New-York tribune., 1918-11-10
By Haywood Broun

"The Big Chance" is a good show, we
think, because it contains several
clever sketches of New York types
much flip and amusing dialogue, which
is suitable to those characters, and one
or two dramatic situations shrewdly
devised to provide a thrill. These
things made up to us for the fact
that the heroine sought the centre of
the stage every now and again to de-
clare most roundly that she had "kept
herself clean" Personally we had no
particular objection to the fact that
she was living with man to whom
she was not married, but it seemed
only fair in return that she should not
continually assail us with proclama-
tions of her virtue. Of all the de-
cendants of Rahab none is such a bore
as the one who has fashioned herself a
philosophy. After all she should leave
her case in the hands of Mr.. Lecky
and let it go at that because he does
it so much better.
But all this may be overlooked.
Probably nobody will take the philos-
ophy of "The Big Chance" lady very
seriously. On the other hand we find
that certain gentlemen of proved abil-
ity have taken the war philosophy of
"The Big Chance" as a thing of mo-
ment. We have to protest because the
ideal set forth by the play seems to us
muddled at best and wrong-headed at
worst. Mr.. Mack tells the story of
five below par persons who are re-
generated to a lily white by the world
conflict. Not content with the implica-
tion alone, he has further empowered
the heroine to interpret the war as
"God's finger moving to give men who
have no excuse to live a decent chance
to die" The whole story is conceived
from the same sentimental attitude as
that Of judge who says $50 you're
a highway robber are you? Well I'm
going to suspend sentence and send
you into the army. That will make q
man of you
in uniform. Generally speaking, able
and efficient men make able and eff
cient soldiers and vicious men and weak
men make weak and vicious soldiers.
We are perfectly willing to admit ex-
ceptions on either side, but "The Big
Chance" makes no such claim. Each of
the FIVE more or less useless persons
who goes into service is trans formed
in all the fundamentals Of his character
by the war. And, speaking of big
chances, we should say that 100 to /
should be a very fair price against the
results which the play asks us to ac
cept.
The violence of our disagreement
with some of the things which have
been written about this particular play
carries us further. One or two have
nailed Mr.. Mack's melodrama as a play
which gives voice to the patriotism
which has fired America. We found it's
expression of that passion most made
quate. 1t is true that men have gone to
the war from all sorts of motives. but
all the men OF whom Mack writes are
governed by trifling reasons. One goes
because he has always wanted to fly in
an aeroplane, another because he has
a lot of bad debts abroad and war
decoration might rehabilitate him, a
third because the women whom he loves
says she will never speak to him again
II he doesn't, and the fourth because a
German bartender once hit him over
the head with bungstarter.
Naturally, there are men in all the
Allied armies who have been moved to
war by some just such trivial motive.
1t is entirely within the scope of drama
that their reactions should be consid-
cred. But it seems to us that a critic
gets a little muddled when he says
This Is true study of the patriotic
impulse. Of course, it is not the fault
Of Mr.. Mack that such meanings should
be read into his play. He simply set
forth TO write good show and an in
teresting one. and in that he has gem
orally succeeded. Indeed, some Of his
character sketches are SO plausible and
his dialogue so amusing and so dis
ereetly placed that it has led one writer
into another overjudgment which we
for one cannot accept at all.
Taking "The Big Chance" as q basis
for his weekly review, Louis De Foe, of
1.-THE World" finds that "bettcr de-
yeloped in our writer's than those of
any other country just now is the
knack Of representing homely life on
the stage and making it seem lifelike.
Equally skiIfui are our actors in the
Of just such plays.
With all their crudcness and s,ck of