wide distribution of these speeches would be of public benefit.

THE COMMUNITY CHRISTMAS TREE

A great throng of people filled Madison Square in New York from half-past four on Christmas Eve until late at night; a crowd that varied, it is estimated, from five to fifteen thousand people, melting away at the edges and filling up again from the side streets. All the city was there, every class in the community was represented; it was a veritable community Christmas celebration.

There was a fanfare of trumpets, then a solemn and noble rendering of " Holy Night" by the Oratorio Society. A child taken from the crowd pushed a button, and a star blazed from the top of the great Christmas tree, to be followed by myriads of other lights-red, green, blue, and whiteuntil the tree was a glowing mass of colors, splendidly distinct against the darkness of the night. At half-past five the chimes of the Metropolitan tower ceased ringing, but for half an hour the Oratorio Society sang selections of old Christmas hymns, and a choir of Welsh male singers added their moving, characteristic rendering of Welsh songs. Meanwhile a hundred Boy Scouts were moving through the crowd, keeping the way open so that the singers might pass to the platform. There was no need of enforcing order; the star and the tree did that.

After a recess for dinner, or supper, as the case might be, a military band played patriotic and religious selections, there was a quartette of church soloists, and later a Negro chorus of a hundred voices singing the old-time plantation songs; and not until midnight, when the Metropolitan chimes sounded the last notes of "America," did the throng disperse and the lights go out.

Some people came in furs and in their automobiles, many by trolley and subway, more walked from a distance. Scattered through the crowd were hundreds of outcasts, and it was noticed that silver was passing from gloved hands to bare ones quietly through the crowd. It was the second municipal Christmas tree in New York.

IN ALL PLACES, FOR ALL PEOPLE

In many other communities Christmas trees were centers of happiness. A noble tree rose out of the pavement at the foot of the steps

of the Capitol in Washington, with a glit tering star at its apex. Those who saw it, with the great dome of the Capitol rising behind it and the wings flanking it, felt that it was a National tree and expressed a National spirit.

In Grant Park, in Chicago, thousands of people gathered, not only to look at the tree but to hear the full chorus of the Grand Opera Company and to listen to speeches by the Mayor and others. Cincinnati, with its musical traditions, listened to the chiming of bells and the fanfare of trumpets and to choruses by boys, and gathered round its glowing tree. In Detroit the tree stood on the City Hall lawn, gayly decorated with lights and toys, a luminous center of a vast crowd. Three hundred men and boys standing beneath the great tree in Cleveland sang choruses. Philadelphia opened a celebration which was to continue for a week, the Mayor touching the electric button which set the great community tree in Independence Square aglow. Boston repeated its municipal Christmas festivities of last year; and the glow of community trees warmed the hearts of thousands in communities from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

And there were many forms of organized cheer in all parts of the country. A dingy basement on lower Broadway in New York was luminous on Christmas Eve with a concerted friendliness. As from a fountain, all sorts of good things were poured out to needy Italians who carried their baskets away with incoherent words of thanks and tears in their eyes; and not the least moving feature of the festivities was the fact that the King of Italy had given his patronage to the undertaking and had sent a personal word for all those who needed aid. The "Italian Journal," which was largely responsible for this happy friendliness, is to be commended for keeping it from publicity and any kind. of advertising.

CHRISTMAS ON THE BILLBOARDS

A novel and very agreeable surprise was furnished in all parts of this country and Canada by the use of the billboards for

Christmas purposes. A large and wellprinted color picture of the Nativity stood out among all kinds of announcements of commodities. The picture was large enough to command attention; it was ten feet high and twice as long, and the shepherds and Magi

always been a town of ideas, and last year revived the old-fashioned Christmas "waits." This year there were six bands, numbering nearly a hundred, singing the familiar Christmas hymns in the streets. They visited more than a hundred and fifty homes, and had a very good time in doing it. There was no noise, and great consideration was shown for homes in which there was sorrow, or age, or the shadow of death. But there was also a great deal of merriment. No refreshments were offered or accepted. This example is worth following.

THE LAUREATE'S

CHRISTMAS SONG

The first official poem written by Robert Bridges, recently appointed Poet Laureate by George V, appeared in the London "Times" on Wednesday of last week. A timely reprint of Mr. Bridges's poetical works (Humphrey Milford, New York) has recently put in convenient form the poetry of the Poet Laureate, excluding his dramas. This volume is instinct with the classical spirit; its workmanship is delightful, and, if the note is not. original, it is distinctive, and in that sense individual; and whatever may be the limitations of Mr. Bridges's interests, he is entirely free from the commonplaceness of his pred

ecessor.

His first poem is a celebration, not of an incident of the State, but a Christian festival; and he uses the form adopted by his predecessor in 1340, the verse form of "The Vision of Piers Plowman." The "Times," in introducing the poem, recalls the fact that one of the most insignificant of the Laureate's predecessors, Nahum Tate, has survived and will long survive by virtue of one happy poem, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks." The Outlook reprints two verses of Mr. Bridges's "Christmas Eve:"

"A frosty Chrismas eve, when the stars were shining,

Fared I forth alone where westward falls the

The night before Christmas a terrible disaster from panic took place in Red Jacket, Michigan. Seventy-two persons, the majority of whom were children, lost their lives in the Italian Union Hall, where, under the management of the Western Federation of Miners, a Christmas tree festival was being held for the benefit of the miners now on strike. Possibly a slight fire started in the tree. A cry of fire from a man in the audience set the excited crowd into a mad and fatal rush.

President Moyer, of the Federation, seems inclined to blame the enemies of the strikers for the disturbance which caused the panic. To make such a charge without strong proof is in itself atrocious, and unless evidence is produced Mr. Moyer incurs serious blame for his wild accusation.

The lesson of such disasters is that small halls of this kind are too often more dangerous than large audience-rooms. Constant inspection, rigid regulation, or a complete suppression of such halls is needed if such calamities are not to be of frequent occur

rence.

tected. On the other hand, they have failed to have fixed the minimum wage at $3 per day for "trammers" and $3.50 for miners. They have failed also (and ought to fail) to compel the companies to put two men at work on a 66 one-man drill." This, as we understand it, is a new machine that with one man at work can get as good results as the old machine with two men. The men's demand, therefore, was something like that of some printers, when the linotype was introduced, that more men than were needed should be employed "for the good of the trade."

Trade, machinery, and invention are immensely human. Strip off statistics and technicalities, and these things tell the history of They are also capable

THE COPPER STRIKE IN MICHIGAN

For several months an extended strike has been carried on by copper-mine workers in Michigan. It is now, according to a long and apparently fair-minded account in the Grand Rapids "Press," nearly at an end. The correspondent points out as a singular and paradoxical fact that while the strike was brought about by the Western Federation of Miners, which "inspired, directed, and financed it, the result has been that, although the strikers have obtained a victory on most of their demands, the Western Federation has totally failed to secure the recognition which it was seeking.

The men, this account states, obtain in the partial settlements made an eight-hour day for surface as well as underground labor, have assured to them the right to present grievances, and to secure the dismissal of bosses against whom repeated charges of injustice are presented, and in other ways are pro

of graphic illustration. Their history and evolution form one of the great chapters in the book of knowledge. It is a splendid and monumental undertaking, therefore, to present and preserve these records.

A plan has been formed for New York City to have a College of Commerce and a Museum of Commerce-the former not a technical school, but a school that comprehends what commerce has variously come to mean in this age; the latter not a museum which merely shows objects of barter, for barter is a small part of commerce nowadays, but a museum that takes note of inventing, making, improving, distributing the machinery and products of modern civilization, and negotiating the necessary financing, credit, and exchange for world-wide dealings. These are the objects of the projectors as we find them described in an article by Mr. Franklin Clarkin in the Boston "Transcript." The projectors include such men as George F. Kunz, Thomas A. Edison, Jacob H. Schiff, E. H. Gary, Admiral Peary,, and others.

Their conviction, as stated by Mr. Clarkin,

is that "there are passions for machinery as well as for paints and brushes and chisels : that if pretty pottery is a creative art, why is there no creative art in putting the breath of power and motion into metal and causing it to run or fly?" They ask :

If it is valuable to teach the beginnings of art, and the progress of art, by exhibited examples, why is it not valuable to teach the beginnings and progress of science and mechanical invention?

Is the advance from the daguerreotype to the moving-talking photograph less interesting than collections of carved sea-shells, ivories, peachblow vases?

Is inlaid armor more interesting than a gun that shoots ten miles?

Is a diplodocus better worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to dig for than the perfection of the art of flying?

Is the discovery of coal, oil, radium, of no consequence beside the excavation of a mummy or a cuneiform inscription in Egypt?

It is hoped to secure a fine site on the Hudson River below Grant's Tomb, to secure large private contributions, and to obtain municipal support.

Here, some one has said, the word is "Try it yourself," instead of "Hands off."

To go through the great section showing the development of the dwelling-places of man is alone an experience not to be forgotten easily. Everything is visual, graphic, simple. The ingenuity and clarity of the arrangement are truly wonderful. To quote Mr. Clarkin once more:

Some of the rooms exhibit visually to the visitor the progress from windmills to the steam engine; from hand printing by monks in their monasteries to the linotype and swift Hoe press; from galleys to ocean greyhounds; locomotives from the one which couldn't go out in the rain to the latest Pacific mogul; flying-machines from the elemental wings of Lilienthal to the machines of Zeppelin and the Wrights; and

so on.

In short, the Deutsches Museum is a marvelous history, told not in books or even pictures, but in solid material, sometimes in model or miniature, sometimes in full sizethings that can be handled and often operated. It is one of the modern world's wonders.

If New York can do within its field what the Deutsches Museum is doing for Germany, it will achieve something of permanent value to civilization.

THE BARRÈRE ENSEMBLE

When chamber music is mentioned, most people, we imagine, think of either a string quartette or a song or piano recital. There is another form of chamber music, however, which has in it elements of popularity as great as either of the others--chamber music for wind instruments. There are chamber music organizations in this country which use wind instruments, notably the Longy organization and the Barrère Ensemble.

A recent concert in New York City by the Barrère Ensemble furnished a capital illustration of the popular character of this form of chamber music. There is a current impression that the best music, or even good music, can be enjoyed only by those who are connoisseurs. Nothing could be further from the truth. It has been proved time and time again that all sorts and conditions of people can be trusted to enjoy the best in music. In what is good, however, there is a difference between that which makes an immediate popular appeal and that which does not make an appeal so

immediate. The programme of this conIcert was of the former kind.

It was not only the programme but the kind of instruments used in this concert that gave it the element of popularity. Four stringed instruments seem very much alike and give the impression of being monotonous until one realizes the wide scope of expression and tone color of the violin fåmily. On the other hand, no one can help seeing that a flute is very different from a bassoon, and that a French horn does not in the least resemble either a clarinet or an oboe. And when the instruments are sounded they obviously differ from one another in tone. The pure

We

and almost unfeeling tones of the flute are in as strong contrast as possible to the mellow, appealing, satisfying tones of the French horn; while both differ from the penetrating notes of either of the three reed instruments -the oboe, the clarinet, and the bassoon. Then there is the interest in distinguishing these various instruments as they play. should not be surprised to learn that the great majority of regular attendants at orchestral concerts cannot distinguish between the oboe and the clarinet either in sound or appearance. In the intimate environment of a chamber music concert the contrast between these two instruments is at once seen and heard. So a chamber concert of wind instruments provides a very interesting method of becoming acquainted with some of the most important members of the orchestra.

A POPULAR PROGRAMME

Then in the case of this particular concert there was the programme. First there was a quintette by Henry Woollett. If one were to guess at the composer's nationality by looking at his name, the obvious guess would be-English. If one were to guess at it from his music as exemplified in this quintette, a perfectly natural and defensible guess would be that he was a German suffering from the influence of Richard Strauss. The fact is that he is a contemporary Frenchman. Just what he means by describing this quintette as being "on themes in a popular form " we do not know, but the themes themselves were of the sort that would make an instant popular appeal. Then came two pieces on the programme which anybody would admit were "classi-a duet for clarinet and bassoon by Beethoven and a sonata for piano and flute by Haydn. A good many people who would

cal"

66

consider their own taste cultivated would regard the Beethoven duet as rather dry, but it is not unlikely that this made as wide an appeal as anything on the programme. Probably the very simplicity of a piece by two wind instruments, each of which could play only one note at a time, accounted for a part of that general appeal. There was a piece on the programme which in paternity was Dutch," but, unlike the cook in the "Capital Ship," did not "behave as such." It was a goblin dance (Ronde des Lutins) by Christiaan Kriens, which captivated the audience at once. Then there was a piece that ought to have appealed to every golfer. It was a walking tune by Percy Aldrich Grainger, a young Australian composer, who calls this "Room-music Titbits for Wind Five-some." It is that word "five-some that catches the golfer's eye. Moreover, the composer says that he made this tune while walking in the Scottish Highlands The theme reminds one of an Irish folk song, "The Moreen." It is plainly Celtic, anyway, and it is cleverly and pleasantly managed. Then at the end came the most interesting piece on the whole programme, a spontaneously written "Divertissement" by Albert Roussel for the wind quintette with piano. The assisting pianist in this case was Miss Carolyn Beebe, who played with skill and sympathy this modern French music which seemed to float in a dissolving cloud of tonalities.

There is no reason why the whole country should not be dotted with organizations such as the Barrère Ensemble-like it in character even if few could equal it or even approach it in musical skill. There are many communities, moreover, which could not afford to maintain an orchestra which could afford regularly to enjoy chamber music such as this.

JULES CLARETIE

Jules Claretie, who died in Paris on December 23, was sometimes called the prince of theater managers. For nearly thirty years, and until within a few weeks of his death, he was the director of the Comédie Française, Molière's playhouse; a position which he filled with credit to himself and benefit to his country.

Although a man of varied gifts and activities-he had been journalist, novelist, and dramatist, as well as theater managerhis permanent reputation is likely to rest to a large extent on his record in the last-named capacity. He was an Academi