MODERN AUTHORS ARE COMPARED BY O'DELL

"When Conrad portrays sea characters with his great simplicity of style, they seem real and living, but when he applies this same simplicity to his landmine, he unaccountably loses that genuineness of character which makes his seamen so famous", said Mr. George E. O'Dell at luncheon in the Liberal Club yesterday when speaking on "English Realism: Galsworthy, Bennett, Conrad, and Shaw". He continued:

Galsworthy Deals With Disagreeable

"Galsworthy depots disagreeable in his plays. He can't let a man leave the theatre in a happy mood. In this respect his tragedies overdo the spirit of repression. Thus, in "The Mod", he develops the disagreeableness of democracy which has overstepped bounds. The foundation of the plot is laid about an incident of Lloyd George's war career. At a political meeting in one of Great Britain's industrial cities, Lloyd George and his policies were resented by an infuriated mob of workmen, and the expresser was forced to leave the building by a rear door in the disguise of a policeman. Shortly thereafter, the wisdom of Lloyd George's policies was proved, and the same workmen returned him to power with an overwhelming majority. Thus democracy, which seemed to be a failure at the political meeting, ultimately was a public good.

Is False to Life

"But true life did not please Galsworthy, who desired the disagreeable. In his play the central character does not escape and the mob does not prove the worth of democracy, but on the contrary, the hero, commits suicide and the mob triumphs to the disadvantage of democracy. Galsworthy is so full of the disagreeable that he is false to life.

Masefield Exhibits Cheap Realism

"Masefield is often more disagreeable. He is a realist and is temperamental about it. His profanity is revolting and largely because of this I would say he exhibits cheap realism. Shaw in one of his seenes gains all the effect of the use of profacity by merely having the speakers repeat the word "rotten", but Masefield simply swears,--to the extent that one becomes weary of it.

Bennett a Modern Dickens

"Bennett is a sort of modern Dickens--a man of the romantic type. He makes a genuine effort to photograph English life--his efforts in this respect culminating perhaps in "These Twain".

Shaw is Platonic

"Shaw Jeaves no doubt as to what he its be terms himself a dramatic realist. His works show the effects of his reading of Plato, for be desires that every one be made an aristocrat. He maintains that education has little to do with the matter of acquiring table manners, except dress, and that outward show which aristocracy presents. Every one should acquire these attributes according him.

"The idea of a panacea for things culminates in Shaw's ideas of marriage as shown in "Man and Superman". Here we have the highly intelligent woman who seeks and-finds the man most suited to be her husband. Every person was to select the right mate and in this way society's ills would be cured. Plato proposed that the upper class should rule and that this class should be encouraged to have many children, and thus to raise the standard of the race. That is Shaw's idea. He wants the world to be placed on the plane of absolute equality of marriage.

"These writers show many eccentricities, but the nevertheless go to form an ora of realism rarely paralleled in literature".