"The whole aspect of the world' has changed. The people of to-day look on life with totally different eyes from the people of 1914. They have taken to wearing glasses—smoked glasses, through which genuine pleasures look drab and the artificial looks real."—Little Rich.
Is London quieter and duller nowadays than it was before the war?
A correspondent of the "Hecho de Paris" has been telling his readers that it is, and gives many' reasons for his conclusions," but one vf England's most famous laughter-makers—Little Tich—does not. agree.
"Why should I be asked to: judge?" said the famous comedian to a representative of "The Globe at the Palladium this afternoon. "My function in life is not to go xbout looking for laughter, but to make it for others, and J find it as. hard to make people smile nowadays as when I first went on the halls, many years. before the war.
"For all that, though, there seem to be more people bent on pleasure than before.
"Nowadays they are searching for something much more intricate than in the old days, Their pleasures seem to be lacking in genuineness.
"The habits formed during the war have not been dropped yet.
"Then everybody was eager to get away from' the worry and strain' of war conditions, They wanted an antidote to care. The music-halls, theatres, ball-rooms, and restaur ants were filled night after night with pleasure-seeking crowds.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.