whenever they choose, and incur debts, and mortgage both land and building as soon as they possess either. They can spend on bricks and mortar all the money they receive to the extent of L250,000, without putting by a penny towards the endowment fund. In fact, no precautions have been taken to avoid a repetition of the disaster that befell the building of the English Opera House, which soon afterwards became the Palace Music-Hall. But more inexplicable still are the clauses referring to the management of the theatre, to which, unfortunately, the general committee have pledged themselves. We have decided that "the supreme controlling authority of the theatre" shall be a body of governors who will number about forty, but apparently their "supreme control" is limited to nominating seven of their number as a standing committee, some of whom, and under certain eventualities all of whom, may be elected for life. This standing committee, however, is to hand over all that is vital in the management of a theatre to a director over whom it has no control beyond either confirming all he does or dismissing him, so that the National Theatre in reality becomes a one-man's hobby. So long as the director is clever enough to humour four out of the seven members of the standing committee, he can run the theatre for the amusement of himself and his friends. He may choose the plays, arrange the programmes, engage and dismiss the artistes, and can even produce all the plays himself; the only thing he cannot do is to act in them; and yet so little have the framers of the report grasped the realities of the situation that, in their other clauses, they refer to the governors dispensing pensions and honorary distinctions on the actors, forgetting that the unfortunate players are the servants of their servant the director, who can dismiss them three days before the honours and pensions become due, so that even in dispensing favours the voice of the director is supreme. As the report stands at present confirmed there is no elasticity allowed to the standing committee to give permanency to those parts of the director's management which are evidently successful and efficient, and to restrict and finally abolish what is unsatisfactory. There is no choice between dismissing the director, or tolerating his defects for the sake of what he does well. But the director should be the chairman of the standing committee; he should have power to engage the producers of the plays, because more than one is wanted; and each producer should be given sole control over the cast and the staging of the play for which he is specially engaged. Then in the case of failure there would be always a remedy. Producers, authors, and actors who showed that they were unskilful in the work they were called upon to do would not be again invited to help in the performances of the National Theatre; but in regard to those who had shown exceptional talent,