The American is either ashamed of honest emotion or, if he is not ashamed, is soon shamed into shame by his neighbours. He is profoundly affected by any allusion to Mother, the Baby, or the Flag--the invincible trinity of American dramatic hokum--and his reactions thereto meet with the full favour of church and state; but he is unmoved, he is silently forbidden to be moved, by a love that doesn’t happen to fall into the proper pigeon-hole, by a work of great beauty that doesn’t happen to preach a backwoods Methodist sermon, by sheer loveliness, or majesty, or unadorned truth. And this corsetted emotion, mincing, wasp-waisted and furtive, colours all native criticism. It makes the dramatic critic ashamed of simple beauty, and forbids him honestly to admire the mere loveliness of such exhibitions as Ziegfeld’s. It makes him ashamed of passion, and forbids him honestly to admire such excellent dramas as Georges de Porto-Riche’s “Amoureuse.” It makes him ashamed of laughter, and forbids him to chuckle at the little naughtinesses of Sacha Guitry and his own Avery Hopwood. It makes him ashamed of truth, and forbids him to regard with approbation such a play as “The Only Law.” The American drama must therefore not create new emotions for him, but must hold the battered old mirror up to his own. It must warm him not with new, splendid and worldly emotions, but must satisfy him afresh as to the integrity and higher merit of his own restricted parcel of emotions. It must abandon all new, free concepts of love and life, of romance and adventure and glory, and must reassure him--with appropriate quiver-music--that the road to heaven is up Main Street and the road to hell down the Avenue de l’Opéra.