THE CRIMSON BOOKSHELF REVIEWS

When we were children we used to dislike taking pills. So the doctors, like the men in G. B. S.'s "duel of sex", promptly went us one step better, and coated those pills with sugar. After that it was better; we even conceived a certain liking for being dosed--provided that the pills were sweet enough. Susan Glaspoll's "Inheritors" is like that: a strong and rather disagreeable moral lesson in three acts sufficiently coated with technique and artistry to be palatable--enjoyable.

The lesson touches what has been the topic of the hour since the war and even before the war, namely, the relation of liberalism and education. Has a University the right to dismiss from its members any person who does not agree with its views, who is advancing along what he considers to be the road to mental, and sometimes physical, freedom? The author thinks it has not, and, in this case at any rate, proves her point with niceness. True, she takes an exceptionally strong example with which to work. The founders of this country, she points out, were rebels, and many of them fugitives from the iron laws of their homelands. Now that we are free and prosperous and, above all, conventionalized, should we forget what is due those who are attempting to emulate our example? Even a Hindu from India, the play shows, has a moral right to plead for the liberty of that Empire, to educate himself to fight his battle for freedom....

A startling thesis. truly. Yet Miss Glaspell wisely refrains from urging it to an extreme. She is satisfied with pointing out the justice of her case, admitting frankly that our present social and educational conditions cannot be stretched overnight to conform to all this. The conscientious objector, the "radical" professor--these our hard-headed, "sot-in-its-ways" democracy cannot at once accept into its colleges. There must be time for growth and advancement; but meanwhile it does no harm to learn our meanwhile it does no harm to learn our faults. After all, it is the old story of revolution being rebellion until it has succeeded, and the hero a traitor until he has conquered.

One might be led to think that a play along such lines would either read like an essay or flare like a dime novel. As a matter of fact, "Inheritors" does neither. The author, through interesting characterization and many well-known tricks of stage-craft, manages to hold the attention and tickle the mental pallet throughout its entire length. So that when he is through, the reader suddenly finds that he has swallowed a moral pill almost without knowing it. And therein lies the charm.

Certainly "Inheritors" belongs to the better class of American drama. Dealing as it does with but a single phase of a temporary physical problem it cannot hope, of course, to be classed with the greater works of literature--all of which are concerned with things more spiritual, more basic, less transitory. But, like Dickens, it has a purpose; like Kipling, it is intensely human. And these two qualities alone should be enough to justify its existence and classify its rank.