EDITORIAL NOTES
AS we write a deputation is to wait upon Mr. Fisher, President of the Board of Education, in order to press the claims of a National Theatre. "Why Mr. Fisher?" it may be asked—a member of the deputation was, in fact, asked the question. The Board of Education cannot establish a National Theatre; the Treasury would scarcely allow Mr. Fisher to make a grant to the National Theatre fund; and whatever the advantages of a National Theatre and the elevating influence which might conceivably be exercised by the drama, few people think of it primarily as educational in the narrow sense of the word. The answer given to the question was: "Because he's the nearest approach we've got to a Minister of Fine Arts."
We suppose that in this special connection the answer was a true one. The President of the Board of Education may be supposed to stand in a closer relation with the drama than other Ministers, though had other arts been under consideration other Ministers would have been thought of. Had domestic architecture been the deputation's concern it would have addressed itself to the Minister of Health, and within a narrow range Sir Alfred Mond at the Office of Works actually performs some of the functions of a Minister of Fine Arts. The fabric of the Houses of Parliament is under his care; his predecessors, Lord Harcourt and Lord Beauchamp, left their marks upon it. It was the Office of Works which commissioned and supervised the later frescoes on staircase and corridor at Westminster, and it is its business to see that alterations are made consonantly with the character of the structure. But this is a very minor thing compared with the vast field in which the Government does at present exercise functions in which æsthetic considerations are largely involved.
Let us, for a moment, ignore the things which might be done—such as the subsidisation of a National Theatre—and think of a few of the things which have been done, or are habitually done. At this moment a Government department is supervising, or preparing to supervise, the erection of hundreds of thousands of houses. These houses will materially affect the architectural landscape. Design, the suitability of materials to local features and traditions, these things are of immense importance; what is done depends upon the competence, the information, the industry, the numerical sufficiency, and the domestic influence within the Department of the Ministry of Health's experts. Many departments build, or arrange for building to their own designs, numerous large public structures, or exercise, or could exercise, a determining pressure upon the design of buildings erected by local authorities. You cannot go many miles along the English coast without finding a barracks, and when you find it you will not like it. We have a complex of public museums which are the particular care of no Minister. We have an immense Government printing business which is directly under the Treasury; it is no powerful person's concern to see that its publications are well produced. Our Mint produces coins, our Post Office produces stamps, our War Office produces medals. The most important medal ever produced by the British Government is the large memorial bronze plaque which is to be given to the next-of-kin of nearly a million fallen. The last, word as to the nature of this, and the process by which it should be made, rested first (we believe) with the Contracts Branch of the War Office, which has been incorporated in the Ministry of Munitions. We have mentioned but a few typical illustrations of the confused, haphazard way in which the State is in operative contact with the Arts; and even then we have not mentioned the most recent and striking instances, the commissioning of a large number of war pictures by a "Minister of Information" who happened to want to see contemporary art well represented in the Imperial War Museum, and the employment of both British plays and British drawings as "propaganda abroad"—the Salome incident may be recalled.
Is there not an overwhelmingly strong case for a Ministry of Fine Arts? We know there are always those who, when the suggestion is made, drop the curtain in their minds at once with contemptuous remarks about "official art." What they ignore is that we are bound to have "official art," that it could not conceivably be worse than it is, and that proper organisation would at least give an occasional intelligent Minister a chance. Design at present is everybody's business and nobody's business. It is not to be expected that even the most æsthetic of War Ministers should much preoccupy himself with the "elevations" of barracks, that the best of Ministers for Education should devote his days to the physical appearance of schools and training colleges, that the First Lord of the Admiralty should mind what his Stores look like, or that even new Government buildings in the middle of London, though they do engage serious attention sometimes, should be anything but bad. The Office of Works itself, which actually builds, is principally concerned with seeing that So-and-so gets so many rooms and So-and-so has his partition pulled down. There is no specialist authority in engraving or metal work. Ministers and officials sometimes consult experts, but it is a matter of chance what sort of experts they will consult. In no capital, not even in Berlin, are there uglier Public Offices than there are in Whitehall, or more pretentious ones. As for the immense amount of War Office building, the Guards Barracks at Chelsea may stand as a type. We commend them as a medicine for anyone who suspects himself of exaggerated national vanity. Our museums are starved. Readers will remember the ridiculous cheeseparing at Bloomsbury early in the war which, combined with the ruthless occupation and closing of museums and galleries, reduced many able and devoted public servants almost to despair. Had these institutions been under the control of a Minister whose prime concern they were, they would have had a higher status in Whitehall and he could have fought for them, as it was no one's interest or business to fight for them.
We believe that in many regards a Minister of Fine Arts would preserve us from the worst infamies, and that a good Minister of Fine Arts would have great opportunities of doing more than that. For certain things he should be directly and solely responsible to Parliament: the art galleries and those museums which are not first and foremost technological. It should rest with his department at least to sanction all designs for public buildings erected by the central authorities, and it might act in consultative capacity to other authorities. His staff should include men capable of originating, obtaining, or vetoing designs for any other department doing work in which design is important. For the Stationery Office, though it be primarily a (not very well run) publishing business, we do not see why that should not be bodily transferred to him. The "format" of most Government publications is disgraceful, both from the point of view of appearance and from that of convenience, and were they better produced they might be better marketed. We are not under the illusion that any Minister of Fine Arts would initiate great revolutions in Art, but he could certainly greatly increase our facilities and add to the comfort of our walks abroad. And, where a subsidy for some definite object such as the National Theatre is wanted, he would be as the mouthpiece of the State and a Minister amongst Ministers far more likely to be able to do something than Mr. Fisher or any other existing Minister. We hope shortly to return to the subject, one of the few at all impinging on politics with which we feel entitled to deal.
Several correspondents have written drawing our attention to the prices paid at the sale of Lord Foley's library and to Truth's comments on them. The facts in brief are these. The Ruxley Lodge library was sold locally; there were few, if any, bidders for the important books, except a number of London booksellers, and the sums fetched were deplorably small. All four Shakespeare Folios (the third imperfect) were there. They fetched £100, £46, £28, and £20 respectively. Two months ago the Britwell copy of the first brought in £2300 at Sotheby's. Thirteen first editions of Shelley fetched £52 the lot, and Keats's Endymion and Lamia volumes produced £7 between them. Some valuable books were lumped in with bundles of miscellaneous books and went for a song; it is likely that, with such cataloguing, many rare and valuable works may have escaped mention except as "and others": our contemporary goes so far as to say that "there is every probability that in this way old books worth hundreds, even thousands, of pounds were disposed of for a few shillings."