RECIPE FOR HEROES

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8296, 6 December 1912, Page 1

RECIPE FOR HEROES

LUMBERING VIRTUE PROTEST AGAINST THE DISMAL IN ART. * The difference between the British nation to-day and the early Britons U very email, according to Mr Alfred Sutro. the well-known playwright. “Wo aro probably not one whit more advanced in morality," he told an audienco at the Working Mens College, bt. Pancras, London, a tew weeks ago. We aro only better clothed, and some of us iiavo bathrooms, and wo still kill each other as blithely as did our ancestors. Wo aro not kinder. We only talk more, and print what wo talk." "Plays, Nonsense, Women. and Heroes" was Mr Sutro’s subject, and here aro some of his sayings: ".Mo man should b© allowed to toacn who could not prove to tho satisfaction of a Board of Children that ho was able thoroughly to enjoy the adventures and vagaries of Mr Pickwick. "Human virtue is a comfortable lumbering, blundering,' somewhat incomprehensible element that has existed from the beginning of things. All lives do not end in suicide, all wives are not unfaithful, all husbands do not drink. ."I stand hero a iirm enemy of all that is dismal in art. I protest against the picture that shows mangled human remains as 1 do against the play that reveals the criminal lunatie beating his head against tho padded cell, or the novel that shows life in its blackest phase of unrelieved misery. “Tho. most deadly of all sins that tho play wri ting person can commit is to bo dull. > Tho clergyman is the only person who has the right to be dull —with the statesman a good second, and our relations third." As a . recipe for ordinary heroes Mr Sutro .gave the following: "You take of noble sentiments so much; self-sacrifice, a little more; suffering, quite a good deal. Add a pretty girl, to be embraced at tho finish, and lo 1 tho thing is done, tho mixture made up—to be taken every night before supper, between 0 and 11. And ITI let yon into a State secret. If you happen to be at a theatre, and don't know who tho hero is. you can always discover him by remembering that the curtain is never »1 lowed to fall unless ho is on tho stage.”