The Washington times., 1931-08-07
True to Ty pc
NOON MADE OF BAD
CHEESE, DISCOVERY
OF INTELLECTUALS :.
BY GILBERT SELDES-

unfortunately they rlghC Inc pnghC OF AXE
Noel Coward is desperate, for the moment
he becomes sincere and tries to deal with genuine
emotion he loses his grip entirely Next season four
ons+ VIII be playing ms m M Ps bs
the human beings in it are not animated by much
human passion-and full of wicked meanness about
and women which is the mastering emotion of the
play. At the same time Cowards new play, Post
Mortem, is promised 1t may go as play; but read
ing it is tragic bore. 1t has just been published by
Doubleday Doran.
Ruinous Sincerity
Coward is desperately sincere about the war, and it
ruins him. 1t brings his wit and his intelligence down
to the level of the undergraduate who has just lost
his faith in established religion and thinks it shocking
to write God with lower case g, and to say that
the deyl una ats your You
God, think" The structure of the whole play is on
that plane. is, in fact, the trick used by Am
brose Berce and by several secondrate writers since
At the of the first scene, the hero is dying the
next six show him ghost returning to En-
gland in $780, and the last scene takes you back to
the dugout and to his death.
It is all hokum as he enters his mothers drawing
ROOM 'there seems to be distant rumble of guns
long way off, and the suggestion of Very flare shin
ing briefly and dying away The book should have
been dedicated to Belasco, not to Bolitho.
A Glimpse Of the Future
john in the front line of 1917 thinks that good
must out of the suffering of the and has "a
feeling that might the whole business just for
second before dies" Then, in 1880, he comes back
and finds that his mother is still suffering from the
infidetes of her husband that the girl whom he wanted
to marry is member of the dull bright set married
chum who is about to commit suicide, apparently be-
cause people haven't been reborn and regenerated by
the war; because newspapers lie and because the Olympic
games preparing us for the next war. After that
he goes to his father rich hypocrcal newspaper
owner and meets rich hypocrtical bishop and rich
hypocritical countess and rich hypocrtcal politician
So he goes to see other comrades of the war; who
have turned middle-class and then bidding his mother
good-by, he returns to his dugout and DEATH
Crying for the Moon
What's wrong with this series of pictures is that no
of Ike 0f
seriously, and to hold up the promise of new moral
order against the and trivial reality doesn't
anything except that human beings al-to-human,
which is nothing to get emotional about Certainly it is
trick to promise the moon to little children but
little children grow up and after ten years they longer
cry for the moon. Nor do they-except in the fairy
tales of the psychoanay ysts-bear grudge against their
and parents for making the promises Mr. Coward
is still angry about the moon and takes it out by
assuring that the cheese of which certainly made
is full of maggots.
Good War-Bad Peace
During the the pacifsts fond of quoting,
"there never was good war or bad peace" but the
Peace of Versailles (and dozens of treaties before D
give the lie to the aphorism. The was in fact,
good one it was waged in accordance with the newest
modern. (The exception is the belated of the
tank but it is only exception; the engineering prob
lens of the solved with extraordinary success
And the peace made with the instruments of the
seventeenth century,. The peace which Wellington die
tated after Waterloo masterpiece of humane in
telligence, compared to that of Versailles. Consult
Philip Guedaa's article in the current Harpers this
point)
Of course, no one during the war; said that at the
end of it we should all be intelligent the only
thing promised was the moon of high moral purpose
and high moral purpose went to pot it always does
when it came to grips with reality. Lloyd George
promised that England would be place fit for heroes
to live in; turns out place Mr. Coward doesn't like
and he blames Lloyd George, as if any sane person
took campaign speeches literally. What was wanted
at the end of the wasn't continuation of the
moral hysteria which had supported it, but few clear
minds at the head of affairs. They didn't exist-and
we paying the penalty
Bruce Barton Seconds
was interested to find in the current issue of Vanity
Fair independent scheme for rejuvenating the world
which closely resembled the proposed here few
weeks ago. Mr. Bruce Barton is by far more prac-
tical man than am, and hope that will accuse
him of frivoly. His scheme is to forbid work to all
people after the of As mine you probably do not
care to remember is to create workless ten years
somewhere between the ages of 25 and 40 am glad
to note that of the advantages Mr. Barton puts
forth is identical with mine His scheme will prevent
children from studying too much and will put them
work when they are best fitted to work, that is,
they handle machinery.
still think that knocking off at about thirty and