Excerpt from Beyond Disillusion

Briefly put then, this play is an effort to present vitally, through the actions and reactions of human beings, under sig nificant conditions, what seems to the writer a constructive sug gestion, a valid consecration, a worthy conception of sacrifice. Just because the individual is sacred the individual must cheerfully endure whatever hardship is requisite to keep him true to his highest ideal of human relationship.

It would be incorrect to say that this play was conceived and written with the view to pressing home a particular doctrine. Rather, it was an effort at a synthetic vision of the human strug gle which had been, with keen, sometimes aching sympathy, ob served as presented fragmentarily in a number of cruel cases which fascinated the author. The judgments reached upon attain ing to this synthetic vision were not clearly foreseen when the material was first decided upon and the preliminary efiorts at its subdual for artistic uses undertaken.

A preface is always a precarious undertaking. It tells too much or too little. It is apt to confuse the artistic issue with personal considerations. The writer, in this case, has no apology to make. He but desires to share his creative joys and pains with the like minded, whoever they may be, and to present to those who differ from him his own best effort at dramatic thinking - thinking that is not abstract, but human; a thinking that proceeds not from syllo gism to syllogism, but through actual human souls and destinies the only sort of thinking that in the long run can help to solve any question as human as this one, which baffles alike the advocate of authority and the unmystical rationalist in our age.

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