remote- quite welcomely free from all the suggestiveness and sensual appeal cultivated by half-clad girls in the usual Broadway "show." This same dancer was far more vulgar in other numbers on the same program, when she appeared with more clothing but in animated dances which revealed certain wobbly-jelly tendencies of her figure.

But vulgarity aside, if one woman chooses to appear for a fleeting moment without clothing, is it important enough to be heralded forth by every newspaper in the nation's largest city? Is not our respectability a bit overconscious when it makes a metropolis' sensation of a glimpse of a human body? To a thinking person the attitude of press and public give more reason for pause than did the original performance.

If Helen Moller really was immoral, her offense lay in violating art. She pretended to the highest æsthetic standard, when in truth she and her pupils are only half-baked artistically. Unfortunately there is no law or custom classing this sort of offense as immoral.

But there is real immorality at the Opera House, and it is practised openly day after day and month after month. It consists in selling, to those who expect to see and hear opera with some comfort, seats from which it is impossible to see more than a small fraction of the stage. Hundreds of seats in the auditorium are cut off from a view of more than half the stage space, and yet tickets for these are regularly sold with the implied understanding that the purchasers will "see the show." No other business is allowed thus openly to obtain money under false representations. If the police and the newspapers really want to do away with immorality at the Opera House, why not start with the flagrant dishonesty at the box office?

WE CAN attach no importance to the far-heralded war that A Futile War has broken out between the Shuberts and Klaw and Erlanger. It is true that the break ends that alliance which gave an allied group of capitalists control over most of the theatres in America. But it is still true that no independent producer can profitably take a play out through the country without paying tribute to one syndicate or the other.

When the Shuberts and their new rivals coöperated there was a monopoly before which practically every theatre owner in America was forced to bow down. Now there are two trusts fighting each other-but both are bound by a primary interest in profits rather than art, both are out to stifle independent competition, both have shown an utter disregard for those qualities in drama which please discriminating audiences rather than the rabble bent on sensational or farcical amusement.

This war means that a few New York producers will have the choice of working with one uninspired group of capitalists or another. For the rest of the country, and for theatre art, the booking-agents' disagreement means nothing.

WE ARE indebted to Robert Jones for the design which appears upon our cover. The figure is adapted from an engraving by Callot.

THROUGH an error in make-up, the captions for illustrations on pages 8 and 14 of our December issue were transposed. Readers who preserve their copies for reference are asked to note that the setting shown on page 8 is that for Overtones, while that on page 14 is for The Magical City.

Four Designs for Stages, by Hermann Rosse, are shown on this and the following three pages. The artist writes: "Most people designing for the stage seem to be occupied with scenic reforms. To me it is much more important to develop some new types of stage and theatre." From an extensive series of sketches, in which the form of the stage is fitted to various types of production, we are permitted to reproduce four varied examples. The one shown above is a stage for a dancer, with an all-gold scene-with flat gold screens at the back and gold patterned curtains at the sides.