The Pacifists

'“The Pacifists” is good, wholesome farce, inoffensive in every respect, which relies for its success on the humour of its dialogue, and rejects the easy and obvious method of extracting laughter from dubious situations ... The whole is broad farce based on caricature. Laughter is evoked by the verbal descriptions of incidents that take place off the stage, and the mental perplexities of the pacifists which arise therefrom (Liverpool Echo, 28 August 1917). ‘Hearty laughter greeted the first production last night at the Opera House, Southport, of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones’s new play “The Pacifists,” described by the author as “a parable in a farce.” In his most brilliant fashion Mr. Jones herein satirises unmercifully the mental attitude of those whose standpoint is “Never resist, no matter how deeply one’s feelings are outraged"' (Staffordshire Sentinel, 28 August 1917). 'The dramatist who writes in parable is tempting fate, for the parable may fail to hit the mark, or in dressing it he is in danger of cardinal sin of dullness. Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has tackled the difficulty in an ingenious manner. He has dressed his parable in such goodly farce as to leave the audience in that singularly happy frame of mind which is unreceptive is of moral lessons. There is plenty of dull propaganda abroad, but little farce of such an enjoyable nature as “The Pacifists.” Mr Henry Arthur Jones has chosen the better way, for though his parable may not carry much weight the spirit of enjoyment is engendered, for which one is devoutly thankful ... The whole is broad farce and caricature. There is little incident on the stage, few comic situations, yet the audience is kept in a state of merriment by the humorous dialogue and the perplexities of the peace at any price cranks. The breadth of treatment weakens the parable but ensures the success of the farce' (Liverpool Daily Post, 29 August 1917). The Era, 29 August 1917, listed the cast as: Peebody, Sebastian Smith; Ferguson, Sam Livesey; Weech, Lennox Pawle; Belcher, Charles Glenney; Mockitt, John East; the Red-haired Shopman, Arthur Chesney; Susanna Peebody, Miss Ellis Jeffreys; Penelope, Rita Otway; and commented that ‘As a farce [the play] is enjoyable, but as a brilliant satire it is splendid' (The Era, 29 August 1917). ‘The reception of the play was enthusiastic, and the applause was unrestrained throughout. In his satire of the principles of the Pacifists the author drives his lesson well home. As the piece, largely farcical, progresses there is scope for diverting conjecture as to the subtle political analogy of some of the characters according to the author’s interpretation. The foundation of the plot does not deal directly with the War and the Pacifists, but its application is obvious’ (The Stage, 30 August 1917). 'At the close the author, called upon for a speech, expressed his gratification that the audience had been enabled to detect behind the surface fun of the story the touch of seriousness which it had been his object to suggest. “A little parable in a farce” is his own description of “The Pacifists,” although so neatly is the powder concealed in the jam that unless your attention were drawn to the circumstance you would hardly suspect its presence' (Hull Daily Mail, 31 August 1917).

‘Mr. Henry Arthur Jones describes his new play, “The Pacifists” … as a parable in a farce. The parable is quite obvious, and, to be frank, I found the play and those pacific citizens of Market Pewbury only little less wearisome than that insignificant body of pacifists who occupy so much of the time of the House of Commons … Mr. Jones forgets that the few pacifists amongst us do not number a tribe’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 5 September 1917; similarly the Aberdeen Press and Journal, 5 September 1917). ‘After a long silence, Mr Henry Arthur Jones was heard again this evening at the St James’s Theatre. The result was disappointing … The moral of it is too obvious, and even without the moral it would be but uninteresting matter for an evening’s entertainment. It is all repetition of rather heavy humour, with long passages in which Miss Ellis Jeffreys ... has to give hilarious descriptions of events which are happening without … it was a disappointing evening, and not the sort of thing we-were accustomed to get in the old days from Mr. H. A. Jones’ (The Scotsman, 5 September 1917). ‘The parable is trite, and the farce is crude … “The Pacifists” is too full of talk, with too little of the old Jonesian wit’ (Globe, 5 September 1917). ‘One lesson from this [is that] if fighting is to be done it must not be vicarious, for a professional deliverer is as bad as a professional bully. Is that Mr. Jones’s lesson? It is, at any rate, told in a crude style of farce, akin, in manner, to an electioneering poster. By indulging in his love of exaggeration Mr. Jones has missed the truth of a genuine parable … The farce was received with considerable applause, and the audience was thoroughly amused’ (Daily News (London), 5 September 1917). ‘I have seldom observed a farce with a more complete solemnity … It was not merely solemnity. It was a pained discomfort at the realisation that Mr. Jones could put his name to anything so monotonously crude … when anything happened it happened “off “ - the defeat of the butcher by an imported pugilist, and his ducking in the pond. These things Miss Ellis Jeffreys had to describe with much hilarity and great vivacity. That is a difficult thing to do. When a thing is not funny, it is not improved by the teller of it insisting that it is and being almost unable to describe it for laughter ... merely as a farce it was mournful. It was so bald and uninspired … If Mr. Jones had not been carried so irresistibly away by his feelings he might have had time to think of his art. But in the castigation of evil-doers he always was a little heavy-handed (Westminster Gazette, 6 September 1917). ‘It is a thoughtful as well as a merry play, abounding in excellent characterisation, and was received with great favour’ (Northern Whig, 6 September 1917). ‘Pacifists may be all that Mr. Jones makes them out to be, but the point is that he fails to make them out to be living beings. They are just dummy figures, which he pelts with clods of satire in the style of a heavy-handed leading article’ (Manchester Guardian quoted in Labour Leader, 6 September 1917). ‘The versatile author of so many clever comedies has often done better work than in what is but a crude farce, in spite of the pretentiousness of its trimmings and its laboured and lengthy argumentation. There is little action proper except at the ends of acts two and three, and the best portions of it are the narratives … Pure extravagance, of course, is the whole coal-cellar business, nor, unless one agrees that two blacks make a white, can one appreciate the repeated ducking of Fergusson and his myrmidons in the canal by the pugilist and his scratch band got together by Belcher’ (The Stage, 6 September 1917). ‘“The Pacifists" ... is funny, but not funny enough. It is hardly likely, therefore, to run for any length of time. The author’s pacifist types do not really exist; consequently we are unable to laugh at their discomfiture with the necessary satisfaction … Jones’s new piece is a misfire as a parable. It is more successful as a simple farce. Try to forget that it is a play with a purpose; accept the characters as stage figments, and you will enjoy some hearty laughs’ (Sporting Times, 8 September 1917). ‘Fergusson does exactly as he likes until Peebody’s uncle enlists a local pugilist, with whose help Fergusson is thrown in the canal, but not until he had commandeered buxom Mrs. Peebody, whom he wellnigh persuades to spend a week at the seaside. The deliverer of Mrs. Peebody is as bad as the butcher, and also commandeers that lady’ (Gloucester Citizen, 8 September 1917). ‘It may be said that [Jones] is here too fond of the verbal quip, too anxious to make his point more by the written word than the eloquence of action. And, course, the drama is, or should be, the thing. But when all is said, “The Pacifists” is a characteristic, not to say notable, effort, and, thanks to admirable acting, gained a very pronounced first night success, with cheers for everyone and a speech from the author' (The People, 9 September 1917). ‘Mr. Henry Arthur Jones makes capital fun out of his pacifist parable. It may be obvious, but it is certainly plausible to make his village Kaiser appear in the rôle of a truculent butcher. Some of us got a little bored by the pacifist speeches. They were rather too true to life. They reminded me of leading articles in certain daily newspapers after we have suffered from an air raid’ (Sunday Mirror, 9 September 1917). ‘The audience laughed frequently, showing amusement at many of the excellent lines written in biting satire’ (The Era, 12 September 1917). ‘It really is a most amusing affair, somewhat farcical in tone, yet with an undercurrent of truth which strikes home the more forcibly because it strikes with laughter … the whole play is full of most entertaining situations. The Pacifists is a brilliant farce' (The Tatler, 12 September 1917). ‘I think it is not too much to say that in the general opinion of the St. James’ audience this play was tedious. Tedious and dull beyond hope of redemption. For three acts it dragged along until one felt inclined to give the poor thing a lift or a push to help it on its wearisome way. True, occasional ripples of laughter throughout the theatre proved that Mr. Jones has not entirely lost his hold on an audience. Indeed, had “The Pacifists” been produced, say, two years ago, and had it been treated more briskly, there might have been a chance. To-day these sneers and jeers at the pacifists among us seem stale. We have heard them all before, and Mr. Jones has failed to say anything new or startling … if he sought merely to amuse - well, not even here has he succeeded. There is the glimmering of an amusing idea, but somehow it seems scarcely fitting to make laughs out of such a serious thing at such a serious time.’ (Clarion, 14 September 1917). ‘‘“The Pacifist” comes off to-night, I note with regret, for it had its points. The great fault was that all the action took place “off “ and all the talk “on.” One would have thought a playsmith of Mr. Jones’ experience would have known better. The comedy acting could not have been improved' (Daily Mirror, 14 September 1917). ‘‘Parable and farce ... do not make too good a blend: the blend simply means that you have your moral hammered and hammered home till you are weary of it, and your fun thinned down because, in this instance of the combination at all events, too much of the action of the story is reported and does not take place under your eyes … here is hardly material for a three-act farce, and the parabolism gets rather obscure when the married heroine transfers her affections from the bully of the town to the pugilist who thrashes the bully' (Illustrated London News, 15 September 1917). ‘we … came to see the unworthy routed and remained to yawn; wondering what on earth had come over Mr. Jones, who has been so light and witty in his time, that he should write anything so monotonous and pointless and commonplace as this. It was strange. I can only attribute it to excess of patriotic fervour, to allowing the moral to overwhelm the play. This Market Pewbury, with its grotesque parodies of provincial Nonconformity and Christian humility, was too crude to be satire and too uneventful to be even moderately entertaining farce’ (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 15 September 1917). ‘The author is so very much in earnest that in his “Parable in a Farce” he has simply used a sledge-hammer when a subtle method would have been far more effective. As an anti-war propaganda play Mr H. A. Jones may be said to have scored a popular success. Compressed into two short acts, what a run it would have on the variety stage, with its broad method of treatment and rough and tumble fun! … . In spite of a few “voices” from the gallery the play had a good reception’ (The Queen, 15 September 1917). ‘The withdrawal of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones’s Play “The Pacifists” after a week’s run is a warning to dramatists. There are several morals to be drawn from it. One is that the public does not go to the theatre to hear lectures on the war, and still less does it want five-act gibes at a small and intrinsically unimportant coterie … There are, of course, possibilities of delightful satire in some of the pacifist sects, but it is necessary to view them more in amusement than in anger. One felt with Mr. Jones’s play that it was righteous indignation masquerading as amusement’ (Leicester Daily Post, 17 September 1917). ‘Mr. Jones aimed, as he contended, at a parable in a farce, apparently typifying German autocracy in a butcher and English pacifism in his old bête noire the nonconformist conscience, with a prize-fighter as the god out of the machine to punish the wrongdoer. This grotesque and trivial perversion naturally pleased nobody, and while the construction was not without skilful contrivance in its own way, “The Pacifists” was a melancholy example of how not to write a war play’ (The Stage, 13 December 1917).

'It is a well-conceived play; it is running over with ludicrous situations and much genuine amusement, but it might be effectually shortened, and more dramatically arranged. Still it is full of good comedy, and it kept the house in continuous laughter ... The play is admirably adopted [sic - adapted?] to show the folly of seeking an ignoble peace which only leads to disastrous war’. Western Morning News, 23 October 1917.

'A satirical parable of no little merit, it is especially suited to the present time, and should be a source of much amusement if of nothing more’ (Birkenhead News, 21 November 1917). ‘This parable in a farce, which was definitely “turned down” in London - not necessarily a condemnation of the play by any means – purports to show what happens if one lives up to the principle peace at any price’ (Liverpool Daily Post, 23 November 1917). 'The interpretation of the parable is that unreasoning brute force, which insists upon overriding the rights of others, cannot be combated by moral reprobation, but must be met by stronger physical force if civilisation is to endure. In putting this lesson into dramatic form Mr. Henry Arthur Jones shows a good deal of his old craftsmanship, though possibly he clings a little too much to the art of a generation ago. There is some good farce and lots of shrewd poking of fun at human and especially feminine nature, but the mechanism is a trifle rusty and the device of exaggeration somewhat overdone to be quite convincing. Accepting the play, however, in the spirit in which it is offered, it yields a capital evening’s entertainment, and it is well and capably played' (Liverpool Daily Post, 27 November 1917). 'Mr. Henry Arthur Jones is certainly not successful in “The Pacifists” at the Playhouse, which he describes as “a parable in a farce,” the farce being so exaggerated and unlikely that the parable is lost. Particular instances in it occasionally redeem it by being amusing, and if the play is poor the acting is very good’ (Liverpool Echo, 27 November 1917). ‘“The Pacifists,” H. A. Jones’ farewell parable, was staged with great success at the Playhouse on Monday. Though lacking in plot, the audience was kept both interested and amused by the ironic subtleness displayed by the author in dealing with the question of peace at any price ... “The Pacifists” is a good play well acted, and deserves greater patronage than the meagre audience of Monday promised’ (Birkenhead News, 28 November 1917). 'The satirical course of “The Pacifists” was followed with some interest and laughter on Monday, and the stock company worked heroically to galvanise the small audience into enthusiasm for the new satire' (The Stage, 29 November 1917). ‘At a time like the present, the pacifist movement stands in need of a corrective, even though the corrective takes the form merely of “a parable in a farce,” as it does in Henry Arthur Jones’s play. From this point of view it is rather a pity that “The Pacifists” is to be withdrawn from the Playhouse after to-night' (Liverpool Daily Post, 4 December 1917).

‘While the International Amateur Theatre Association is in conference at Leamington Spa in the week commencing September 2, the Talisman Theatre, Kenilworth, present a little-known play “The Pacifists” by Henry Arthur Jones. Conference delegates from many countries will see the play on Friday ... Its message, warning of the folly of appeasement, is surprisingly topical today, though wrapped up in a series of comic events in a village. A bully gets away with more and more outrageous behaviour while the village worthies meet and meet again, always deciding that it will be wise to take no action’ (Coventry Standard, 2 August 1963). 'It is enterprising to exhume an almost forgotten play, but “The Pacifists” is a poor product of the playwright’s later years, a laboured satire on peaceful ottitude [sic – attitudes] set in the early part of the century but produced in the middle of World War I ... The point of interest is Mrs Peebody’s fascinated response to brute strength, which is, perhaps, psychologically perceptive. There is also an foretaste of black, or sick, comedy in the plight of the old lady kept in a damp cellar for days and fed through the bars (“And it’s a clay soil..”)’ (Birmingham Mail 3 September 1963). 'The author’s comedy has, in parts, that sense of the absurd which characterises the work of Ionescu. For instance, Peabody’s mother is locked in a coal cellar for three days while food is fed to her through a grating. As long as she gets a regular supply of muffins Peabody is quite happy. It is to the credit of the Talisman company that they succeed in keeping the whole fantastic thing bubbling along merrily, as all the action occurs off-stage and the humour of the situations has to be brought out in the dialogue' (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 4 September 1963).

Mentioned in The Tatler, 30 October 1965: ‘This Stage 60 production by Shirley Butler is a farce in three acts showing the results of acting on the principle of peace at any price’.