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 fiancee, 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 cliches; 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 HAIDEE 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....