Aug. 3.
Elsewhere to-day we reproduce from the "Daily Herald" a summary of the British Labour Party's. general election programme which is to be laid before the annual conference of the Party at Birmingham in October for final approval. will be remembered that the election is almost certain to take place next spring or in the summer, and the autumn winter campaigns of the various parties will be of special inter-it. On the whole the Labour new programme has excited less reprobation in Home newspapers than is usually to be expected, perhaps for the obvious reason that so much of it is "borrowed stuff". 'The "Daily' Herald", of course, is jubilant:—
It says The new statement of Labour's policy and programme a challenge to the exi and a call to action to the whole drews of wishing to turn the theatre into a pulpit. Things are bad enough when it takes itself too seriously as it certi ly would do very soon if it followed his advice, And experi-"ence suggests that when the stage does that, it is of little practical use to itself or anyone else.
The bad times through which the stage is passing are, perhaps, part of the natural process of up-hill and down-hill through which art and everything else has to travel as the world swings round. If writers now are turn-
Labour Movement. It is an attempt to re-state in the light of the knowledge and experience of the last ten years the principles down in Labour and the New Order'—the document which hundreds of thousands of war-weary and disillusioned men and women to the Labour Move. ment."
The "Times," with a clear recollection of the' wide differences between electoral promise and parliamentary achievement} is mildly surprised at the terrific mass of legislation to which the Labour Party is committing ing to publishers rather than to theatrical producers, their output does not seem' much the better for it. Technically clever as modern novels are, how many of them are felt to have the qualities of endurance? How many of them do we not throw down in weariness after only. a few chapters? Nor do musie or painting seem In a" more satis-tory state. Thoxe who re-mber the London theatre of the nineties may trace a gradual contains notking new of surprising; but there may be a little mild wonder in other parties, and raging indignation in the Independent Labour gion of some great schemes which have been well canvassed by the party's more active propagandists.
"Even when so lightened the Programme represents a weight of commitment of formidable size. Mr, MacDonald himself calls it formidable, It will be frantically
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.