have eliminated the sexagenarians. The truth is that the aged Hindenburg had to be summoned from pensioned. ease to meet a crisis created by his juniors. The explanation is to be found, our authority thinks, in the specialized training to which contemporary army officers are subjected. Armies have their cavalry experts, their division commanders, generals who can even direct large forces in the field. The modern staff system, however, has failed to develop the soldier of initiative, capable of independent action when confronted by novel situations. Hindenburg is a product of the past, before the development of maneuvers as a problem in mathematics with fixed rules of solution. The fact that he knows so much about the Masurian Lakes is beside the point. Others have studied those lakes too. In emerging so gloriously from retirement, von Hindenburg disproves incidentally to a writer in the Rome Giornale d'Italia a popular legend respecting Emperor William himself. His Majesty is by no means anxious to occupy the center of the German stage. He will gladly cede his conspicuity to anyone who proves to be the strong man capable of coping with the crisis. William II., in this impression of him, never supposed his own powers adequate to a world crisis. He is ready to follow the example of his grandfather by keeping in the background when the savior of the Fatherland emerges. If von Hindenburg be the hero, he can have the glory too. That is why the Emperor encourages the cult of the hero of the lakes. The hero himself reveals meanwhile the sense of humor and the human personality for which he is famed, receiving journalists with. genial candor, moving freely among his men and making personal inspections of the strategic railways which rendered possible his operations against the enemy. He comes first into view as a callow lieutenant, says the Neue Freie Presse, during the Franco-Prussian upheaval. After the sanguinary engagement at Saint Privat in Lorraine he was found wounded on the field, his dead horse on top of him, and he the sole survivor of his regiment. Thus he came by the iron cross of the first class and won THE IRREPRESSIBLE PRUSSIAN his commission in the guards. He seems to have been an indifferent courtier, for he never figured brilliantly at court in his youth while his middle age was spent in garrison towns. Before his retirement he lived in Magdeburg, where his wife and two daughters played a prominent part in the society of the place. He had the good luck, as some think, or the bad luck, as others infer, to miss very long service on the general 241 ле staff. The great general staff in Berlin plays in the administration of the German army a part more important than is allotted to the general staff in any other military force. All the higher officers have passed the crucial phases of their careers with it. Von der Goltz, out of forty-two years of active service, has spent but twelve in contact with the troops. Heeringen, once war minister, got twelve years with the troops out of forty-six years of service. Hindenburg alone has not confined himself to staff work with such exclusiveness. Nevertheless, he has served in its several departments with credit and for a time acted as chief. Another vital consideration to military experts who analyze Hindenburg's career concerns Emperor William. His Majesty did not receive an education of a strictly military kind. His training, indeed, as the Paris Débats reminds us, was mainly that of the civilian. Fate, by calling him to the throne at the age of twenty-nine, prevented his acquisition of that military science of the practical kind which is Hindenburg's specialty. The strategy of William II., the French paper adds, is markedly amateurish and his tactics are simply spectacular. His great general staff does not heed him as an expert at all. When, therefore, Hindenburg developed differences with his associates at headquarters, it was easy enough to bring his theories into ridicule. A great deal has been made of the Masurian Lakes, because the operations in the eastern theater seem to vindicate Hindenburg's judgment. He has always insisted, to come to another point, upon open formation for infantry advance. He never could get his way. He is said to have had hot disputes with Bernhardi on the subject of cav alry, and here again he was worsted. "His Majesty dared not overrule the general staff." Were Hindenburg less hot-headed and impetuous, thinks one who knows him, writing in the Rome Tribuna, he might have taught valuable lessons to the general staff. The gifts of persuasion and of conciliation have been denied him. As things military in Germany are reduced to a science, the grizzled Prussian, after long years in garrison towns, found himself in contact with the Emperor's military cabinet, the advisers of the chief of staff, the great staff itself. His head grew dizzy as he went from one compartment of the great military machine to the other, striving to infuse all with the impulse of a single mind. He did not realize, altho a part of it himself, what a machine the German army is. His roarings at headquarters, the pounding of his fist on the table, his threats to go direct to the Emperor with charges impeaching the sanity of his associates and his own unwillingness to listen to anybody himself, made it impossible to work with him. It is an open secret J that he left the general staff in some- Anfractuosities of disposition are so conspicuous in Hindenburg, says the Italian daily, that his personality has been misunderstood. He is no mere Prussian drill sergeant glorified by high command. He is a cultivated and educated gentleman of very good family, well read, fond of literature and the arts, a good card-player, disposed in his latter years to experiments in horticulture, and eager for social life. For some years he has been a resident of Hanover, living on his pension and a small fortune coming to him through his wife. Few figures were more familiar here than his, for he went everywhere freely, in a simple sack suit, chewing a straw meditatively and carrying a cane because of his gout. He denies that he has gout and is sensitive, says the Paris Figaro, to allusions on the score of his age. The night-life of Berlin had its charms for SORROWS OF THE This is a false impression, retorts the Berlin Vossische Zeitung, for the young lady, an independent and reigning sovereign of a neutral nation, is one of the allies of the King of Prussia, devoted to the cause of the Fatherland. Nevertheless, we read in the Paris Temps, the Department of State at Washington had to enter a protest before the representative of the United States Government could transmit an official communication to the sovereign of Luxemburg. The Grand Duchess, now twenty years of age, is a captive, mocked with guards of honor who are really her gaolers. him likewise. His visits to the capital were many and Americans would call him a good mixer. He pounded his stein on the beer-garden table with whatever journalists, actors and Bohemians happened to be of the company, and he roared the choruses with the rest. Yet his library in Hanover is well stocked with the classics. One of his little vanities is an idea that he speaks French, and his friends are too tactful to reveal that he is unintelligible in that idiom. Animated is the debate among the experts of the allies upon the achievements of Hindenburg. Is he a genius? He is, writes the competent Mr. A. G. Gardiner in the London News, "a man of bold, original powers among the commonplace card-index minds of the Prussian military hierarchy." And he is "a garrulous old boy." The war found him rusting unused in Hanover until the Russians overran East Prussia. When the Emperor's telegram came, Hindenburg had just time to buy some woolen underclothing and to make his old uniform presentable. The rest is history, or will be. observes a writer in the Débats, over the religion as well as over the marriage of the Grand Duchess. Marie Adelaide, it is true, is a living example of Roman Catholic piety, unremitting in her attendance at mass and regular in approaching the Sacraments. It seems, nevertheless, that a combination of liberals, freethinkers and Socialists has long sought, altho vainly, to undermine the faith of the Grand Duchess. Failing in that, as was reported to the late Pius X. while he lived, the anticlerical combination headed by Minister of State Eyschen sought to make life in Luxemburg impossible to members of the religious orders. Hints were conveyed to burgomasters that under the new sovereign piety would be a disqualification for advancement in public life. She was pronounced somewhat "Ibsenite" in her ideas. YOUNGEST REIGNING QUEEN IN THE THEATER OF WAR OURNALISTS abroad have invited. So profound is the mystery been baffled again and again involving the destiny of the Grand in their efforts to penetrate to Duchess that whether to-day she be the palace of Marie Adelaide, maid, wife or widow, none can tell. Grand Duchess of Luxemburg, Months prior to the war her betrothal and now, as the Paris Débats assures to Prince Henry of Bavaria delighted us, the most interesting of all the the pontifical court, since both these prisoners of war in the power of Em- royalties are fervently Roman Catholic peror William. and Luxemburg has been ravaged by anticlericalism. Now what has happened to this romance? What has become of the Bavarian consort, if, in truth, he be a consort at all? The queries inspire inconceivably fantastic rumors, the German Emperor figuring in one story as the heavy villain of the piece, menacing the Grand Duchess with his displeasure unless she espouse one of his own sons. Secret marriage, compulsory divorce, solemn betrothal and partings in grief and tears have their place in the most sentimental complication provoked by the war. Marie Adelaide lost no time in givOn the other hand, she could not, as ing the lie to such insinuations. She a Catholic, secure a divorce, altho a made public professions of her devomarriage into which she may have en- tion to the memory of the venerable tered might be void from the beginning. Yolande of Nassau, held in such honor There are many eligible royal bride- by the order of Saint Dominic. She grooms among German princes as interested herself in efforts to induce among Balkan princes, while in Russia the Holy See to develop the cult of this the charming Grand Duke Constantine saintly nun. From that time forth, a is twenty-six, to say nothing of six markedly pious tone has impressed itother Grand Dukes on the list, all very self upon the whole court of Luxemwealthy. The Grand Duchess of Lux- burg. The frivolities of society are emburg would not lack suitors if they discouraged. Manners become puricould gain access to her and if she be tanical. Etiquet is most rigid, the really marriageable. Grand Duchess and her five younger Tremendous battles have been waged, sisters being of a much more ancient Brief, in consequence, according to London and Paris dailies, was that recent interview between the Emperor William and the Grand Duchess Marie Adelaide which rumor makes tempestuous. The young lady was cold and distant, we are told by the journalists. She declined to be seated during the conference, thus forcing the German Emperor to stand during the colloquy, seeing that even a Hohenzollern may not take a chair in the palace of an independent sovereign until he is GRANDEUR OF A GRAND DUCHESS THE YOUNG LADY WHO HELD UP THE GERMAN ARMY There seems no truth in recent sensational stories that the Grand Duchess of Luxemburg was secretly married. She drove her motor car across the road leading into her dominions when the German forces invaded them, but she was conveyed bodily back to the palace where some say she is still a prisoner. branch of the house of Orange-Nassau than that to which the Queen of the Netherlands belongs. This young sovereign of Luxemburg was received with enthusiasm, we read in the Paris Croix, when, on the attainment of her legal majority, she headed a glittering procession to the legislative palace and there vowed fidelity to the national constitution. She was accompanied by her august mother, that Infanta Marie Anne of Braganza from whom the Grand Duchess inherits her piety; by her five sisters, fruit of the union of the late Grand Duke William with the Portuguese princess; by her venerable grandmother; by the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, devoted relatives always; and by the Prince Alois of Loewenstein, to say nothing of the brilliant suite. Majesty was in every gesture with which the Grand Duchess ascended the steps of the throne and announced to the brave assemblage that she had assumed her proper rank among the sovereigns of the world, ruling a nation free and independent. The occasion was not graced by the presence of the morganatic son of her uncle, the Count of Marienburg, who calls the Grand Duchess an interloper and who claims to be himself the rightful sovereign of Luxemburg. Both he and his sister, that Countess Torby who became the morganatic wife of the Grand Duke Michael of Russia, have spent large sums in litigations having for their object the ousting of Marie Adelaide from the throne she holds so precariously now. A diplomatist recently on mission in Luxemburg edifies the Parisian press with impressions of the heroism of the Grand Duchess in what he calls her captivity. The trim young figure is shrouded in black and the eyes of the princess show traces of much weeping. She has given up her horseback riding completely; but the occasional glimpses of her in the park afforded to the curious who pass the sentries 243 suggest that she is in fairly good health and able to enjoy the fresh air. The smile is gone from the face. The palace functionaries have been removed by the Berlin government and their places given to Prussians with whom, according to the Libre Parole, the Grand Duchess will hold no communication whatever. One Paris report is that she may not receive and send letters even to the Pope without having her correspondence censored. Portraits of the Grand Duchess in the Paris Illustration and other prints are affirmed to malign her horribly. She does not take a good picture, the society organs say, nor have the court painters caught her wistfulness of expression, either. She has the long oval face so characteristic of the princesses of the house of Orange in the elder branch, and she blushes with almost no provocation at all, says a correspondent of London Truth. The hair is of the fine silky sort, not overabundant, rebellious to the brush. The full red lips manifest a wealth of temperament, nor does the Grand Duchess feel called upon to dissemble her emotions from the populace. The figure is very slender and girlish, the gait revealing the proficient dancer. Marie Adelaide is very fond of dancing; but the complaint is made that, owing to the high heels she affects, her full weight is thrown against her partner incessantly. She tired three princes out completely when on a visit to the Belgian court before the war. Marie Adelaide, in addition to being born royal, was, we read in the London World, born "chic." One evidence of this is the ease with which she has her hair done without regard to fashion, the result being in every case precisely harmonious with her type. It is the sanguine and statuesque type, very conventional in attitude to all things, inclined to seriousness. This makes her seem every inch a Queen along the traditional lines of the part. She exacts perfect deference from every personage in her suite, both official and personal, being especially sensitive if the fact of her independent sovereignty be not clearly apprehended. "I am a reigning Queen!" Thus is she quoted in the Matin, the observation having been addressed to the special envoy sent by the head of the house of Hapsburg to felicitate her upon her accession. The fact that she is so "chic" in aspect imparts to her deportment on these occasions of disputed etiquet every element of the majesty she asserts. Those authorities on fashion who convey their impressions through French society sheets dwell insistently upon the lines of the Grand Duchess Marie Adelaide. She manages to hold her figure in highly individualized lines, with no sign of stiffness what ever. "CHILDREN OF EARTH": ALICE BROWN'S $10,000-PRIZE T PLAY HAT "secret sentiment and passion" which made New England possible, to quote a phrase from the Outlook, forms the theme of Alice Brown's prizeplay "Children of Earth." The "secret sentiment and passion" exist between Mary Ellen Barstow, a very typical New England spinster, and Peter Hale, very typical of the New England husband, both born and bred in the typical New England farm community. We find Peter eloping in the third act with Mary Ellen. Peter has a wife. So that is the story. In 1913 a prize of $10,000 was offered by Winthrop Ames for the best play, to be submitted anonymously, by an American author. Nearly seventeen hundred manuscripts were received; and in June, 1914, the judges, Augustus Thomas, Adolph Klauber and Winthrop, Ames, awarded the prize to "Children of Earth" by Alice Brown. On January 12, 1915, Mr. Ames produced the play at the Booth Theater, New York. We reproduce our extracts by permission of the managers and the publishers, the Macmillan Company of New York. We find ourselves in the first act, on the afternoon of a spring day, in the sitting-room of a New England colonial house. We get acquainted with Aaron Barstow, a man of fifty-two, a selfmade rubber millionaire, and his sweet daughter, Anita. She is a charming girl whom young Adam Hale loves. He is cousin to Peter, around whom the coming tragedy is woven. These Hales are dreamers, poetical, romantic, and for that reason Aaron Barstow hates them. They make no millions. Adam is especially detestable to Aaron, because of the sentimental relation growing more and more defined between him and Anita. Aaron has come to take his sister, Mary Ellen, away from the farm because her father is dead and the "old maid" needs some one to "see to" her. There is little sympathy between brother and sister, Aaron being a "smart" millionaire while Mary Ellen retains the stamp of New England. She is suppressed. Years before she had loved Nathan Buell, then young and poor, now pious and well-to-do. He is coming on from Ohio to marry Mary Ellen now because she has money. Mary Ellen has not seen this old love of hers since her father drove him off with scorn years before. OF MIDDLE-AGED LOVE . from the road. It transpires that Aaron has been buying up many parcels of land, using Mary Ellen as a dummy. She resents it and threatens to hold on to the land that stands in her name, encouraged by Peter and Nathan. NATHAN. A bargain's a bargain. MARY ELLEN. A bargain. It's all bargains, then. Well, I'm done. AARON. Now what d'ye mean by that? MARY ELLEN. I'm sold up. Bankrupt. I had my youth. I'd ought to spent it as God meant a woman should. Keepin' my house. Bringin' up my children. AARON. Pretty talk for a good modest woman. MARY ELLEN. An' how'd I spend my youth? Livin' out my sentence in that house up there Aaron is insisting that his sister leave the old place with him, for he anticipates and dreads a marriage between his sister and Nathan. He is unaware of the secret passion between his sister and Peter Hale, a passion neither has dared to avow to the other, real as it is. Aaron is not touched by any tender boyhood reminiscences, not even when crazy old Eph Grout passes by, the sport of the village children. He is bent, however, on buying the farm occupied by Peter Hale, owned by Nathan Buell. The luckless Peter has secured a promise from Nathan to let him have it at a fixed price; and, when Mary Ellen hears that her brother is likely to buy it over Peter's head, she is horrified. To avert that catastrophe, she makes a desperate promise to marry Nathan Buell almost as soon as he comes on from his Ohio home. She feels no love for Nathan nor he for her. Time has effected its disillusions in them. But Mary Ellen succeeds in getting an option on the farm from the man she has promised to wed, and then she rushes to the farm on which Peter Hale lives with his wife Jane. Jane is a drinking woman who has been temperate for a year. While Mary Ellen is mystifying Peter by telling him she make anybody stop an' think, hearin' a has bought an option for the land and wants him to lend her money to pay for it, Aaron, Nathan and Anita come in AARON. You were takin' care o' father. MARY ELLEN. Settin' at his table because he thought I'd ought to set there, an' bakin' his bread because he thought I ought to bake it. AARON. You could ha' had a hired girl. MARY ELLEN. But all the time I lived in a dream. (Pointing to Nathan.) About that man. An' did he dream o' me? No. I s'pose I never once come into his head till he heard I was buyin' up land. Then he thought I was a good investment, an' he come on here after me. NATHAN. Mary Ellen, it's enough to woman talk like that. MARY ELLEN. One after another you've traded in me, same's if I was a slave. I shouldn't ha' minded if you'd told me I was a slave. But you were always actin' as if I'd ought to be thankful for your showin' me how to put the spoon to my mouth. AARON. I should think you were crazed. Git hold o' yourself. MARY ELLEN. An' now I've had enough of it, an' I want to be free. (A snatch of singing in the distance, "Early One Morning.") PETER. Yes, an' before another day's gone over our heads, you shall be. NATHAN. You've made a bindin' promise. (Adam and Anita come running in, he determined, she gay and breathless.) AARON. Come, Nita. Come, Mary Ellen. We better be gittin' along home. ADAM. (To Aaron.) Mr. Barstow, give me a minute, will you? I've got something to say to you, and I want to say it right here. NATHAN. (Disgustedly.) This's no place to talk business. (He goes off, with the effect of washing his hands of "folderol," to the road.) ADAM. I won't be long. ANITA. What is it, Adam? ADAM. Mr. Barstow, I want a new deal. AARON. I dunno what ye mean. Come, Nita. ADAM. I thought I never should say another word to Nita, nor to you. But now I want to say it right here in this town where you began yourself. AARON. That's a good many years ago. Things have changed consid'able. ADAM. But I want you to remember where you began. And I want Nita to see with her own eyes how I'm beginning. I've gone into partnership with Pete. AARON. Well, I hope ye'll get on. Come, Nita. ANITA. Tell us, Adam. ADAM. If Pete's got to give up this place he'll begin somewhere else and I shall begin with him. But Anita can look round here, right here, and see what kind of a life she'd lead with me. AARON. Yes. She can. did. THE $10,000-PRIZE-PLAY Now I'll tell you. A Hale-of this generation-can stiffen his backbone just about the time you think he hasn't got any. And when he's talked about so much -to no good-he can shut his mouth. ANITA. You don't care for anything but-yourself and the Hales. ADAM. That settles it. (He turns away and strides off behind the house.) ANITA. (Miserably.) Come, father, let's go home. AARON. Come, Mary Ellen. (Singing, "Come, Lasses and Lads," in the distance.) ANITA. (To Mary Ellen.) Are you going to stay? MARY ELLEN. I dunno. I dunno where I can stay. You go with him, Nita. Git him away from here. (Anita and Aaron go off to the road.) Peter, I dunno what I've said to 'em nor what I ain't. But whatever 'twas, I had to say. PETER. You've let out more this one day than all the time I've known ye. MARY ELLEN. It's been locked up in me, an' now it's come out. Peter, I've set with father twenty-six years, at the table, in the evenin' by the lamp, an' I might ha' been a dumb woman for all I said to him or all he wanted me to say. PETER. You've been jailed. MARY ELLEN. Yes. My thoughts were prisoners. An' now they're comin' out like swallows out o' that barn. See 'em circle. O my God! I don't hardly know the shape o' my thoughts now I see 'em. But they're flyin' out. 245 MARY ELLEN. We never met then when we were young. PETER. Ain't you seen I loved you? MARY ELLEN. You've been terrible kind to me. PETER. What'd I do your chores for, an' wait an' tend, if't wa'n't for love o' you? MARY ELLEN. Why, you were a good neighbor. PETER. What'd I hang round the house for, night after night, till your light went out? MARY ELLEN. Did you? knew you could. PETER. Love's all the same, young or old. MARY ELLEN. I thought't would be like that when he come back. But now he's come, I can't feel anything. PETER. No, you can't. MARY ELLEN. I'm past lovin'. PETER. You're past lovin' Buell. Are you past lovin' me? MARY ELLEN. I don't use that word for you. PETER. Use it then. Say it. Love. PETER Has he kissed you? PETER. When he does you remember this-an' this. (He draws her to him and kisses her passionately.) MARY ELLEN. (As he releases her.) Oh, God help me! PETER. My thoughts, too. They've been locked up. I don't know's they'd ever got their wings if you hadn't told me you're goin' to marry Buell. MARY ELLEN. You can't stop it. Nor promise. Help me not to be like this. I can't. PETER. You an' I've got to speak the truth. My thoughts are flyin' out, same as yours. It's the spring day that set 'em free. MARY ELLEN. (Wonderingly.) Is it the spring day?. PETER. Yes. Everything's breakin' bounds. MARY ELLEN. (Dazed and passing her hand before her eyes.) Seems as if there was a mist. The apple blooms look dim. (The singing ceases.) PETER. Yes. There is a mist. But we've got to see clear, I tell you. We've got to see clear. MARY ELLEN. Then you help me. PETER. How'm I ANITA. You're so clever, Adam. You goin' to, when all I could put yourself anywhere. ADAM. Nita, I'm showing you the worst you'd ever have to bear. If I can better it for you, don't you think I will? But I won't bribe you. ANITA. That's not caring. ADAM. Oh, I've heard the receipt for making love. But that's not my way. The girl that marries me has got to begin by believing in me. Your father's told you what you can expect of a Hale. see is a picture? Not you an' Nate Buell married an' goin' off together MARY ELLEN. Together! PETER. I can't see you an' him. I see you sittin' here by right. You'd be my wife. PETER. Help you git away from me? MARY ELLEN. Help me to keep my PETER. I've kissed you to put bonds on you. To let you know you're mine. MARY ELLEN. Yes. I ain't anybody's but yours. An' I never knew it. PETER. You've dwelt on Nathan Buell |