because they do not understand that she is the second Helen born into their midst. In the middle of his tirade he crosses the threshold; there is a rush towards him; the door is slammed; and the curtain falls on Oona in tears, the company jeering at the poet, and he himself cursing them marvellously from beyond the door.

In 'The Marriage,' too, Dr Hyde has gone to a popular folk-story of the same period for his subject. The play is the story of a poor couple newly married and sitting at their wedding-dinner of a cake of bread and two boiled eggs. So poor are they that Martin must go off at once haymaking in a strange land, and Mary back into service to make enough money to enable them to keep house. A poor blind fiddler comes to the door; they entertain him, and all unconsciously he eats up the whole of their wedding-feast. In his distress at the discovery he tells them that he is the poet Raftery. He begins to play on his fiddle; and soon the house is filled with people who are on the road home from the fair. The name of Raftery conjures them in; and his persuasion makes every one of them bring a present for the bride and a piece of money for the fiddler's plate. When the plate is full, he hands it over to the bride, and, while the company are crowding about her counting the money, with a sigh slips out of the house. Hardly is he gone when a young man comes in with the news that Raftery has been dead four days.

The Lost Saint,' founded (Mr Yeats informs me) on an ancient story, is so exactly in the atmosphere of the same tradition that one can imagine it a piece of genuine currency from the west. The central figure here is a holy man who, to hide himself from the world, is spending his days minding the oven and grinding the meal for a little country school. The master, unconscious of his identity, set the boys a poem of his to learn. One of them is too stupid to learn it and is left over his task when the others go out to play. The child falls asleep, and the saint prays over him.

O Lord, O God, take pity on this little soft child. Put wisdom in his head, cleanse his heart, scatter the mist from his mind, and let him learn his lesson like the other boys. O Lord, Thou wert Thyself young one time; take pity on youth. O Lord, Thou Thyself shed tears; dry the tears of this little

lad. Listen, O Lord, to the prayer of Thy servant, and do not keep from him this little thing he is asking Thee. O Lord, bitter are the tears of a child, sweeten them; deep are the thoughts of a child, quiet them; sharp is the grief of a child, take it from him; soft is the heart of a child, do not harden it.'

The child wakes up knowing his lesson. The saint is recognised, and the school kneels to his blessing.

All the three little pieces (and no less so the short 'Nativity' which was given in English at the Abbey Theatre last January) are, even in translation, extraordinarily moving. They are permeated with an emotion strangely naive and sincere, the pathos of the poor man's feast, the child sobbing at his book, the baby in the manger. One cannot analyse their astonishing simplicity. Even the sufferings of Red Hanrahan, the rancorous, arrogant poet, who wanders for ever with the world's sorrows in his heart and the world's doors shut in his face, are the sufferings of a child, of a simplicity which holds the key of all wisdom, yet lives in a perpetual inarticulate conflict with the unintelligent and the unintelligible.

Even on a cursory review one cannot help being struck with the great variety of the work which the Irish Theatre has produced; and the force and sincerity of the movement is clearly shown by the way in which it has brought out the individuality of the different writers. It is not the voice of a literary or political clique, or the forced growth of a town, but the expression of a genuine national feeling. One notices, too, the way in which the nature of the work produced corresponds with local division of national characteristics. The realists come from the north, east, and south, the strongholds of Unionism and O'Brienism, while Mr Colum, whose country is central Ireland, forms a connecting link with the mystical and imaginative west. It is in the west that the Gaelic tradition is strongest ; and the work of the League (which has now over a thousand branches) has undoubtedly done a great deal to repair the breach of continuity that set in with the Union. In 1906 there were 100,000 children learning Irish in the schools, though the permission to teach Vol. 215.-No. 428.

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the language in school-hours had only just been obtained; and a great deal is being done by means of organised festivals and competitions to revive and educate the traditional love of dance and song and story.

One ought not, however, to be surprised or disappointed that the movement which Mr Yeats inaugurated has produced no heroic drama of distinction but his own. It is, indeed, rather a matter for congratulation. Not until the names and feats of the ancient heroes become as familiar to the Irish people as those of racehorses and cricketers are to the people of England, will Irish writers turn naturally to the old stories as a medium of expression. The essence of great drama is that it should be written for an audience; and the audience of Mr Yeats' ideal must, when Naisi or Fergus, Maeve or Conachar steps upon the stage, thrill on the instant with the whole tale of their loves and hates, their triumphs or calamities. Until that time comes, heroic drama must always be the plaything of a coterie. It is, in fact, another proof of the sincerity of the dramatic movement that even Mr Yeats' enthusiasm has not been able to keep it from what must at present be a more legitimate mode of self-expression. The political trend of nationalist enthusiasm, coupled with the national passion for the land, inclined the playwrights naturally towards the delineation of peasant life; and the material circumstances of the theatre, with players drawn almost entirely from working people, halls strictly limited in space, and resources equally limited, have worked in the same direction.

The result has been, on one side, a realism that is natural and genuine. The life of the town tends to produce plays which are either artificial and insincere, or earnest and didactic, while accumulated stage conventions and elaborated stage mechanism intensify the artificiality. In Dublin the players, being unable to rely on anything but the arts of speech and gesture for their effects, have developed a wonderfully simple and expressive style of acting; and the playwrights, influenced by the same conditions, have grown into a technique that is refreshing in its economy and freedom from theatrical artifice. Some such purification was necessary before there could be any real renascence of

the stage; and the Abbey Theatre has brought it about simply and naturally. At the same time there has been no break in the continuity of the national tradition. M. Dubois has said in his Contemporary Ireland' that Ireland will never do anything in literature except through the medium of her ancient language. One is glad to think that the last few years have demonstrated the falsity of the prophecy. But it is certainly true that all that is best in the work of the Abbey Theatre is directly in the Gaelic tradition. The naked sea-bitten provinces of the west, where life is still simple and speech harmonious, have brought imagination back to the stage. But regeneration is never a rebirth, it must be the birth of something new; and Synge and Lady Gregory, and (in a less degree perhaps) Dr Hyde, have given the stage something that is entirely new.

The genius of Ibsen sprang from a history curiously parallel to that of Ireland. Norway, like Ireland, had a literature noble in its childhood and obscured by a long eclipse of national development. In Norway, as in Ireland, the struggle for political freedom was accompanied by a revival of traditional and popular art; and, when that struggle was approaching the fulfilment of its hope, the literary renascence gave birth to Norwegian drama, and begat, not a new Snorro, but the melancholy little whiskered prophet who revolutionised the stage of Europe. It may be that Mr Yeats' hopes will yet be realised; that there will yet arise one strong enough to blow upon the Dord Fiann, and call Finn and the Fianna back from their long sleep; it may be that we shall once again hear Cuchullain, as the three times fifty queens who loved him heard him long ago, riding high through Emain in his Druid chariot singing the music of the Shee. It may be that Ireland is not fated to lead the peccant multitudes of Europe back from the cares of the flesh and its material ambitions to the glory and wonder of the morning world. But, whatever its destiny, the Irish movement may well rest content with having given to our stage the aerial purity of Mr Yeats, Lady Gregory's rich humanity, and the harsh, sweet, abundant genius of John Millington Synge. CHARLES TENNYSON.

Art. 11.-THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE TRIPLE ENTENTE.

1. Problems of the Middle East. By Angus Hamilton. London; Nash, 1909.

2. Die Bagdadbahn. Von Dr Paul Rohrbach. Mit einer Karte. Berlin: Wiegandt und Grieben, 1911.

SOME months ago, in consequence of undeniable successes gained in the East by German diplomacy, the enfeeblement, and almost the bankruptcy of the Triple Entente were freely proclaimed in various quarters on the Continent. It is interesting to enquire to what extent these criticisms are excessive or correspond with facts. First of all, what is the Triple Entente? It is difficult to give an exact definition of this agreement, since no formal diplomatic compact exists between the Governments of London, Paris, and St Petersburg. It may, however, be replied that, if the Triple Alliance exemplifies the orthodox system of treaties made between sovereigns, the Triple Entente presents this original feature, that it was desired by the peoples before being adopted by the Governments. The very fact of the absence of a definite treaty embodying the Triple Entente clearly proves that it exists by virtue of being in accord with dominant public opinion in England, France, and Russia. The Triple Entente also presents this particular aspect, that it departed from the earlier lines of European diplomacy in a perfectly decisive manner and with extreme suddenness. France and Russia have indeed been for a long time bound by a definite compact. But it is only a few years since France and England were still in a state of acute rivalry; war was even within an ace of breaking out between them at the time of Fashoda; while mutual suspicions of the most inveterate nature had long existed between the Russians and the English. What, then, is the event which has been powerful enough to break down the strong and ancient barriers formed by national preconceptions and prejudices between France and England on the one hand, and between England and Russia on the other? What circumstance has been so far-reaching as to change profoundly the tendency of interests and