Exhibitions are at @ discount just now, but there is a show of toys open to-day in the heart from Aveitin; and tim chico the display is to induce British manufacturers to make toys 90 that our children may not be dependent upon the alien enemy. It is not a small trade to capture, since we imported toys from Germany last year to the tune of about £1,800, 000. There is, of course, not" the smallest difficulty in making toys of precisely the same kind in this country; but the trouble is thst the German makers have been content with a margin of profit which does not satisfy our manufacturers Ousting the German Trader, A good deal of business appear ed to be going forward at the show, which is the first of a series of such exhibitions in various trades which being arranged by the Commer cial Intelligence Branch of the Board of Trade.
I had a chat with an official of the branch to-day, and he assured me that already many manufacturers were increasing their plant and machinery with the direct object of making goods of a type and quality which have hitherto been almost exclusively supplied from Germany.
German manufacturers ar, however, striving energetically, and with some amount of success, to maintain at least part of their trade with this country through the me dium of Holland.
"Those who sit in Judgement"
Almost the only public event of the week which has no direct re ference to the war has been the production of a new play by the dramatist who writes under the name of "Michael Orme," It is called Those who Sit in Judge ment," and although somewhat too stagily conventional in plot t please the critics it proved, with Sir George Alexander and Miss Henrietta Watson in the principal parts, thoroughly delightful to the audience. Michael Trent, the hero on whom the world sits in judge ment, is a young man who wi love of the "femme in comprise" of a vulgar and objectionable suburb ban solicitor. The scene is Lai first in Surburbia, where we treated to some amusing travesti¢s of suburban vulgarity, then 0 West Africa, where the hero, in at tempting to exploit a rubber concession, meets with a succession of undeserved calamities and suc cumps to drink; and finally to the Gity of London, where Michael is ruthlessly judged and unjustly condemned by a company meeting. largely at the instigation of the vul gar husband of the ' femme incom. prise." He is, however, saved from utter collapse under his cumulated misfortunes by the hero
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.