Brooklyn Life from Brooklyn, New York • Page 18

Of Va i In rest to the President or the Administration; He asserted that there had been no hour so dark while the war was as the period we are now passing through. He asserted that the Germans had prepared for peace as systematically as they had prepared for war that not only was the Bolshevist outbreak in Russia deliberately fostered and promoted by them, but that the disorders and violence in their own country was ninety per cent camouflage and deliberately kept smoldering for the sake of the effect. Incidentally he charged our Government with being responsible for the Russian situation in having given passports to Trotzky. and thirty, or more of his followers in the face of earnest protests from the French Government. He maintained that Germans already controlled the unexampled water power facilities of Switzerland, the platinum and other mines and the timber rights in Russia and Siberia, the oil wells and other natural resources in Roumania and other neighboring countries and that unless stripped of this widespread control of enormous wealth she would rapidly rehabilitate herself and again become a menace to the world's peace.

The Bolshevik outrages he maintained were deliberately inflamed by Germany with the object of killing off all the intelligent classes in Russia so that when the time was ripe she could step in and run the industries of that country. Dr. Hillis paid a glowing and well deserved tribute to the British empire and handed the Irish a few smart raps. In place of the Governor of Vermont the Lieutenant-governor, the Honorable Mason S. Stone, spoke for the Green Mountain State and Professor Will S.

Monroe of Montclair, N.J., who for several years has been engaged each summer on a mountain trail which, is to extend ISO miles from the Massachusetts to the Canadian boundary gave a very interesting account of the work. Mr. Andrew W. Edson, president of the society; presided. Mr.

George E. Miner was chairman and Mr. Herbert K. Twitchell, of this borough, a member of the, dinner committee. Judge Hiram R.

Steele, Mr. Porter Steele, Mr; Ros-well H. Steele, Mr. Charles M. Steele, Mr.

and Mrs. Omri Ford Hibbard, Mrs. Twitchell and Mrs. Miner were among the well-known residents of this borough who attended the dinner. The Early Career of Walter Hampden.

WALTER HAMPDEN'S re-appearance in Brooklyn in response to insistent demands is indication of the strong impression his "Hamlet" is making. The Institute was compelled to refuse tickets to hundreds at the performance on March first, so arrangements have been made for two additional performances, under Institute auspices, at the Academy of Music on Saturday afternoon and evening, March twenty-ninth. The appeal of Walter Hampden's "Hamlet" lies in its freedom from the conventionalities of the stage and from the classic traditions connected with the presentation of this character a condition which, with Mr. Hampden's genius for interpretation, makes Hamlet the real man Shakespeare saw him to be, possessed of the human qualities that all the changes of time. Such presentations of this masterpiece are a potent influence in the Shakespearean revival that is surely making itself felt among English-speaking people.

Brooklyn has special reason to be proud of this actor who has revived the Forrest and Booth tradition, for Walter Hampden was born in Brooklyn, the second son of the late J. Hampden Dougherty, so long one of our most distinguished and public-spirited citizens. His brother, Paul Dougherty, has become famous in the world of art, as perhaps the foremost living American painter of marine pictures. Hampden, for he dropped his surname when he went on the stage, attended school at the old Poly Prep in Livingston Street, and there under the awakening touch of Dean Kellogg, professor of English literature, his- talent first became known to himself, and to others, who saw his remarkable impersonation of Shylock when a mere youth of sixteen. Later he played "Sir Peter Teazle," staged and played in two farces by David and appeared in musical extravaganzas with the Polytechnic Dramatic Association of his day.

With the exception of a freshman year at Harvard, Walter Hampden obtained his entire education at the Poly Prep and Institute, receiving his B.A. degree from the Institute in 1900. A year in Paris studying music and drama and languages was followed by his entrance into his chosen profession in England. For three years he toured the provinces in Shakespeare with the celebrated troupe headed by Frank Benson, recently knighted by the King for his services to the English stage. Here he gained much-needed experience, playing some seventy-odd parts in Shakespeare, old comedy and Greek tragedy.

The Benson Company spent three weeks each year at Stratford-on-Avon, giving those famous revivals at the poet's birthplace which have become known over the world. Benson's was an ideal training school. Here was opportunity, direction, team-play, and the rough experience of seeing the world, though with not much salary. Athletics, too, were freely engaged in, and the Benson Company played hockey and cricket with the best county and university teams, and often won a victory. Here, too, Hampden was enabled to continue his practice with the foils, an art nowadays much neglected by the actor, but the ripe fruits of which enable him to appear to such advantage in the duelling scene with Laertes in the last act of "Hamlet." This company of players was the school of many of the finest actors in London and was always resorted to by London managers for new material to recruit the metropolitan stage.

After three years, Walter Hampden was snapped up and brought to London to be starred in "The Prayer of the Sword" at the Adelphi Theater, the theater by the way where William Terris made his last appearance, for as he stepped out of the stage door one night he was stabbed in the back by a crazy actor whom he had often befriended. In London Walter Hampden made a name for himself in romantic drama. On the boards of the old Adelphi he first played "Hamlet," in May, 1905. Dr. Pilcher to be Parade Marshal.

IN the preparations for the parade of the Grand Army of the Republic on Memorial Day, Dr. Lewis S. Pilcher, Department Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic of the State of New York, has been honored by being elected grand marshal of the Brooklyn parade of the veterans of the Civil War. His selection was unanimous on tlie part of the Memorial and Executive Committee of Kings County. After assuming command he appointed Mr.

Henry C. Draper, secretary of the committee, as assistant adjutant-general. Berkshire String Quartet's Last Concert. ON Monday evening, March twenty-fourth, the Berkshire String Quartet will give their third and last concert of the season at Aeolian Hall. 3 1 riv 1 In' VV i' The Vermont Society Dinner.

THE annual dinner of the Vermont Society at the McAlpin in Manhattan last Saturday evening brought together a notable gathering of Green Mountain boys and girls of all ages, including not a few this borough, and though the absence of two of the most distinguished speakers an the scheduled list, the Honorable Percival W. Clement, Governor of Vermont, and Judge Wendell Phillips Stafford of Washington, D.C., caused some disappointment it was nevertheless a delightful occasion. The Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis took the place of Judge Stafford and whatever difference the substitution may have made it is certain that the Judge could not have made a speech better calculated to make his audience sit up.

In spite of a well-known propensity for exaggeration or overstatement owing to which there is a disposition to discount some of his most surprising statements, Dr. Hillfs's analysis of the situation in Europe was very impressive if not reassuring, for he has spent months on the other side and was able to substantiate his conclusions with much data. His remarks were by no means flattering MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. B. MAURICE, K.C., M.G.C.B., Who will speak on "League of Nations" at Academy of Music, March twenty-ninth, at 8.30 p.m.

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