the process of child-birth had been painful, and that, therefore, despite the judgment of the courts, their little daughter belonged more to her than to him. The reader is, of course, annoyed by all this nonsense; but this annoyance, once again, must be regarded as a tribute to the reality of the author’s characterization. No heroine who was not a living human being could make the auditor so ardently desire to climb upon the stage and talk back to her. Fortunately, it is not at all necessary to like Mr. Middleton’s women in order to like his plays. One may admire Ibsen’s _Hedda Gabler_ without wishing to be married to the heroine; and the pleasant thing about Mr. Middleton’s women is that, while the reader is permitted to observe and study them, he is also allowed to realize with hearty thankfulness that he will never have to live with any of them. The world in which his women move is a world of discontent. This discontent is truly representative of the present transitional period in the evolution of society; but it is not representative of that perennial reality of life that remains oblivious of periods and dates. At all times, the really womanly woman has been a lover of her life and has not found it difficult to feel at home at home. New York Letter GEORGE SOULE It would be difficult to imagine a more fantastic occasion than a debate in New York on the justice of the cause of the Allies vs. that of Germany between Cecil Chesterton and George Sylvester Viereck. The gods permitted it to happen last week, much to the chagrin of the Allies, for the hyphenated Germans took good care to fill the hall and hiss every offensive statement. Mr. Chesterton, an honest fighter and a clever polemicist, who has leapt through every phase of radicalism into the enfolding charity of the Catholic Church, deserves to be known for his journalistic achievements and his exposure of graft in high places almost as much as for his brother Gilbert. Mr. Viereck, a sublime egotist, has come into sudden favor with his countrymen by editing _Das Vaterland_, although before that he had taken every known means to secure notoriety for a naturally obscure individual. He began as a poet of strange verse, both in German and English. When it became apparent that it wasn’t going to sell, he issued a last volume which he called his “swan song,” with the announcement that as this commercial age was unappreciative of his poetry he would write no more, and anyone who wanted a last chance to value him at it must buy this book. For himself, he was going to get in line with the genius of the century and become a Big Business Man, for he must make himself felt. He announced in a stentorian wail his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt, and was much chagrined when that celebrity would not let him trail along on the skirts of his ample publicity. Later on, when Alfred Noyes began to sell in large quantities, Mr.