That the older generation sacrificed the younger by its blind, selfish prejudice in bringing about the World War, only to continue in its folly when the war was over, is the theme of "Merchants of Glory", playing at the Repertory Theatre. It is a cynical attitude, but the cynicism is of a sort that stimulates thought, and the attitude is splendidly sustained throughout the play, relieved by humor and exaggeration, but not once betrayed by sickening sentimental ability.

The motif of the plot arises from the complications attending the return of a soldier, who was thought to have been dead for ten years--an old idea, but treated in a new way, for the soldier finds that his return is undesirable. His wife has remarried, and his father, formerly a poor clerk, has climbed to amazing heights upon the reputation of his deceased son, one of the great war heroes of France. What inconvenience, then, to have the son resurrected. The only good hero is a dead hero, and not only that, but the son reveals that identification tags were mixed and his posthumous glory belongs to somebody else!

The principal figure of the story is Bachelet, the soldier's father, admirably played by Mr. Thomas Shearer. In the prologue we see him as an obscure but sincere character--still a clerk after a lifetime in his office spent watching his contemporaries promoted over him by the use of influence. The war and its injustice are intolerable to him. Then the news of his son's heroic death comes to him, and everything seems to have gone out of his life. We next see him ten years later--his grief has gone, his son is no longer a human to him, but a symbol of the glorious militancy of France. He has become full of words, insincere, prosperous, successful. The ambition which was dormant while his son was alive, has caught fire and he is climbing to prominence upon his son's coffin.

He is not conscious of this change, and his realization causes a conflict within him which comes to a crisis when Henri, the son, returns. Ambition proves the stronger, and he asks Henri to live under an assumed name, that the hero legend may survive and that he, Bachelet, may remain a minister of France. Henri accepts the situation France. Henri accepts the situation with the bitter resolve that having returned from the hell of war into a world of swine, he will himself fight and grasp and be a greater swine than all of them. It is a strong play, conviucingly acted, and it has the unpleasantness that is often the companion of truth.