So much, then, for the possibilities of expanding the idea. On the other hand it is capable of just as extreme contraction and simplification for use in the smaller, less wealthy communities.
By taking a little more care in costuming the marching escorts an effective pageant could be arranged with only five or six floats.
Indeed, it is not absolutely essential to have floats at all. Nearly all of the situations suggested above could be adequately represented by appropriately costumed groups on foot; and there would even be this positive advantage, that leaders like Garibaldi and Kolokotrones and Black George might appear at the head of a more realistically adequate body of troops than could be assembled upon a float.
According to this plan the various foes of liberty might also appear in force, and sham battles could be fought in various outskirts of town earlier in the day (let us hope, with noiseless as well as smokeless arms!) before the various units unite in procession.
If the parade is combined with the performance of a specially written masque, the combination would obviate many of the usual objections to the ordinary “safe and sane” Fourth. The masque would provide a most desirable dramatic and educative element. And, by charging a small admission fee, this performance would ordinarily pay the entire expense of the celebration, including the expense of engaging a competent pageant master. Now a pay performance without the free parade might, under the circumstances, be considered an undemocratic way of celebrating what should be our most democratic holiday. But in combination with a free parade the admission fee would be unobjectionable, and the masque would, more than anything else, stimulate that deep, thoughtful patriotism whose lack to-day is as grave a defect in our barbarous Fourth as its cruelty.
The idea of the masque has as yet been worked out only tentatively. Its development is the business of a dramatic poet. Roughly speaking it would proceed somewhat as follows.
When the procession arrives at the stadium the floats would enter in their historical order, each accompanied however, by only the small, specially trained nucleus of its marching escort. The floats would circle the inclosure once or twice, and then divide into two files, forming a lane of honor through which the Liberty float would move slowly and take up a position in the center of the inclosure.
Its escort would then sing a chorus which ought to be as eloquent and beautiful and suggestive an exposition of the nature of abstract liberty as Swinburne’s “Hertha” is of the soul.
When this is finished the Americans would approach this central figure of Liberty and recount, with music and dramatic action, perhaps, their struggle in her honor, ending with America sung with full chorus and band. Then the Americans would take up their position in the secondary place of honor opposite.