"My biggest disappointment has been the English stage. I know our 'playsmiths' are futile enough, but we would never endure in New York what is put on at many first-class London theaters. At a time when her grandsons from the four corners of the world are paying, in most cases, their first visit to the Old Country, England offers them the spectacle of a once classic stage given over to inanity and vulgarity. Of course, there are two or three producers who still maintain a commendable standard of art, but in the majority of first-class London theaters one finds a coarseness of innuendo, an utter lack of refinement, and an almost total elimination of humor. In their musical shows the producers still go in for the type of comedian known on Broadway as 'hard-boiled'--the kind that carries his own jests in a valise, and whose _pièce de résistance_ is the word 'damn,' which seldom fails to convulse the audience. If I may coin a phrase, I would say the aim of some London producers is 'to be vulgar without being funny.'" ("I wonder if that is original," observed the editor.) "I like the restraint of the better English newspapers, and there are still five or six monthly journals that demand a high standard of writing from their contributors. Some of the popular English magazines, however, publish stories that would hardly pass muster as a blushing schoolgirl's first attempt at authorship. I remember my mother used to say to me, 'Out of nothing, nothing comes.' She had obviously never seen one of these fiction magazines. "Judging by the advertisements in these publications and in the society illustrated papers, I would say that manufacturing women's underwear, or 'undies,' as they are coyly called, is the greatest commercial industry here. The advertisements state that an officer can send a lady a complete set of these garments with his regimental crest on them. I am still trying to gauge the mental attitude of an officer who would do so. "The political situation puzzles me. Lloyd George looks like a mighty big man, but he has to spend most of his time dodging snipers from behind. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, but a certain section of the House of Commons goes in for absolute symphonies while Britain is locked in the death-grip with Germany. But she's a dear old country, and her people are as brave and cheery as in the days when she was Merrie England, and not England of Many Sorrows. "To hear her people talk, you would think that the Canadians and the Australians had done all the fighting, and that the United States was the savior of the world; but I know there's hardly a home in England or Scotland that hasn't lost a son--and often the last son too. And when the old families send their boys, it's right into the trenches, not back on the lines of communication.