There is no reason for supposing that his remarks are not uttered in good faith. Indeed, it is their obviously complacent sincerity which renders them so exquisitely comic. If he were half as funny on the stage as he is in cold print, the whole world would be at his feet. From one point of view his utterances are quite unimportant: to the world outside the music-hall they only represent the unintentional humours of a man without weight, save in his branch of his calling; but, so far as they are the opinions of the variety stage, the matter is serious, since it suggests that the modern drama has an enemy, not a friend, in the music-halls, and an enemy which works under such unfair conditions of advantage and is so powerfully organised that it may become the duty of the theatre to wage a fierce war upon it. No great change would be needed in the conduct of the playhouses in London to enable them to cut into the music-halls. The sympathy with the music-halls of those who have been advocating free trade in drama may become exhausted, and, on the other hand, a system may be devised under which the theatres take music-hall licences, and then the inflated salaries which have led to swollen heads will soon shrink. Double Entente The correspondence provoked concerning Mr Harry Lauder and his views about the drama and the music-halls was a little disappointing owing to its onesidedness. The music-hall performer in one respect resembled St Athanasius. A passage in a letter on the topic was surprising. Miss Violet Vanbrugh said: "The English language, too, is so difficult; it leaves so little to the imagination. It seems to come down definitely, in a fearfully flat-footed fashion. The French dramatist finds his task made easy, as his language can suggest simply without definitely stating, more easily than can be done in English." This opinion is surprising. It would be amazing if it were correct, seeing the enormous wealth of our language in words and forms of expression, and the fact that for the best part of a century our dramatists lived chiefly on "hints," upon suggesting more than they durst say. The very word "hint" is significant. We use it frequently; who can find a word in the French language that exactly represents it? One may add that we have English equivalents for most, perhaps all, of the French phrases that have to serve for our handy word "hint." When one recollects the hundreds of adaptations of more or less indelicate or indecent French plays seen on our boards, the idea that it is difficult for the English expert to say nasty things nicely seems absurd. Our journalists have used more often the incorrect phrase _double entendre_ than the French critics the phrase _double entente_, which is the term that our writers intend to employ.