"Noel Coward, whose brain is so delicate that it is intoxicated by the slightest waves in the ether, has, in desperation, taken a header in the wrong direction. He ought to be a white-hot pacifist. But somebody waved a Union Jack in front of him, and he tripped up, and he wrote Cavalcade. That play is about the finest essay in betrayal since Judas Iscariot jingled his thirty pieces of silver in the moonlight a number of years ago. And the tragedy of it is heightened by the fact that it is Noel who has been betrayed, and not his public. His public, which is deservedly vast, adored the flags and the streamers, the blood red, ice-white and royal blue which, in varying patterns, he threw across the stage of Drury Lane. And he, I am quite sure, adored the thirty thousand pieces of silver which, as a result of this play, he was able to jingle in his pocket. But the play was a tragedy, none the less. And the tragedy was not on the stage. It was in the Royal Box. It was focused in the thin, nervous face of the young man who had created this glittering tissue of dramatic lies, as he turned to his adoring audience, and said, "It's pretty exciting to be English nowadays.""