—Robert M. Lovett.
The State Forbids: A Play in One Act, by Sada Cowan. New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
The mother speaks: “The State won’t let us women help ourselves. We must have children whether we want them or not, and then the State comes and takes them from us. It doesn’t ask. It commands. We’ve got to give them up. [Shrilly] I’ve got to give my boy. [Again shrilly] What are we, we women? Just cattle. Breeding animals ... without a voice! Dumb—powerless! Oh, the State! The State commands! and the State forbids! Damn the State!”
It is to appear in vaudeville. Like War-Brides it is woman propaganda; but here the emphasis is on Birth Control. Like War-Brides it is negative as literature, but the woman speeches make smashing vaudeville. We wonder whether it is the importance of its idea or its evident value as a thriller and shocker which prompts its production.
The Reader Critic
Ben Hecht, Chicago:
I congratulate you on the roseate misconceptions of “Life Itself.” Long live your fancies—mine didn’t. The perfumes of Araby are short-lived in a slop-jar.
I envy you your dogmatic naïveté until I remember something I thought of long ago:—that ideals are for the weak; that people who live on fancies starve for lack of sorrow, shrivel for lack of cynicism, and finally die of inhibition.
I remember, in a discussion on art the other evening, your crying out about “the eternal standard” and I feeling it was true but not knowing what it meant. I know now. It meant nothing. It is just another fancy.