we reach once more the name of Thomas Beecham, Beecham's operatic activities began in February 1910 at Covent Garden, when he gave the memorable performance of Strauss's Elektra' and introduced Ethel Smyth's 'The Wreckers' and Delius's Village Romeo and Juliet.' In the summer of the same year he gave at His Majesty's a series of performances in English that included Strauss's 'Feuersnot' and four Mozart operas. At an autumn season in the same year he produced at Covent Garden Strauss's 'Salome' and other works new and old. Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos' came in 1913, and later in that year, as well as in 1914, we had 'Sir Joseph Beecham's season' at Drury Lane, when London, for the first time, heard the Russian operas in Russian with Shalyapin as the bright star of the company. was during these years that Stravinsky's 'Le Rossignol and Le Sacre du Printemps' came, and left in the memory an odd nightmarishness that seems, on reflexion, to have been the fitting prelude to the terrible dawn of August 1914.

It

The war itself did not quench Beecham's ardour, and I recall one thrilling night at Drury Lane when Figaro sang his 'Non più andrai' to the thunders of an air-raid. Among Beecham's productions during this period were Ethel Smyth's The Boatswain's Mate' and Stanford's 'The Critic.' But in spite of many adventurous productions over a wide field, it is as the apostle of Mozart that Beecham deserves our fullest gratitude, and I am sure a large audience would welcome his return to operatic activity with a cycle of the Mozart operas from 'Idomeneo' to 'The Magic Flute.' As it is, his services to the cause of opera in England exceed those of any other man, and have a special value because of the care he gave to the performances in English itself. The British National Opera Company is the child of Thomas Beecham.

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas do not belong to the tradition either of grand or of ballad opera, though they embody features derived from both. They descend from the kind of entertainment that used to be called extravaganza' or 'burlesque.' But, whatever their origin, they form the only authentic and successful con tribution of this country to the literature of operatio

music. Their scale is small, but even with that considered, they make a perennial group comparable only Their continued success should

co the Mozart operas.

ceach us a little both about English opera and about opera in English. It is excessive to demand, as some people do, that opera performances should invariably be given in the native language. Surely we should have mental flexibility enough to enjoy 'The Magic Flute' in German or Italian or English. The success of an opera rarely depends upon our comprehension of every word. Even when it does-as it does very largely in the first act of Tristan'-we do not gain perceptibly when we near Isolde exclaiming, with terrible scorn :

'In shrinking trepidation,

His shame he seeks to hide,
While to the king, his relation,

He brings the corpse-like bride.'

In any case the supposition that opera in English will be more intelligible to English people than opera in German or Italian is rather optimistic. I have heard sopranos sing some of the Wagner scenes at concerts without being certain what language they were using, until the absence of any German sounds convinced me that it must be English. Now, if opera in English is to be genuinely successful, the words must be as worth the trouble of singing as Gilbert's, and the enunciation as clear as that of the old Savoy singers.

The Gilbert and Sullivan operas touch the different question of English opera. Our various operatic enterprises are periodically blamed because they give no chance to native work. The accusation is unfair. Just as the first duty of a government is to keep in office, so the first duty of an opera-manager is to pay his way. What English operas have helped him to do that? The Carl Rosa company, Harris and his successors, Thomas Beecham and the British National Opera Company, have all produced native works and given them every chance of success. I have heard every new English opera produced here for the last twenty-five years, but I have encountered nothing resembling an English 'Hansel and Gretel' or 'Madame Butterfly' or 'Louise.' Speaking as one of the ordinary paying public (for whom, after

all, however despicable we are, the operas are written), I have often felt that our English opera writers have been trying to write somebody else's music. Further, they have usually been writing beyond their means. Balfe did not

try to write a 'Fidelio' or Wallace a 'Don Giovanni.' It is absurd for a ballad-opera talent to think in terms of a Wagnerian trilogy. We must really try to grow out of the mechanical view that serious art is a matter of length, breadth, and thickness. Simplicity is not triviality, and, even in music, brevity may be the soul of wit. The humour that rarely fails the Englishman in literature and drama seems to desert him when he approaches music. Can he find nothing to encourage him in the unshaken popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan? By all means let him write his trilogy, if he must; but it will do him no harm to remember occasionally that the field of light or ballad opera is always open to him. The recent success of 'Lilac Time' is not without its lessons, for what was Lilac Time' but a pretty ballad opera? When our ambitious young composers are great enough to be simple the later story of opera in England may become the story of English opera.

GEORGE SAMPSON.

Art. 5.-AGRICULTURAL FACTS AND FALLACIES.

1. The Agricultural Crisis, 1920-1923. By R. R. Enfield. Longmans, 1924.

2. Agricultural Tribunal of Investigation-Final Report. Published by His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1924.

AGRICULTURE, possibly more than any other staple industry, suffers from an alteration in the general level of prices, that is to say, an alteration in the purchasing power of money. This arises from the fact, inseparable from farming operations, of the long period which elapses between the time when the farmer lays out his money, and the time when he reaps the reward of his industry, added to which there is a 'lag' in the movement of wages and other costs behind the movement of produce prices, thereby increasing the loss sustained in a period of rapidly falling prices. Rising prices tend to bring about an increase in productive areas, particularly in exporting countries, and when once the equilibrium between supply and demand has been greatly disturbed, on account of the difficulties of obtaining adequate knowledge of demand and other reasons, the readjustment is slow and painful.

Such being the case, monetary operations resulting in the rising, followed by the lowering, of the general price level were bound to throw the agricultural industry into a state of economic disorganisation. By money, during and after the war, the whole agricultural machine was put out of gear, and the economic disabilities of agriculture became magnified into difficulties and even dangers of unprecedented importance. While the readjustment to a lower price level in certain branches of agriculture, such as stock farming, would seem to have taken place relatively quickly, where the reaction to high prices brought about the ploughing up of large new areas, not only in England but in many foreign countries, the readjustment has been protracted long after the downward price movement came to rest. What agriculture needs is the stabilisation of prices.

Such is the explanation offered by the economist of the problems which to-day distress the agricultural community, and puzzle the general public. Many people

hardly know how much to believe of the so-called agricultural crisis. Does it merely represent a new phase in the chronic grumbling of the farmer? Or is our oldest industry in a moribund condition? There is good reason for perplexity upon this point. One page of the daily paper contains long lists of agricultural grievances and proposed remedies-many of them strangely inconsistent -while we are assured that it is now impossible to grow corn, and most other agricultural products, at a profit. And then it is surprising to learn from a subsequent page of the same newspaper that agricultural land is selling well and the demand for farms has seldom been greater. One school of thought advocates intensive farming based on co-operation, and dangles the picture of prosperous Denmark before the eyes. Another warns us that the present situation can only be met by what is known as 'ranching' or 'prairie farming,' and Canadian methods. One standard work advises a system of continuous cropping whereby the land is kept in a state of constant cultivation; while another agriculturalist of experience sees salvation in lucerne or clover leys, and cultivation once in five or even seven years.

It is believed, therefore, that a sketch of the present position of agriculture as it appears to one whose means of livelihood is the land would be useful. Material for such a study is supplied by the experience gained in the management of a scattered agricultural property of 30,000 acres, and in farming 500 acres through the socalled crisis. The writer has no political object to serve, and it may be that he occupies a point midway between the economist who tells the farmer how he should farm, and the farmer who tells the economist what he should write. Like all agriculturists he has had plenty of expert advice-by some of which, but not all, he has profited; his practical experience at least includes a great many mistakes. His hope is to present to the reading public that is interested in agriculture a simple, intelligible picture of farming conditions to-day and of the parties engaged in it--the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer; to examine their difficulties, which are alternately exaggerated and minimised, and to consider the practical remedies, after discarding the more violent ones, which may be applied to things as they are. The object is