A Cry Out of the Dark

"A Cry Out of the Dark"—Three plays by Henry Bailey Stevens. Boston: The Four Seas Company.

Mr. Stevens' volume contains three plays that on the surface are plays of protest against the senselessness and deformity of war. In reality they go deeper than that, and voice a passionate indictment of brute force administered by stupidity to the ends of selfinterest. This fact gives them a quality of universality that they could not otherwise enjoy, now that the world conflict is so definitely relegated to the past. Brute force remains and always will remain, striking beauty dead and drifting dust along the pathways of the world. It is this fact that makes the plays interesting out of their setting. The plays contain understanding, much fire, and not a little spiritual fineness. As is usually the case with drama written for such a purpose, they are better reading plays than acting plays. "8010 and Babette" is the best of the three, because it is more definite in structure and characterization, and less clouded with abstract dialogue.

Kenneth Allan Robinson.