poem the whole house was standing upon its feet and two of the interrupters had actually mounted the stage to strike Mr de Massot, the one with a fist upon the cheek and the other with a walking stick upon the shoulders. There was only time to get in about two resounding whacks before the agents de police bore the intruders, as I said, amid much flashing of police clubs, over the heads of the audience to the exit. Then the hale reader went on in absolute silence to tell us who the others were who had died upon the field of honour, and for half an hour or three-quarters, there was a boresome, respectable silence for everything on the programme, even for Man Ray's quite terribly-insulting-to-our-intelligence moving picture. But by the time the dramatic offering of Mr Tzara was reached, the belligerent bravi had somehow crept back into the purlieus of the Théâtre Michel and were there to shout and to mount upon the stage and to finally stop the performance. They were undoubtedly the same bravi and the query is to me, how did they fix it up with those gendarmes so to re-enter the arena like that. What took place between them and the police outside? Did the police say, "Now will you promise to be good if we let you go in again?" and did they promise, or what? At any rate it is possible to envy Paris her police system. We have nothing like it here. I had to explain to Mr Tzara that we martyrize the first person who does anything in America and that our martyrdoms are not amusing and do not necessarily lead to much. I cited the Gorki incident for him—of the hectoring Gorki received because of the lady who came with him and who was not Madame Gorki. I explained that now half Greenwich Village lives with ladies who hate the term Madame with a Queen Victorian hatred and that at present Gorki could pass unmolested from Boston to Hollywood. Mr Tzara seemed to think the amount of preparation our public requires for an idea formidable. He was somewhat sad and unsmiling as he talked of the evening at the Théâtre Michel. He appeared to be conscious that there had been something of a formula about it and that an effort in a new country and under new conditions might help the cause. I said as little about our police as I conscientiously could, but nevertheless I fear I said enough to disturb him. If Mr Tzara does not have an "evening" soon in the Sheridan Square Theatre I suppose I shall be to blame.
Mr Erik Satie, whom I met at Braque's, was not too much elated
