinese Constitutionalists are doing the best thing that is possible at the moment; namely, concerting a joint program, involving the convoking of a parliament and the cessation of military usurpation. Union is essential, even if it involves sacrifice of cherished beliefs on the part of some. Given a program upon which all the Constitutionalists are united, they will acquire great weight in public opinion, which is very powerful in China. They may then be able, sooner or later, to offer a high constitutional position to some powerful general on condition of his ceasing to depend upon mere military force. By this means they may be able to turn the scales in favor of the man they select, as the student agitation turned the scales in July, 1920, in favor of Wu-pei-fu against the Arfu party. Such a policy can be successful only if it is combined with vigorous propaganda both among the civilian population and among the soldiers, and if, as soon as peace is restored, work is found for disbanded soldiers and pay for those who are not disbanded. This raises the financial problem, which is very difficult, because foreign powers will not lend except in return for some further sacrifice of the remnants of Chinese independence. I do not accept the statement by the American consortium bankers that a loan from them would not involve control over China's internal affairs. They may not mean control to be involved, but I am convinced that in fact it would be. The only way out of this difficulty that I can see is to raise an internal loan by appealing to the patriotism of Chinese merchants.