The performances of any representative man have to be viewed reasonably, and by instructing him at every turn, his initiative will be curbed and his courage become a very attenuated affair. We are, therefore, faced with the problem of making modern democratic institutions function with efficiency whilst safeguarding and preserving our heritage of freedom. We must beware of the fetichism of words, for neither those of democracy, freedom, working-class control, the ballot or referendum, have virtue in themselves like that most blessed of all words, Mesopotamia. We have to think in terms of things; what the state is, and in what freedom consists and its purpose, to reconcile expediency with moral principles, to achieve at once beauty and efficiency.

It is easy by means of a referendum, for instance, to put the onus of important decisions on the whole community, a community necessarily uninstructed on details. The method is not only unsatisfactory from that point of view, but it is costly, involving a large addition to the bureaucracy and public printing press, etc. Indeed, the chief value in most ballot voting is the kind of guarantee it gives that a large dissenting minority will acquiesce in whatever decision is made.

Thus, it will be seen, the ballot vote and the representative principle, taken by themselves, will not achieve the ends we have in view. The working of the modern democratic state involves attention to a tremendous mass of detail, the grasp of which is beyond any representative or a bureaucracy located in the capital city. It is a primary axiom that the state must have unity if it is to have stability and strength. But strength will be dissipated if it endeavours to deal as a state with the most searching details of industrial and business ramifications, where administrative detail is everything. Incidentally it will truncate democracy by denying it initiative at the extremities, and render itself unstable by repressing strong desires, strengthened by increased education. For efficiency, partially digested and lop-sided views must be avoided and those with whom decisions rest must be fully informed, and, by training, be capable of understanding clearly those things with which they deal. This involves a devolution of function, a devolution which the collectivist, no less than the capitalist,

hopes to achieve by the use of officials, acting directly under the control of government.

For the foregoing reasons, and recognising the necessity for a state organisation, it seems desirable that the functions of government should be clearly defined and distinguished from those of industry and commerce. The necessary functions of the state deal with the administration of men, primarily in the great categories of defence, justice and education. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with the proper performance of any one of those important functions. The pushing of personal or syndicated interests of any description, such as happens in our business legislatures to-day, is vicious and should be avoided. To push defence to the point of aggression at the instance of armament rings, to pervert justice by money bribes, or bribes of office, or to curtail educational facilities, so that cheap boy and girl labour may still be available in factory and mill, are crimes against the community, not always recognised or punished to-day, but crimes which will be recognised in the functional democracy of to-morrow.

The productive functions of society are not matters with which the necessary state should be called upon to deal. A functional democracy would establish selfgovernment in each industry, and not only at some headquarter's place, but in the commune and in the individual workshop. This is the true sphere of shop committee and industrial council, whose functions should be two-fold; to ensure cheap and efficient production, as well as to secure the maximum opportunity to the labourer for self-expression. Not only so, but industries should be so grouped as to enable those engaged in them to deal with factory legislation concerning their own industry. Those primarily concerned and acquainted with the industrial circumstances, know the details and appreciate the difficulties and are interested in getting the best solution, away from the state assembly and its indefinite knowledge. Other functional organisations will grow up side by side with the new orientation of industry, possibly councils of consumers to regulate distribution or to advise on prices. The important thing in all considerations is to separate the spiritual functions of the state from the material functions of production and administration of things.

Thus, the old loose conception of democracy must give way before a detailed functional conception, a conception which, without curtailing liberty, but by increasing it, will justify itself by leading to efficiency and greater beauty in everyday life. There is much loose talk of social ideals; ideals nebulous and vague, where they should be hard and definite. Such talk will lead us nowhere. If functional democracy is to grow in beauty and strength, it must prove itself more efficient than other forms of social organisation-generating in its progress a demand for definite and broadly based measures of public service, whether such service be in art, education, public administration or industry. Those ideas and proposals will require to be thought out carefully and clearly formulated, for the stress of the modern world will not allow any room for vague sentimentalities and slipshod improvisations. The mass of men are prone to accept half-digested theories and to tolerate many unnecessary and undesirable things which have been dictated by strong vested material interests, even where they impinge upon and distort public service and make our social life less beautiful than it could be. The old doctrine that public good is served by each person pursuing his own selfish interest in his own way will no longer serve as a dynamic in the new society.

Our ideas of the functions of the state in relationship to the democracy we envisage, must be compact and definite, and must not be deflected by the specious contention that this detailed functional democracy will lessen the sum of liberty. Liberty is not a licence, but a discipline, and the society which puts itself most definitely under great moral and aesthetic laws, which fears indeed to transgress them, even under great provocation, is the society which is most free and stable. And in the day of achievement, when the protagonists of the historical leviathan shall yield to a higher law, when the last vestiges of the political means of exploitation shall have disappeared, then for the first time will flourish the necessary state, looking after education, justice, national health and foreign affairs, in a democracy in which creative effort will have full scope and the human spirit no longer live in terror of the state.

G. W. THOMSON.

over, because his adventure is business beyond all things else, and mony a puckle maks a muckle,' he raised, directly or indirectly through his contracts, the prices of programmes; so that what D'Oyly Carte and Henry Irving gave for nothing, and elsewhere, once upon a time, cost no more than the penny or the twopence it was worth, often now costs as much as fourpence in the Gallery and the Pit-for a list of names, padded with discussions, as feeble as hens' talk, on the handwriting and casual opinions of stage favourites about anything and nothing, with funny paragraphs that would drive the ghost of poor Joe Miller back into its grave.

Happily, the ascendancy of the merely commercial theatre is being broken, and thanks to the truer taste of the public and to the companies of actors who have proved their love for the drama by doing repertory work, here and there, for a salary not talked about, the play-house is showing prospects of regaining a strength it has not enjoyed for twenty years. It is not merely a pay-box strength; it is that of appreciation, quality of performance, and adventurousness of ideas. Repertory theatres have been, or are in being, at Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, Hampstead, Oxford, and elsewhere; and although it must be a long time before such variety and versatility is attained by these pioneers of the new day as was shown by Samuel Phelps, sixty years ago at Sadler's Wells, when he would play on succeeding nights such diverse parts as Hamlet, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, King Lear, Bottom, Virginius, and Tony Lumpkin; yet a weekly change of programme is a worthy ideal which, after a time, is bound to win the reward of profitable audiences.

We must, however, have genuine actors able to act; and true in their acting, for the first requirement of the dramatic, as of all other arts, is sincerity. That is the only sure means of carrying an illusion over the footlights. With sincerity an audience will accept a golden curtain as yellow sands and a wooden chair as the sufficient furniture of a throne-room. For the play is the thing; and to give to it frankly and full-heartedly all the powers and possible qualities of acting and production, is the least that is due to the artistic truth. The

artistic truth! That always must be the ultimate aim and test. Yet how badly often, even in the best regulated' theatres, is it neglected! Producers should remember that to win the verisimilitude they are asked for, the stage must be kept as distinct as possible from the auditorium. It belongs to the world of illusion. Applause should be the only communication between actors and audiences, other than the words and emotions of the play itself. The proscenium arch should be something more than a structural detail, for it is the frame of a separate life, the open doorway to another existence, to a world of enchantment. How carelessly, how wantonly, are this distinction and this reticence often disregarded!

The first monstrous custom to be abolished should be the curtain-call. I remember the first time that I suffered the shock of that outrage on the truthfulness of a play. Cleopatra, in the beautiful person of Mrs Langtry, had come to her end. The evening had not been exhilarating; but, as always, the lovely simplicity of the incomparable death-scene had carried the audience to the heights. The ultimate lines of the play were cut, so that the curtain should fall at once on Cleopatra's last words; yet hardly had its fringes touched the boards, than 'the serpent of old Nile,' without any invitation whatsoever, was standing, asp in hand, before the footlights, bowing and smiling as if not only had she not just then tragically died, but that positively she had been spending a rather amusing evening. It was a sin against Shakespeare; it ruined the effect of the play. Yet that instance was nothing to what the practice has come to nowadays, when actresses and actors have been photographed and paragraphed into a notoriety altogether out of keeping with their human values. Apparently not even an act can be ended without the characters who appeared in it, whether dead or alive, dukes or chambermaids, returning to the stage, if they happen to have left it, to stand bowing in a stiff and regulated line, with a gradual retirement of the lessimportant until the 'stars' are left for the ultimate handclaps.

Possibly my worst experience of this wanton spoiling of the illusions in recent years, because it so badly wounded the sincerity of an earnest play, was with an