_England._ In recent months there has been a strong provincial movement against the indecency and unpleasantness of the plays produced in London. Respectable citizens complain that they never can tell what salacious beastliness may not be sprung upon their protesting eyes and ears, what searchlight cast upon the Augæan stables of high society. Actors and actresses have expressed their views, pointing out that a pure stage is as good a paying proposition as a nasty one, and invoking the case of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to bear witness to the truth of their contention. These operas, a notorious commercial success, have never been known to bring a blush to the most bourgeois cheek. A number of London women have accordingly banded themselves together vowing to purify the stage. Protests are to be made nightly in theatres at which plays to which objection is taken are performed. “We shall stick at nothing,” said the leader of the campaign, “to make our protest effective”. Concurrently with this development there has arisen a demand for a stricter censorship. I think it probable that we are on the threshold of a period resembling the early seventeenth or middle nineteenth centuries, when life as it is will be driven off the stage by the Puritans’ demand for life as it ought to be, love will give place to sentiment, and reality to romance. _America._ A new teetotal version of the Bible is promised from America. The festive passages are all dry, the words ‘raisin cake’ taking the place of the word ‘wine’ wherever the latter occurs in the Authorized Version. Thus we have “And he dealt to everyone of Israel, both men and women, to everyone a roll of bread, a portion of meat and a cake of raisin”. _Scotland._ Steps were taken in the spring of this year to transfer to Scotland a film depicting the explorations of Livingstone. An extract from the daily paper tells us that “Prohibitionists there are already strenuously objecting to the incident which shows Livingstone, after he has been found by Stanley, drinking champagne with his rescuer! The difficulty is that the incident is historically correct ... and the problem is whether truth should be suppressed in the interests of morality. ‘At any rate’ said the Secretary of the London Missionary Society ‘the raising of the question _is evidence of the progress made since his time_.’” It can scarcely be doubted that if the meeting had taken place to-day, Livingstone would have acknowledged the march of progress by drinking water.