A Daughter of England

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This melodrama, adapted for the French of E. V. Millar, is certainly thrilling in its way and above the average in plausibility of dialogue. The plot is as follows, the time of the first two acts being, evidently, a little before the War. In act I Sylvia, the English Governess in the family of a German Colonel, is insulted by the advances of her employer. In revenge for her contemptuous rejection of them this villain plots her ruin by pretending she has stolen important documents which he secretes in her cloak. She escapes in fear, cloak and documents with her, to the attic (act II, scene I) some way on the road to France of one she has known as an old fiddler, but how turns out to be the young Captain Paul Dubois, of the French secret service. He sends off the documents to France by a faithful and sagacious dog, gives Sylvia the disguise of a young man, hides her, and when the wicked Colonel and other officers arrive, defeats them by an exciting ruse and escapes with Sylvia to an abandoned hut in the Vosges, still in German territory. There, again, he defeats an officer searching for them by another ruse, donning the uniform of a German Captain, and then proceeds to a point on the frontier, where is the great scene of a faire of the play. The colonel arrives but Paul gets Sylvia safely across the frontier and 'leaps into the ravine'. The last act is in Sylvia's home. War is just breaking out and the evil Colonel makes his last effort: Sylvia is arrested because of a document (sent by a supposed sympathiser with England) giving details of a 'gun wharf’, taken from the Colonel and in her handwriting. It is of course a forgery and is exposed by Paul, who arrives opportunely, being in England on a special mission against espionage. The wicked Colonel is also in England, is found by Paul and would have been maltreated by a mob as a spy but for Sylvia's interference. Then Sylvia promises to marry Paul. This last act is weak. In spirit this melodrama does not differ from others in which the villain is a German. It gives, however, a more elaborate picture of German life and that is hardly exaggerated and there are good Germans - e.g. The Colonel's wife - in the play. Trenchant attacks on Prussian militarism and so forth abound but they are not too violent in expression. I do not like, on page 71, the suggestions that a German officer might treat the burning of a house with a prisoner in it as a joke: that seems to me too near mere abuse, but it is not worse than other incidents passed: of course the house is not burnt. The free hand given to a French officer to deal with a German in England is at least improbably (pp 102 & 104) but I think hardly matters in a melodrama. Those are the only doubtful points and the play is Recommended for license. G. S. Street.

Researcher's Summary:

The Bath Chronicle and Daily Gazette noted that the play 'has been written with the object of revealing something of the despotism of the German military party, although a remarkable fact is that when this play was penned in French by E. V. Miller, the dark clouds of war had not then loomed up on the horizon'. (20 March 1915).