come, if he have many daughters, may be pretty sure that they will not all marry, especially after this war. He cannot look upon his own child as a negligible "spinster woman." If he brings her up on the lines suggested in Mrs. Whetham's book, she is not likely to be able to make her living; and unless he is prepared to leave her the greater part of his patrimony, to the detriment of his married children, how can he assure her happiness? He has also no certain knowledge when his daughters are little which of them will be left permanently in his home. Is it unreasonable that he should bring them up like boys, to be able to make their own way in life? Mrs. Whetham says that a professional woman is not as a rule a marrying woman, and if she does marry she has few or no children. It is impossible to deny, and impossible not to regret, the fact. In the class of whom Mrs. Whetham writes there are more women than men. Is she prepared to regard education solely as an equipment for the race which is to be run for matrimony? Emigration is not such a simple way out of the difficulty as some people think. It is easy for a cynical looker-on to wonder how it is that parents should be attached to all their children, and should be filled with anxiety at the thought that even one girl should go away alone to a new country to hunt for a husband; but so it is, and the situation may be still further complicated by her unwillingness to go. The problem is, so far as one can see at present, radically insoluble; but there are expedients which might ease the situation for instance, the sweeping away of minor class distinctions. The immense and absurd expense of education is the thing which maintains the class barriers that surround the upper middle class. Its members must be willing to pull those barriers down,

or to sacrifice its daughters to the fetish of the Public School. Their men could marry earlier, and women could marry men who are now-to put it plainly considered to be a little beneath them socially. Dearth of men is not so obvious in any class but the professional, and marriage is not so late in any other. Once outside it, we can see our way a little clearer. Whether it is a good thing for the country that the upper middle class should cease to exist is another question; but, to speak frankly, we think it is better than that it should produce armies of educated unmarried women, heartily as we disagree with Mrs. Whetham's cruel tone towards them. She pays them the compliment, no doubt, of believing that a very large number are single by their own choice. That this is true in a smaller measure than she seems to think is demonstrable because of the few bachelors over thirty-five whom one meets. On the other hand, there is truth in it. The number of women who resolve not to marry is negligible, but the number among the educated who will not marry without a grande passion, or what they take for one, is fairly large, was larger, we suppose, in this class in this country in the last century than it ever was in the world before. It was the Victorian ideal, and was very fine and very widespread. Can we afford in bringing up our daughters deliberately to break it down? A great many parents will still be found to say "No; it is worth almost any sacrifice." The present writer, for his own part, thinks otherwise; but if we destroy one ideal we must substitute another or lower the moral standard. The daughters of French lawyers and doctors and Civil Servants and soldiers and sailors do not marry for love. They are brought up to regard marriage as the right preliminary to motherhood, and their

ideal view the one put before them in youth-is that husband and wife should draw closer and closer together in common devotion to their children, and that matrimony should become a perfect friendship sanctified by a still holier and more passionate tie-the bond of common parenthood. It may of course be said that this is a view of marriage which looks very well on paper, but which in practice is by no means always satisfactory. The same thing may be said of the more romantic English way of facing the question. The truth is that both systems work fairly well, and both ideals are equally high; but, considering the present necessity, the French one would seem to be the more practical, and it would serve, if we adopted it, to stem the new and curiously unnatural desire just now evinced by women to pile the cares of maternity upon other shoulders-sending their children earlier and earlier to school, and keeping no boys over eight and no girls over twelve in the house with their parents.

Money difficulties lie at the root of all changes in what we may call the family plan. The French system presupposes dowries, and the English professional man must overhaul his time-honored financial system before The Spectator.

he can give money to his daughters before his death. We all agree that greater economy will be a necessity for years after the war, but we do not know how to accomplish it. Mrs. Whetham's hints on the subject of household budgets puzzle us. She thinks that the type of housewife who keeps three servants may bring her food bill without undue difficulty to eight shillings a head, and if she be prepared to spend twelve shillings may provide her family with a diet of considerable variety and some luxury. In these days this computation of expense is sheer nonsense. After the war it may be again possible, but we think the mother of the ordinary upper middle class family will find it a hard task indeed, even though she be assisted in her trouble by the suggestions of her elder children as well as her hungry husband. But Mrs. Whetham is right in considering that housekeeping must once more become a fine art and home-making a first duty if we are to cope with any of the problems before us just now. To sum up, we think Mrs. Whetham's book will be widely read, because it is eminently provocative of discussion. For ourselves, we should describe it as a superficially interesting and deeply irritating piece of journalism.

"Charity beginneth at home is the voice of the world," says old Sir Thomas Browne. It is the second part of this apophthegm that most nearly concerns the subject in hand. The war, which has waved its lightning wand over society of every sort, has certainly upset the equilibrium of voluntary entertainment. No profession can compete at any time with the theatre in generous devotion to the

cause of suffering, but actors and actresses are now being constantly uncomfortably harnessed and harassed by a crowd of ambitious amateurs, fashionable eccentrics or dilettantes, and the trained beauty-chorus-for so they must be styled-of those importunate ladies who court the limelight of illustrated papers and seek bacchanalian excitement (otherwise denied) under a tinsel mask of self-effacement.

Added to these are those-their name is legion-who pounce on such revels as a ready means of cultivating celebrities. In the name of charity Mrs. (or rather Lady) Leo Hunter has now the time of her life. Inflamed by enthusiasm she writes off post-haste to everyone whom she has never met and appeals for co-operation in "the good cause." The first thing, of course, is to form an "executive committee"an eventual, indeed the unhappy parent of multitudes to come. She gets a congenial secretary to drudge for her gratis in a correspondence exasperatingly involved and illusory, a day is named, and a tea-table contemptuous of the Controller stands alluringly spread in her ample drawing-room. Her telephone is ringing all the morning, but if half the people whom she has never met turn up she will be more than satisfied. There is, of course, the dear Duke and Beryl, the Cubist poet, and that wonderful Lady Catshanger, whose imputed "pasts are as voluminous as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," and Marrable, the delightful jeune premier, of whom everyone raves, and quite the wit (in tow of Lady Catshanger), who takes everyone off so drolly except himself when there is food. There will be a cluster, too, of famous actresses and the inevitable Paulo-post-impressionist, who resents privacy at whatever cost to himself or others. A novelist who creates new and inverted worlds with a view to circulation will probably be induced to attend; a pianist, the comet of the concert-room-at any rate so far as his hair is concerned-and a few old conventional "first-nighters," who have no objection to being first-afternooners. Blended with these or more correctly overwhelming them-is the dazzling beauty-chorus above mentioned, who deem no sacrifice too great or small for advertisement, and one or two really earnest, quiet people who

feel rather "out of it." One of these steady-going folks-a lady of equine countenance is usually put at the head of the table with a view to a semblance of order, and then the fun

-we beg pardon, the business begins. The first thing is to toss up, so to speak, for the charity. Of course, there has been a general idea that it must somehow be connected with the war, but in these things some certainty is desirable. A few letters of suggestion are read from the grandees who have selfishly honored the committee by their absence. The Red Cross is especially recommended, but the idea does not seem to commend itself as sufficiently unconventional. Indeed some get red and others cross at the very mention of a cause that, like the poor, is always with us. And then the discussion is started. It becomes the hubbub of Babel. Nothing is too outré for the peg on which to hang the performance. "Clubs for war widows," "Toffee for the front" are hardly caricatures. Capping the latter the humorist is heard to murmur, "Why not bracers for the back?" but he is unheeded, for no faddists however frivolous like to laugh at themselves. last the steady-going chairwoman observes in a still, small voice, "Let us try something local." The Post Office Directory is fetched at once, but

At

scarcely a district out of the West End is found to have been uncatered for. Is there not a hospital somewhere in Southwest Belgravia? By heaven, there is. A gasp of relief goes round. The performance then is to be in aid of the Southwest Belgravian Hospital. But what is the performance to be?

There can hardly be a doubt. If it is not a variety show in a gardenusually too small, and now too often laid up with potatoes-it must, of course, be a revue. There is nothing like a revue for the photographers— who have the best of it by never

being photographed. There is nothing like a revue for everybody having a turn and a disappointment. The beauty-chorus (assisted by the real actors) will naturally monopolize the stage as usual, but the Cubist poet can help with the libretto, which all of them will "write," including Lady Catshanger, who immediately sets about forming an authors' and also a costumiers' committee. The comet pianist can help with the music if he will be so obliging as to get an orchestra together, and the Paulo-poster can help the scenery, which under his misty touch will need help almost divine if it is to be recognizable. The novelist can help not only by his influence and his pen, which indeed manages at last to oust most of the indignant others, and the jeune premier will organize (that is the word) a ballet to the great advantage of the beautychorus. It will be something classical, where naughtiness is etiquette, and where there is an infinite opening for partial costume. Who shall be the milliner? Why is there not a milliner on the committee? Everyone names the milliner who gives and does them credit. Pas si bête is Lady Catshanger, who dryly observes, "But I am a modiste. Haven't you heard? I took over Langouste's yesterday. I'll manage the costumes of Olympus of course, at war rates-and the clothes must be rations, mustn't they? And what's more I'll dance myself, and (sinking her voice to the great scandal of the steady-goers) I shan't want too much on, I promise you." Following on which Quill suggests a ballet of Mrs. Grundy as a supplement, and this delicate contrast is hailed as a masterpiece by the beautychorus.

What shall the revue be called?

The novelist who, out of print, is singularly dull, suggests "The Belles of Belgravia." "Putrid." murmurs an

actor who, like so many, has been driven to the halls, and up again as a "star" of that firmament who kindly offers to press a whole comic constellation into dazzling choice. The Cubist poet vaguely murmurs "Dingles"but nobody marks him. "Why not 'Langouste's,' shrills Lady Catshanger, who loves to blush visibly. Then Quill comes gallantly to the rescue. "I vote for 'What's On?'" he pertinently observes, and the beautychorus hail him rapturously. A quarrel, however, begins the precursor of many more for weeks in all the affiliated committees. Everyone speaks at once amid Olympian clouds of cigarette smoke. Some even call each other names, while the novelist commercially jots down notes in his (exceedingly) commonplace-book. The president rings her diminutive bell several times, but the voices drown the bell-that bell of Belgravia. Here, again, Quill proves the god of the machine. "Do," he pleads, "do let us speak well of each other behind our backs." Peace is restored.

When is the performance to take place? Here, again, there is another discord. Not one day will suit everybody, and so far as the beauty-chorus is concerned no day or hour in the year would seem unoccupied-in the name of charity. However, as night seems to be their chief period of self-sacrifice, an afternoon is eventually settled. The rehearsals are another burning question. Once the parts are arranged, is it any good rehearsing at all? One rehearsal is so like another. Only half of any requisite number ever turn up at all, and so one only secures a half-impression-which, however, is the ideal of the Cubist poet. The actors, however, suddenly become stern. There must be rehearsals and they will get Horace Blackline to "produce" the masterpiece-that is, if he can spare the time, for what with

charities and actualities he is the hardest worked man in London. The beauty-chorus smiles. They know that even he cannot manage them.

And so to chaos succeeds a kind of order the germ of fresh and complex anarchies, however, in future. The next committee meeting is, if you can call it so, "arranged." Everyone, except the real actors and actresses, is highly excited, and Lady Hunter dreams that night of the dear duke who, throughout, maintains a patrician silence. One thing, however, he (and the beauty-chorus) promised: the certainty of a prodigal audience; stalls at The Saturday Review.

four guineas apiece in these socialist times, for, as he justly remarks, "the more you charge 'em, the better they like it." "'Em" are the war-nouveaux-riches, patriots to the bone.

When the day comes the hospital is substantially helped-that is the best of it. But it cannot be said, in this instance, that Charity "vaunteth not herself," though she certainly suffers long from the monotony of these orgies. And, as certainly, she is "puffed up," for the publicity is colossal, and the Paulo-poster paints a poster called "Charity," which looks like an earthquake engulfing a monument.

To their "Whole World Series" of music folios, D. Appleton & Co. add "Songs the Whole World Sings," a collection of more than two hundred sentimental, home, college, patriotic, sacred, southern, national and children's songs, each one arranged to be played or sung; "Dance Music the Whole World Plays," containing ninety or more standard and modern compositions by the most celebrated dance-music composers; and "Piano Pieces the Whole World Plays," a collection of seventy or more popular compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chaminade, Chopin, Godard, Gounod, Grieg, MacDowell, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Paderewski, Rubinstein, Schubert and others.

Any fanciful child, and not a few grown persons who are not of a too serious temper, will like to taste Walter de la Mare's "Peacock Pie," a book of whimsical and diverting rhymes, ranging sometimes through fairyland and sometimes through the land of every-day, but always light and gay. There are eighty or more of them, and each of them is decorated with a drawing

by W. Heath Robinson-an artist whose mood is as merry as the poet's who sings the verses. Here is one of the rhymes"Poor Henry"-which will appeal to any child:

Thick in its glass

The physic stands, Poor Henry lifts

Distracted hands; His round cheek wans

In the candlelight, To smell that smell!

To see that sight!

Finger and thumb

Clinch his small nose,
A gurgle, a gasp,

And down it goes;
Scowls Henry now;

But mark that cheek,
Sleek with the bloom

Of health next week!
Henry Holt & Co.

"In the Claws of the German Eagle" is the thrilling title under which Albert Rhys Williams gives his account of war experiences. These were most exciting. At one time Mr. Williams was held in prison for a couple of days as a