On its completion, the Admiralty harbour became the base of the battleships and armoured cruisers of the Atlantic Fleet. In 1911 the defence of the Straits was handed over to the destroy- ers and submarines and a camber in the northern corner of the harbour was completed for them just before war broke out. In Aug. 1014 the Sixth Flotilla of destroyers and submarines formed the naval force guarding the Straits, with their base at Dover.
During the war Dover was entrenched, the perimeter being nearly 6 m., and a division of troops manned the defences. The Swingate aerodrome was an instructional school for the final training of officers before leaving for France, and the Guston aerodrome the H.Q. of the R.N.A.S., afterwards the R.A.F. Dover was subjected to repeated air raids, the first raid on England taking place at Dover on Dec. 24 1914. There were several Zeppelin raids in 1915-7, but the defence prevented any serious damage. In all, 184 bombs were dropped on the borough and 370 in the immediate vicinity, and the total death toll was 25. The castle was hit several times by bombs but beyond a few chips in the walls of the keep no trace of damage remains. Over 100 men lost their lives in the blowing up of the monitor " Glat- ton " in Dover harbour on Sept. 16 1918, and 155 were drowned in the mining of the " Maloja " off Dover on Feb. 24 1916.
At the close of the war Dover harbour was abandoned as a naval base, the camber was leased to a private company for the breaking up of old battleships, and the Admiralty in 1921 were offering to lease the naval harbour for commercial purposes.
Dover castle has been placed in the care of the Office of Works as an ancient historical building and a considerable amount of restoration and preservative work has been carried out on the Roman pharos and the late Norman towers and walls. In recent years many tiles bearing the letters Cl Br have been found in the area between the Western Heights and the Dour, indicating that Roman Dover occupied this site. The tiles show from their stamp that they were made by artisans belonging to the Roman British fleet. As they have not been found elsewhere except at Boulogne, they appear to indicate that Dover was the chief Roman port to the continent.
The chief feature of the industrial development in the dis- trict was the opening up and working of the Kent coal-field. The H.Q. of the chief colliery company is at Dover.
AUTHORITIES. "The Port of Dover," Jour, of the Royal Society of Arts (April 15 1910); Engineering Supplement of the Times (April 24 ); J- Bavington Jones, The Annals of Dover (1916).
DOWDEN, EDWARD (1843-1913),' English writer (see 8.456), died at Dublin April 4 1913. See his Letters, edited by E. D. and H. M. Dowden (1914).
DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN (1850- ), English novelist (see 8.461), was one of the originators of the Volunteer Corps during the World War, the first corps being formed by him at Crowborough, Sus., in Aug. 1914. In this, the 6th Sussex Batt., he served for four years as a private. He also did much propa- ganda work, and issued various pamphlets on war subjects, also a six- volume history of the war which was extensively read in America. He visited the war zones twice, and published The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1914. (1916) and A Visit to Three Fronts (1916), as well as a volume of verse, Then Guards Came Through, and other Poems (1919). His other writings since 1910 include The Case of Oscar Slater (1912); The Poison Belt (1913); Danger (1918) and His Last Bow (1918). He became an ardent spiritualist and published A New Revela- tion (1918) and The Vital Message (1919), following these up by an active campaign of lecturing and controversy on the possibil- ity of proving by spiritualism the continued existence and con- ditions of human life after death. A public debate between him and Joseph McCabe on the subject took place in 1920.
DRAMA (see 8.502). The decade 1910-20 was one of paramount importance in the history of English drama and the English theatre. Apart from the temporary, but substantial, effect of the World War, which lasted for nearly half of the decade, other causes of wide influence profoundly affected both the drama as a part of literature and the theatre as a commercial organization during that period. In the United Kingdom great changes in the constitution of theatrical enterprises were brought about abruptly and almost catastrophically. The government of the theatre by actor-managers ceased with dramatic sudden- ness and was replaced by the government of syndicates composed, for the most part, of persons innocent of all knowledge of acting or drama and concerned primarily, if not exclusively, with the production of large profits quickly returned. In those theatres where the actor-manager was not replaced by a commercially minded syndicate, his place was taken by what may be called the producer-manager.
The three great actor-managers of the English theatre, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Sir George Alexander and Sir Charles Wyndham, did not outlive their reign; the era of the actor- manager ended simultaneously with their decease. Tree died July 2 1917; Alexander March 16 1918; and Wyndham Jan. 12 1919. The normal process of nature, whereby one generation or tradition is slowly merged in another, was in their case mercifully suspended. In 18 months the actor-managerial system, which had been immensely powerful, was in ruins, and its chief pro- tagonists, men of ability and taste, were dead, spared from the humiliation of neglect and supersession. It was a system un- deniably disadvantageous to the drama as an art, since it tended to make the play subordinate to the player and restricted many dramatists to the production of plays with good parts for particu- lar persons, but there is no doubt that the actor-managers, especially the three named, were possessed of ambition and much taste and that they worked successfully to restore dignity to the theatre. They were directly associated with many of the most interesting plays that were written during their reign, and Tree, Alexander and Wyndham could claim exemption from the charge so frequently and justly brought against Sir Henry Irving, of doing nothing whatever to encourage the work of meritable modern English dramatists. Sir Herbert Tree's annual Shakespearean festival, held often at grave financial disadvantage to himself, was a real tribute to taste and culture, despite the serious complaints fairly made about his methods of production. Sir George Alexander, more than anyone else, made the way to the stage easy for the writer of distinguished comedy and was chiefly responsible for the career as a dramatist of Oscar Wilde. Sir Charles Wyndham, less consistently ambitious than his colleagues, followed an honourable tradition and was re- sponsible for the redemption of farce from buffoonery.
The decline and fall of the actor-managerial system coincided with the disappearance from the centre of London of the music- hall in which a succession of " turns," sparely produced but highly individualized and having no relationship with each other, formed the programme. Three well-known music-halls ceased between 1910 and 1920 to be music-halls. These three, the Oxford, the Tivoli and the London Pavilion, were the centre from which radiated an elaborate ganglion of music-halls throughout Great Britain and Ireland. The Tivoli was de- molished and its site remains, in 1921, unoccupied. The Oxford became, during the war, a theatre and in 1920, under the manager- ship of C. B. Cochran, was re-named the New Oxford, where an elaborately produced but less highly individualized form of music-hall entertainment, roughly connected in shape, was provided. At the London Pavilion, also controlled by Mr. Coch- ran, a skilfully contrived form of what is called " revue " became the standing entertainment. Specific reference to " revues " will be made later, but here it may be said that they are not " revues " in the French sense, a commentary on contemporary affairs, but a mingling of musical comedy and music-hall entertainment in which individual ability is made subordinate to general im- pression. The chief characteristics of this new entertainment, seen perhaps at its best in the roof-garden productions in New York, are expensive dresses, handsome scenery, fine and even beautiful effects both in grouping and lighting, and a particular insistence on feminine beauty.
This change in the character of the London West End music- hall coincided with the great growth in popularity of the kinema,
