the culture and
intelligence of the British nation to assume that no appreciable
section of it cherishes that taste for the literary drama which keeps
the national or municipal theatre alive in France and Germany. At any
rate, judgment should be held in suspense until the British playgoers'
mettle has been more thoroughly tested than hitherto.

No less humiliating is the argument that the art of acting in this
country is at too low an ebb to justify the assumption by a public
body of responsibility for theatrical enterprise. One or two critics
assert that to involve public credit in a theatre, until there exist
an efficient school of acting, is to put the cart before the horse.
This objection seems insubstantial. Competent actors are not
altogether absent from the English stage, and the municipal system of
theatrical enterprise is calculated to increase their number rapidly.

Abroad, the subsidised theatres, with their just schemes of salary,
their permanent engagements, their well-devised pension systems,
attract the best class of the profession. A competent company of
actors, which enjoys a permanent home and is governed by high
standards of art, forms the best possible school of acting, not merely
by force of example, but by the private tuition which it could readily
provide. In Vienna the companies at the subsidised theatres are
recruited from the pupils of a State-endowed conservatoire of actors.
It is improbable that the British Government will found a like
institution. But it would be easy to attach a college of acting to the
municipal theatre, and to make the college pay its way.

Much depends on the choice of manager of the enterprise. The manager
of a municipal theatre must combine with business aptitude a genuine
devotion to dramatic art and dramatic literature. Without a fit
manager, who can collect and control a competent company of actors,
the scheme of the municipal theatre is doomed to failure. Managers of
the requisite temper, knowledge, and ability are not lacking in France
or Germany. There is no reason to anticipate that, when the call is
sounded, the right response will not be given here.

Cannot an experiment be made in London on the lines of the Vienna
Volks-Theater? In the first place, it is needful to bring together a
body of citizens who, under leadership which commands public
confidence, will undertake to build and control for a certain term of
years a theatre of suitable design in the in