For some weeks I hardly ever attended a performance without falling into an ecstacy of astonishment at the moderation of the Berlin public's artistic requirements and the imboundedness of its endurance. To offences, as well of omission as of commission, which would have elicited showers of petty vegetables from the auditoriiun of a second-class Italian provincial theatre, Berlin audiences constantly accorded their approval (on the principle that " silence gives consent ") and not infrequently their plaudits.