C.E.M.A. and the Government It is an interesting and perhaps
a highly significant fact that the committee appointed to arrange the spending of the Pilgrim Trust grant of £25,000 to encourage music, drama and art has the co-operation of the Board of Education, which is represented by Miss Thelma Cazalet and two expert civil servants. It goes by the name of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, and it has already, under Lord Macmillan's chairmanship, been explor- ing the possibilities of doing what can be done with severely limited means to afford under difficult war conditions means of enjoying and practising the arts. It is evident that the sum of £25,000 would not go far to check cultural atrophy on a nation-wide scale ; and it is a not unnatural conclusion that the Government would neither have been called in in the first place to co-operate in a private charity nor have offered its co-operation unless it strongly approved of the movement, and was willing to express its approval by financial assistance. Thera is no Ministry of Fine Arts or of Culture in this country, but some of the work that such a Ministry might do is capable of being done by a Board of Education released to that extent from routine. Lord De La Warr has already shown that he interprets his duties broadly, and that he thinks that some expansion of the Board's func- tions may be even more necessary in war-time than at other times. A Government that is conducting a war for civili- sation is specially bound to look to the home front, and to do what can be done to prevent civilised activities from being crushed.
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