It is very interesting to compare the barometer of public morale in the European capitals, judging from their amusements. Here is one day’s bill taken from the London _Daily News_, the Petrograd _Ryech_, the _Berliner Tageblatt_, the Vienna _Neue Freie Presse_, and the Paris _Figaro_; I have omitted the movies, which bear for the most part ultra-patriotic titles, and the vaudevilles. The London bill is quite poor: _Veronique_, a comic opera; _Mme. Sans-Gene_; Gaby Deslys in _Rosy Rapture_, presented by Charles Frohman; _The Girl in the Taxi_; Frondai’s _The Right to Kill_; _For England, Home, and Beauty_; and our old friends, the Irish Players, in the Little Theatre. Still more meager is the Paris bill: outside of _Cavalleria Rusticana_ (the chairman of the Walt Whitman dinner pronounces it Keyveleeria Rohstikeyna), it abounds with such tit-bits as _La Petite Fonctionaire_, _Mam’zelle Boy Scout_, _Mariage de Pepeta_, and so forth. Berlin has on that day three operas—_Don Juan_, _Elektra_, _Lohengrin_; three dramas—_Faust_, _Peer Gynt_, _Schluck und Jau_ (the last one in Rheinhard’s Deutsches Theater), not counting the minor affairs. Vienna’s bill took away my breath: a Schönberg-Mahler Abend, a Schubert-Strauss Abend, a Beethoven-Brahms Abend, a Brahms Kammermusik Abend, a concert under Sevcik; _Carmen_; a play by Fulda after Molière; Ibsen’s _Master Builder_ and _Ghosts_; Kleist’s _Kätchen von Heilbronn_. As for the Petrograd bill, I had better not say what emotions it has aroused in me. Judge for yourselves: five operas—_Traviata_, _Faust_, _Pagliacci_, _Ruslan and Ludmilla_, _Eugene Onegin_; a ballet by Mlle. Krzesinsky; two ballets by Fokin’s company; plays by Ibsen, Mirbo, Andreyev, beside _Potash and Perlmutter_ and other importations; an exhibition of paintings by Lancerè and Dobuzhinsky; a Poeso-Evening by Futurist poets with Igor Severyanin as leader; an Evening of Poetry under K. R. (Grand Duke Konstantine, whose play _King of the Jews_ recently appeared in an English translation); public lectures on _The Blue Bird_ in Our Days, on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.... Allow me to stop. Are you inclined to draw conclusions and comparisons between the stage of war-ridden Europe and that of peacefully complacent America? I beg to be excused. _Edmond Rostand on the Lusitania_ Rostand is a member of the Academy; perhaps this affliction is responsible for his growing hoarseness as a Chantecler. Yet as of all recent war poems his is the best, I feel justified in citing it: Les Condoléances Bernstorff, pour aller à la Maison Blanche, S’est mis tout en noir. (L’onde a pris, là-bas, la dernière planche Dans son entonnoir.) Il entre, affigé, refuse une chaise D’un geste contrit. (Des femmes, là-bas, heurtent la falaise De leur sein meurtri.)