and endowed by the Government of England, with the approval of the majority of English citizens. It seems to me that this last would be the best, the most secure, the most creditable way of founding a national theatre and of fostering a great and popular national drama. I believe that a sum of public money so expended would be one of the wisest and most economical investments that we could make. It would be the merest fleabite compared with the vast sums that are now spent-nay, that in many cases are now wasted-on public education. And yet what a potent educator a national theatre would inevitably become if it were wisely directed! I know that a great outcry will be raised against the endowment of the theatre in England. I see ominous shakings of the head amongst my Puritan friends; I hear their indignant mutterings; I begin to quake under their scowls.

What are the reasons for the State endowment and State recognition of the drama? They are precisely the same as those for the State endowment of the other arts, music, painting, sculpture. Indeed, seeing that the drama is the most popular of all the arts, and the most intimately connected with the daily life and conduct of the citizens, there is all the more need for its wise recognition and encouragement.

The reasons for the encouragement of art by the State could not be set forth in a clearer and plainer way than has been recently done by M. Massé in the Chambre des Députés. He said:

Mais si l'État ne fait pas l'art qui est la liberté, la spontanéité même, s'il ne peut prétendre au rôle de metteur en œuvre, s'il ne saurait nous donner un poète ou un statuaire comme il nous donne un sous-préfet, s'il n'a pas à fixer une esthétique comme il formule une loi civile, s'ensuit-il qu'il n'ait rien à voir avec l'art et que celui-ci n'ait rien à en attendre, hors de n'être ni maltraité ni proscrit ?

L'État peut, au contraire, concourir indirectement à la production de belles

œuvres.

Je dirai même qu'en tant qu'administrateur des intérêts généraux, il le doit.

And again:

De quelle nature est donc en matière d'art la fonction de la puissance? A coup sûr elle n'est point créatrice. L'art n'est pas un service public que l'État ait mission d'assurer. Sa fonction n'est non plus ni tutélaire, ni réglementaire, ni de contrôle, ni de police. Parfois encore aujourd'hui elle a ce caractère, mais c'est là un des derniers restes de la conception qu'on se faisait jadis du rôle de la puissance en matière d'art et elle doit perdre ce caractère.

La fonction de l'État est essentiellement une fonction auxiliaire; il ne doit ni réglementer l'art ni le contrôler, mais l'aider et l'encourager. C'est une modeste mais utile collaboration, une coopération féconde entre toutes.

And further:

L'État doit, par l'éducation et par l'enseignment, s'efforcer de rendre le Beau accessible à la généralité des citoyens. Il doit aussi chercher à développer

tout spécialement les arts qui, grâce à des conditions économiques nouvelles, pourront être goûtés par ceux qui jusqu'à là avaient considéré l'art comme un luxe coûteux et hors de leur portée. Embellir et égayer la vie de tous les citoyens, même les plus humbles, en leur donnant des notions d'esthétique et en ornant d'œuvres simples et belles tous les endroits où se rencontrent les citoyens-écoles, mairies, hôpitaux, salles de réunion et de conférence-telle est la conception que doit avoir de son rôle, en ce qui concerne les arts, une démocratie.

And yet again:

Il faut encore que l'État universalise le goût pour pénétrer dans les masses, la notion et l'émotion de la beauté, aujourd'hui propriété d'une élite orgueilleuse. Dans ce sens, il convient d'insister sur la création d'un théâtre populaire, et de l'enseignment théorique des arts à l'école, ainsi que sur les œuvres de décentralisation artistiques.

These are the reasons that may be urged and re-urged for the establishment and endowment of an English national theatre with the public money. What are the hindrances? Who are the hinderers? It cannot surely be the amount of money that is asked. The little State of Denmark endows its national theatre with some 20,000l. a year. Again, see the sums that Puritan England spends on its other enjoyments, say on racing. Inquire what amount the English theatre-going public has spent on musical comedy during the last ten years. Judging from some reports that have appeared, at a rough estimate English theatre-goers must have spent in musical comedy in town and provinces something like five or six millions of pounds during the last ten years. That is to say, on this particular form of popular entertainment the English public has, in a few years, spent a sum sufficient to buy an entire fleet; a sum that, capitalised, would bring in about 150,000l. a year, or exactly fifteen times the sum that we need to start a sane intellectual drama. Now what has the English play-going public to show for these five or six million pounds? There remain some very charming and graceful pieces of music, and the memory of much pretty dancing and singing. But for the rest? Does anything remain at all? A single line to quote? A single vital character? A single scene that faithfully pictured life? A single idea one would care to recall? A single permanent touch with humanity? A single thing that manager or author can claim with pride, and say 'I did that'? And five or six million pounds have gone! And all those golden evenings of leisure!

Oh, witless debauch of grave, religious England! Oh, converse side of our Puritan buckler! Oh, undergarments of prudery! Oh, burden of bigotry too hard to be borne! Oh, systole! Oh, Exeter Hall! Oh, diastole! Oh, Leicester Square! Oh, land of blind and bitter fury against the drama! Oh, sanctimony! Oh, license! Oh, nauseous pie! Oh, botchery of all our holiday hours!

It has been rumoured, with some apparent foundation, that there

are secret reasons for the enormous success of these entertainments on the lowest intellectual level at our fashionable theatres. Facts have been vouched for which seem to lend some colourable support to these sinister rumours. In giving them some sort of currency, which I do with all reserve and caution, I must carefully guard myself from all suspicion of malice against a most respectable class-I mean the attendants at the various cloakrooms of our theatres. If they have been partners to the practice which it is alleged has lately become prevalent at some theatres, the practice of insisting that the brains of each member of the audience shall be left in the cloakroom with the other impedimenta-if the cloakroom attendants have lent themselves to this practice, and in conjunction with clever young surgeons are actually engaged in working it every night, they surely cannot have been responsible for its introduction. The custom is of course very profitable to the theatre, but the cloakroom attendants can reap very little benefit from it, since I believe that in no case is a higher fee charged than sixpence. Therefore if any accident should occur I trust the blame will not be laid on the cloakroom attendants. In talking over the matter with the eminent surgeon, Sir Harvey Hunter, I congratulated him on the triumphant march of surgery which made such hasty operations possible. I expressed, however, a fear that some very serious injury might result from the continuance of the practice. He assured me that no permanent ill-effects were likely to befall the average frequenters of these entertainments from any exchange or misplacement of their brains. Altogether the evidence as to the frequency of these practices is conflicting. There remain, however, certain well-vouched-for facts which are inexplicable except on the theory that the operation does take place; amongst them the appalling fact that one young gentleman, who seemed to be quite rational in other respects, bragged that he had been forty-six times to one of these entertainments. I leave the matter for further investigation.

Now, if things are followed to their consequences, it matters little to our final pecuniary position as a nation, or as individuals, whether we pay this three or four or five hundred thousand a year voluntarily, or at the quest of the tax-collector. The fact for us to ponder is that the English theatre-going public does pay this enormous tax for what is allowed to be the most childish and empty form of theatrical entertainment. It is absurd to say that the English nation could not afford to pay (say for a few years only, to see how it works) 10,000l. a year to foster the fine and humane art of the drama. It would be a mere nothing in the ocean of our national expenditure. Therefore it is not the amount of the money required that stops the establishment of our national theatre.

What is it then that stands in our way? Probably all classes of English life and society would at least acquiesce in a dole of 10,000%.

a year to the English drama-except our Puritan friends. I make a very strong appeal to them on all grounds, and more especially on the ground of the influence for good in national affairs of those Puritan principles in which I, in common with them, was nurtured. With a deep sense of the value to our nation of those Puritan principles I offer these considerations to our Puritan friends:

'The instinct for drama is one of the deepest and most ineradicable in human nature; you can watch it any day in your children and judge how natural, how spontaneous, how universal it is. With all your hatred for the theatre, you have yet a great love and reverence for our great dramatic poet, and many of you class him next to the Bible as the greatest power in our literature, and the greatest moulder of our national character.

'You once denied to the English people the satisfaction of this natural instinct, this play-instinct; you closed the theatres and banned the drama. What was the result? By force of reaction you called into being one of the most shameless and heartless stages the world has ever seen. Are you not repeating your ancestral error to-day? By your abstention from the theatre, by your opposition to the State endowment and recognition of the drama, are you not in some measure bringing about the same evil reaction and the same degradation in our national life and manners? At any rate you are shutting yourselves out from a main current of our national life. We are bound to have a drama of some kind, and a popular stage of some kind, in England. Theatres are sure to multiply with our city populations. Would it not be better for the nation to invest 10,000l. a year for a few years in a national theatre that would everywhere set a standard of good taste and good manners, and would raise the character of theatrical performances all over the Empire, rather than to ignore and starve this fine humane art, with the result that gaudy palaces of rowdy nonsense and sniggering vice and folly will be everywhere established as the evening resorts of our populace? You cannot hinder the English nation from having a popular drama. By opposing it you do your best to ensure that it shall remain as it is-for the most part an empty and feebly foolish entertainment, the most childish and despicable drama in Western Europe. Hadn't you better have a finger in the dramatic pie? Will you not be best serving your Puritan principles by making them felt in this great concern of the nation's evening leisure?'

I make that appeal to my Puritan friends. I hope it may weigh with them when the moment comes for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make this tiny little dole for this important national purpose.

On all sides we seem to be moved and moving towards a national theatre. After much consideration, I am wholly in favour of it. And this national theatre should be built and established and endowed VOL, LV-No. 325.

ΙΙ

with the national money; with the intelligent consent of the citizens; with their knowledge and faith that the drama is not only a symbol and index of civilisation, but is also a source and agent of civilisation and good manners; a harmoniser; a humaniser; an enlightener; in the best sense an educator.

If such a theatre were established, either by Government or by private munificence, I would do my best to ease its financial launch. I would gladly write a new comedy for it without any fees. I am aware that such a gift-borse might prove a very undesirable asset; but, on the other hand, by good hap it might provide the whole of the necessary security for the first year. At least I should think it a great honour and pleasure to write for a national English theatre without any consideration of payment. Indeed, why should it not become a custom for English dramatists to leave a piece in the possession of the national theatre, as painters give a diploma work to the Royal Academy? My only condition is that the theatre must mount and cast the piece to my approval. I need not say that I do not wish to meddle in the general management of the theatre.

But if no English national theatre can be established at present, if the building of our Canterbury Cathedral is as yet afar off, it still remains for us to spread our root idea among English playgoers. Ideas have the advantage of being quite inexpensive.

And our root idea is this: The separation of the English drama from popular amusement; its recognition as a fine literary art, which is not and cannot be the creature, and instrument, and tributary, and appurtenance of the English theatre.' This idea, diligently planted among English playgoers, will take root and live and spread. And meantime we may be picking ourselves out of our present slough, and climbing to some little hillock of vantage, whence we may look backward to the distant Elizabethan range with its peaks amongst the stars, and forward to the shadowy loom of giant heights that shall be scaled by other feet than ours in days to come.

HENRY ARTHUR JONES.