"THE UNKNOWN."
Mr. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, who recently intrigued and perhaps just a little
scandalised the town with a most engagingly flippant and piquant farce all
about an accidentally bigamous beauty, certainly shows courage in launching
so serious a discussion as _The Unknown_. And in the silly season too. I
see that in a quite unlikely interview (but then all modern interviews are
unlikely) he defends his right to discuss religion quite openly on the
stage. Of course. Why should anybody deny that religion is to the normally
constituted mind, whatever its doxy, an absorbingly interesting subject; or
that the War hasn't made a breach in the barriers of British reticence?
Whether to the point of making a perfectly good married Vicar (anxious to
convict a doubting D.S.O. of sin) ask in a full drawing-room containing the
Vicaress, the Doctor and the D.S.O.'s fiancée, mother and father, "For
instance, have you always been perfectly chaste?"--I am not so sure. Nor
whether the War has really added to bereaved _Mrs. Littlewood's_ bitter
"And who is going to forgive God?" any added force. If that kind of
question is to be asked at all it might have been asked, and with perhaps
more justice, at any time within the historical period. For the War might
reasonably be attributed by the Unknown Defendant thus starkly put upon
trial to man's deliberate folly, whereas....
No doubt, however, Mr. MAUGHAM would say the shock of war has (like any
other great catastrophe) tested the faith of many who are personally deeply
stricken and found it wanting, while the whisper of doubt has swelled the
more readily as there are many to echo it. So _Major John Wharton, D.S.O.,
M.C._, having found war, contrary to his expectation of it as the most
glorious manly sport in the world, a "muddy, mad, stinking, bloody
business," loses the faith of his youth and says so, not with bravado but
with regret. The Vicar, with dignity and restraint, but without much
understanding and not without some hoary _clichés_; his wife, with venom
(suggesting also incidentally sound argument for the celibacy of the
clergy); the old _Colonel_ and his sweet unselfish wife, with affection;
and _Sylvia_, _John's_ betrothed, with a strange passion, defend the old
faith, _Sylvia_ to the point of breaking with her lover and getting her to
a nunnery--a business which will in the end, I should guess, lay a heavier
burden upon the nuns than upon _John_. The indecisive battle sways hither
and thither. It is the _Doctor_ who sums up in a compromise which would
shock the metaphysical theologian, but may suffice for the plain man, "God
is merciful but not omnipotent. In His age-long fight against evil we can
help--or hinder; why not help?"
The most signal thing was Miss HAIDÉE WRIGHT'S personal triumph as _Mrs.
Littlewood_--a very fine interpretation of an interesting character. Mr.
CHARLES V. FRANCE adds another decent Colonel to his military repertory.
This actor always plays with distinction and with an ease of which the art
is so cleverly concealed as perhaps to rob him of his due meed of applause
from the unperceptive. Lady TREE made a beautiful thing of the character of
_Mrs. Wharton_, whose simple unselfishness was the best of all Mr.
MAUGHAM'S arguments for the defence. Mr. R.H. HIGNETT nobly restrained
himself from making a too parsonic parson, yet kept enough of the
distinctive flavour to excite a passionate anti-clerical behind me into
clamorously derisive laughter; a very good piece of work. Miss O'MALLEY
acted a difficult, almost an impossibly difficult, part with a fine
distinction. Mr. BASIL RATHBONE'S _Major_ and Mr. BLAKISTON'S _Doctor_ were
excellent. I am sorry to be so monotonously approving....