THE British Empire Exhibition is, as it should be, vast. Like the British Empire itself, it covers a large space. The curious citizen who visits it may pass from the tropics to the pole in a brief afternoon. From Canada to Nigeria is a long journey, and at Wembley we may catch sight of them both in an easy saunter. If these weary you, you may seek amusement in a Maori hut or wonder at the beauty of a Burmese temple. And, wherever you turn, you may feel a legitimate pride in the many diversities of race and custom. The right of citizenship was never shared by so many differing people, differing in creed and fancy, in skill and ambition, since the world began.

Your pride in the Exhibition is perhaps less than your pride in the Empire which it symbolises. Many of the pavilions in which are gathered the spoils of the Dominions are not without an architectural interest. The Exhibition fails in arrangement. It is impossible, as you wander along its dusty highways, not to compare it with the Exhibition which in 1900 brought all the

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world to Paris; and if you thus compare it you must admit that it is deficient in taste. Now the French are eminent in taste. others, they possess the tact of arrangement. Of the discordant elements which made up their Exhibition they evolved a beautiful and coherent whole. Though in the famous Street of Nations an English manor - house jostled a poor copy of Milan Cathedral, though a Hungarian stronghold stood side by side with a castle in Spain, the genius of France gave to all these strange things a surprising unity. The spectator could not but feel that each of them had its proper place in an immense design. It is the defect of Wembley that, as you find your way from pavilion to pavilion, it seems as though its makers were content to discover a large empty space and drop down the pavilions within it, as whim or fancy took them. There has been no attempt to compose a whole and single work; no sacrifice is made to the art of arrangement; and the visitor must get what satisfaction he may

from contemplating the multifarious life and industry of our Empire.

Multifarious, indeed, is the life, tireless is the industry of our dominions. It is as though a panorama were unfolded before your eyes of man in every stage of his progress from savagery to civilisation.

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nearer he remains to savagery, the more deeply interesting does he seem to-day. The savage is master of himself and of the simple means of life. He has not yet become the slave of machinery. You observe him sadly in his later stages, when he bows the knee to the twin gods of petrol and electricity, when he devotes himself to the saving of the time which, when he has saved it, he knows not how to employ. But at Wembley, at any rate, there is that which should please all the tastes. There is East Africa for the simpleminded. There is the Hall of Machinery for the gloomy lover of speed and progress. Above all, there is a palace of the Arts, to remind you that man does not live by bread or by machinery alone. Here, too, Wembley suffers if we remember the Paris of 1900. Although on the walls of the picture-gallery hang many masterpieces, although we carried away an ineffaceable memory of a portrait by Gainsborough, the collection seems to have been made at haphazard. So the display of furniture, as it was made at various epochs, is rather a sketch of what might have been

done than a finished design. On the other hand, the Queen's Doll's House, a masterpiece in little, illustrates perfectly the arts of an elegant life as it is lived in the twentieth century, and will remain for ever in the minds of most as the clou of a great exhibition.

And since, rightly enough, an exhibition should in one aspect suggest a country fair, the Amusements Park has been contrived for those who take their pleasures violently. There you are permitted, on payment, to enjoy" all those sensations which in life you are at the greatest pains to avoid. For sixpence you may ride upon the "witching waves," and endure, modestly, the pain of sea-sickness. For the same sum you may do your best to drive a motor-car, with the full assurance that a collision is inevitable, or you may be shot through the air on the end of a rope. In brief, there is no end to the discomfort which may be yours for a small fee, and the zeal or the heroism of the people seems inexhaustible.

When you have seen what is to be seen, and have wondered at the industry and resource of the Dominions, you cannot but ask yourselves what it means. Is this vast Exhibition a beginning or an end? Is it a hymn of triumph or a funeral knell Do those who visit Wembley sincerely think with pride of the Dominions, or do they go thither merely agape to look upon some strange thing? One thing is clear to

those who have eyes to seethat, despite some shortcomings, the British Empire Exhibition is such as no other country could rival, and which no other age could have surpassed. Here is gathered together everything that the British Empire could want or need -corn and oil, the fruits of the earth, timber in abundance and of every kind, gold and silver, and jewels. If only we and the Dominions held together, we might flourish independently of the rest of the world. And then the politicians intervene to spoil a marvellous dream. What are the Colonies to the demagogues who now pretend to rule us? A mere hindrance to the main object of their lives, which is to gather votes. The poor deluded electors, who have been taught that patriotism is a vice, that it is a better thing to flatter their enemies than to help their friends, look askance at the other Britons oversea. They hear daily in their conventicles, where the pure gospel of Socialism is preached, that it is the chief object of our Ministers to encourage trade with Bolshevik Russia. It matters not to Mr Ramsay MacDonald and his friends that, even before the Bolsheviks accepted murder and arson and torture as a settled policy, our trade with all the Russias was less than our trade with New Zealand. To the Socialists trade with those whom Lenin's cruelty has spared is a magnificent

"gesture," for that is what they call it in their detestable jargon, and trade with the Dominions, which still look to Great Britain as their home, and which fought with us in the war, is a thing to be discouraged. And so it is that in the year of the Exhibition, the policy of Colonial Preference is frowned upon by men quickened by no imagination and inspired by a hatred of the Empire. overtures which the Dominions have made to us are flouted or ignored, and it is not the fault of the Socialist Government that the ties of Empire are not permanently weakened.

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Again, when Australia and New Zealand begged that Singapore be made into a naval base, Mr MacDonald preferred to show a foolishly magnanimous front to those who are not of our kin, and who will interpret his attitude as a proof of weakness rather than to acquiesce in the wise and loudly expressed desire of the Dominions. He finds it easy to snub a friend, easier still to surrender to a potential enemy. And though he has done us incalculable harm, he has not succeeded in achieving the main ambition of his life. While the Dominions have been put firmly in their place, trade with Russia is as far off as ever. But the Socialists may still go down to their gallant electors and tell them their tinned salmon will not cost them more. In truth, so long as the housewives of