The weak point of "The Call to Life" is _Marie's_ father, the old _Moser_--one of the most repulsive figures ever seen on the stage. It may have been made what it is in order that the girl's crime might not hopelessly prejudice the spectator at the start and thus render all the rest of the play futile. We must remember, too, that the monstrous egoism of _Moser_ is not represented as a typical quality of that old age which feels itself robbed by the advance of triumphant youth. What Schnitzler shows is that egoism grows more repulsive as increasing age makes it less warranted. The middle act of the play, with its remarkable conversation between the _Colonel_ and _Max_, brings us back to "Outside the Game Laws." That earlier play was in its time declared the best existing stage presentation of the spirit engendered by the military life. But it has a close second in "The Call of Life." To anyone having watched the manners of militarism in Europe, the words of the _Colonel_ to _Max_ will sound as an all-sufficient explanation: "No physicians have to spend thirty years at the side of beds containing puppets instead of human patients--no lawyers have to practice on criminals made out of pasteboard--and even the ministers are not infrequently preaching to people who actually believe in heaven and hell." If "The Lonely Way" be Schnitzler's greatest play all around, and "Intermezzo" his subtlest, "Countess Mizzie" is the sweetest, the best tempered, the one that leaves the most agreeable taste in the mouth. It gives us a concrete embodiment of the tolerance toward all life that is merely suggested by the closing sentences of _Dr. Schindler_ in the last act of "The Call of Life." It brings back the gay spirit of "Anatol," but with a rare maturity supporting it. The simple socio-biological philosophy of "Change Partners!" is restated without the needless naturalism of those early dialogues. The idea of "Countess Mizzie" is that, if we look deep enough, all social distinctions are lost in a universal human kinship. On the surface we appear like flowers neatly arranged in a bed, each kind in its separate and carefully labeled corner. Then Schnitzler begins to scrape off the screening earth, and underneath we find the roots of all those flowers intertwined and matted, so that it is impossible to tell which belong to the _Count_ and which to _Wasner_, the coachman, which to _Miss Lolo_, the ballet-dancer, and which to the _Countess_.