It is natural, I suppose, that a hall that is
half full should look half empty. And a half-empty hall looks a little depressing. But when the hall seats tz,000 an audience that fills half the places is by no means negligible. And that was about the number that occupied the Harringay arena when, on Monday, in the third week of the musical festival there, the Prime Minister was interposed very agreeably in the concert programme to make an appeal for the Margaret McMillan Memorial Fund, which was launched then and there. He did it extremely well, on the basis of an intimate personal knowledge of London's social problems and a close acquaintance with Margaret and Rachel McMillan themselves, and the invaluable work they did as pioneers in the nursery school movement. I am not quite sure why the appeal has been delayed so long after their deaths, and £25o,000 is a large sum to ask for in these days. But the proposed allocation of the fund—Doo,000 for the Rachel McMillan Training College at Deptford ; £too,000 to found a new Margaret McMillan
Training Centre in the North of England ; £3o,000 for the Com- munity Centre at Bradford, where Margaret McMillan began her work for children ; kzo,000 for the Nursery School Association of Great Britain—seems admirable, and I hope very much that the required amount will be raised. As for the concert that occupied the rest of the evening, I have no qualifications for pronouncing on it, and there are compelling reasons why I should not try. But even I (and the wealth of significance in that " even " is beyond computa- tion) could appreciate something of the effect when Dr. Malcolm Sargent mounted the rostrum to conduct the French National Orchestra. The possibilities of the Entente Cordiale were never demonstrated more effectively.
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