SCREEN VS. SCENE.

Much ink has been spilt in debating the respective merits of the "movie" and the legitimate drama, each side holding forth for the complete damnation of the other. It would seem the part of wisdom, as well as discretion, to recognize that both will persist, and that, in fact, their fields of endeavor do not overlap. The moving picture, able to change the scene, or setting of the action in an instant, so that everything, the ship-wreck, the escape by aeroplane, the hanging of the villain, all take place before our very eyes, is undeniably the most effective means of presenting those stories of action which depend for their chief interest on the interplay of incident. To put William S. Hart on the stage and confine him almost exclusively to words, would be to revive the old bombastic melodrama, where, instead of seeing the hero jump onto his trusty horse and dash madly up and down mountain sides in pursuit of the villain, we should have the heroine gazing out a painted window from which she would turn now and then to gasp to us, "There he goes, there he goes, My God, My God, over a ditch, he's getting nearer, he's getting nearer ... ah.. my brave boy, he's got him, thank God!"

On the other hand, the moving picture will never be able to do any justice to those more vital stories which concern themselves with the struggle of human wills and the development of character. Here the shadow on the screen cannot replace the living personality, nor the "flash" suggest the spoken word. To attempt to "screen" one of the searching character delineations of Sir Arthur Pinero, one of the seathing satires of Bernard Shaw, or one of the witty farces of W. S. Maugham, would be quite as futile as are the condensed novels of Thackeray which appear complete in one newspaper column.

So let the movie magnates and the legitimate producer cease their bickering. Let the one show us heroes and villains moving through a panorama of incidents, actions, accidents; let the other present to us personalities which emerge from a conflict of wills into characters; then we will be satisfied with both.