In the established tricks of the trade, of course the amateur cannot compete with the professional.” In writing as well as in selecting plays for amateur performance Mrs. Aldis has wisely preferred truth of situation to the “punch.” In the second place Mrs. Aldis has made her characters speak the language of life rather than that of the stage. This trait again fits her plays for amateur production, especially in a small theatre where effects can be gained without the emphasis of stage talk. Working as she says for a small stage Mrs. Aldis has been able to reproduce with striking fidelity not only the vocabulary but the movement, the rhythm, even the intonations of human speech. This kind of naturalism is of great importance in the drama of situation. The words in which Mrs. Aldis calls attention to this connection, and to the possibilities of artistic success in amateur acting depending thereon might have occurred in Maeterlinck’s essay _The Drama in Daily Life_. “We seek,” she says, “plays in which the mental attitude and the interplay of character are more important than the physical action. Here, if anywhere, lies the amateur’s opportunity. So we are not afraid of plays with little action and much talk.... It is in talk, low and intense, gay and railing, bitter and despairing as the case may be, that we moderns carry on the drama of life, the foundation of the drama of the stage.” —_Robert M. Lovett._ _The State Forbids: A Play in One Act, by Sada Cowan. New York: Mitchell Kennerley._ The mother speaks: “The State won’t let us women help ourselves. We _must_ have children whether we want them or not, and then the State comes and takes them from us. It doesn’t ask. It commands. We’ve got to give them up. [_Shrilly_] I’ve got to give my boy. [_Again shrilly_] What are we, we women? Just cattle. Breeding animals ... without a voice! Dumb—powerless! Oh, the State! The State commands! and the State forbids! Damn the State!” It is to appear in vaudeville. Like _War-Brides_ it is woman propaganda; but here the emphasis is on Birth Control. Like _War-Brides_ it is negative as literature, but the woman speeches make smashing vaudeville. We wonder whether it is the importance of its idea or its evident value as a thriller and shocker which prompts its production. The Reader Critic _Ben Hecht, Chicago_: I congratulate you on the roseate misconceptions of “Life Itself.” Long live your fancies—mine didn’t. The perfumes of Araby are short-lived in a slop-jar. I envy you your dogmatic naïveté until I remember something I thought of long ago:—that ideals are for the weak; that people who live on fancies starve for lack of sorrow, shrivel for lack of cynicism, and finally die of inhibition.