Pioneer

Electric Theatre. -1 It is not often that I deal with -the-c-urrent pro- grammes at the Electric Theatre, but this week I cannot help but comment upon the marvellous two top-liners that have followed each other in the two progmmmes. The Riders of the Pur- ple. Sage that was the star turn from Monday to Wednesday I regarded as the greatest film I had seen; and "The Rainbow Trial" that is topping the current list is part of the same theme, and is regarded by myself as part of one great film, though each of its parts may be re- garded as a separate entertainment. I should find it hard to describe the story of adventure in the Mormon country of Utah, because the whole story is like an intensely dramatic chap- ten- torn from the book of life; and not like a piece of fiction framed together according to rule for dramatic purposes only. Thousands are with me, too, in regarding the story and playing as exceptionally fine as witness the oapacity houses that have attended each show. And the same enterprise that "brought to us those two great features is equally discernable in next week's holiday programmes. From Mon- day the attraction is to be the film version of Sporting Lif, whioh as a stage play created a recoixl in its run at Drury Lane that has never been approached before or since. Sporting Life" despite the very serious handicaps that the stage offers to the presentation of either boxing or horse racing scenes was palpably so finely romantic and healthy that the British public took it to its heart and made of it a classic of the stage. With those restrictions re- moved, and the big freedom of outdoors im- ported as the film alone allows it to be intro- duced, the picture has an even more gripping appeal than had its .stage parent. To have in- cluded it in a Christmas week programme was nothing less than a stroke of genius in manage- ment. Then from Thursday there is one of the most remarkable of new releases starring in The Eternal Magdalene," a Stoll-Goldwyn picture, with the great Maxine Elliott as leading lady. i have read over the .story, and liave been struck with its likeness to much of the best work that Dickens did. The story tells of the efforts of Elijah Bradshaw—a powerful city magnate—to rid his city of its evils by a reformist movement. But his reformist activity is turned on its track by the discovery that his own daughter has stepped ion the brink of ruin Sinking into a stupor, the Magdalene comes to him and through her ministrations he is led to .see the misery and ruin that lie himself in his sternness has brought to others. Himself on the brink of despair, riharity touches his heart and remoulds his whole character. The erring child is brought back to the home that had been closed against her. Then lie awakes It was only a dream—but the seed had been sown, the daughter returns, and hiimanitarianism sets aside the drastic re- form movement to supplant it with something better. There is a touch of Scrooge's ighost there that is apt for the season. Then there is much that is Christmassy in the fill-up films, and a real Christmas programme for the special Christ- mas week matinees for the little ones that are to be held.

DR. BARNADO'S LEAGUE. I Sir,—A cheque for f;88 Os. 7id. has been sent to Miss Rachel Norton, Secretary of Dr. Bar- nado's Homes, as the result. of the jumble sale recently held at Tabernacle Hall. On behalf of the local committee I beg to thank everybody who kindly assisted and sent gifts to make the sale a,&uccess.-Yo-Rrs faithfully, MARY H. JONES. I 4 Brynhyfryd, Troedyrhiw, December 15th, 1919.

Nationalisation Or I MR. J. H. THOMAS has never been in happier vein than he exhibited during his this week's tour of South Wales. His pronouncements on the railway question are calculated to prove an education in the whole complex that the chief artery of transport presented. Unfortunately use is already being made of the possibilities of a. temporary settlement of the railwaymen's difficulties by the anti-nationalisers, who are so anxious that the mines should continue to be the property of private capitalists, even if the expense to be paid for the retention is to be the admission of the miners into a shadowy mirage of share in the management that will delude them for a time into the delusion that they have secured the substance of their demands. Either such men are woefully ignorant of the whole question, or they think that the miners are. If the railwaymen care to accept anything short of nationalisation of their industry, that is their concern for the moment, and it does not alter the fact that no system of divided management can alter the fundamental opposition of Capital and Labour. If it does anything at all it merely postpones an impending calamity .by mutual agreement, but beyond that it cannot go, and that the railw aymen realise that that is the limit of its possibilities is amply attested by the tena- ciousness with which they have clung to their own power—the power to strike. No compromise can be lastingly .satisfactory that does not delve deeper than an attempt to reconcile the irrecon- cilable. Capitalism seeks pi-i)fits-if the profit on money employed in railway undertakings falls far below the average return of invested capital —then there is going to be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and general dissatisfaction in the ranks of railway investors, and attempts to withdraw the capital that is there. If on the other hand Capital is not to fall below that level, then one of two things has got to happen— either the railway workers will have to carefully revise their present aspirations for a bigger and better share of life and remain content as hewers of wood and drawers of water at miserably in- adequate wages, or the whole posi tion. will have to be rendered economically unsound for the na- tion by heavy subsidisation from the public purse. Assuming the last, what sort of logic is it that counsels an all-round application of that principle of Isubsidation to industry after indus- try, and where does it lead There is only one source from which the wealth that represents the subsidy can come. The labour of thp worker ap- plied to the raw materials -of earth so that by extending the circle of pacification by subsidy wide enough, as it would ultimatety, and before long have to be extended, the same position a.s was originally faced would arise again in a more intense form, and the whole thing have to be gone into again on the .same basis. The quarrel all the time turns upon the ownership of the products that labour working under the normal social conditions of the. time makes possible, and no fanciful schemes can for long invalidate that fact, or evade its moral. The moral is, of course, that participation in the fruits of that product should be a« social a.s the processes that call it into being, and should be determined by parti- cipation in the social work necessary for the production of the product. The issue is Social- ism, and no tinkering evades St. Whether it, is to-day, next year, or twenty years hence Social- ism will have to be the solution finally invoked. If the railwaymen are not prepared for that at once, then they will proceed towards it by stages each one so long as the wage-system la.sts and Capitalism rules, the State will prove but mile- stones to mark the journey to the final goal. For the miners socialisation is the logical next step. Not only are they prepared for it, but a Royal Commission has recommended it, and so in the coal industry, milestones are to be alrol- ished and the goal accomplished in one journey. But even so, the journey will not be partiei- patable in to the fullest until all are side by side. The arrival of the miners will be the incentive for the others to complete the journey.

eath Of The", Citizen" Guardg. I THK announcement that the Government has sent word around thatbhe Citizen Guards are to be quietly dropped out of existence is one of the few signs of sanity that the Coalition has dis- played during its twelve months of office. The body which was started with some little noise during the recent railway strike, was by way of being an extension of the war-time special con- stabulary, especially adapted for service during periods of industrial strife. It was to be a sort of watered down and official Pinkerton service, in which men prejudiced against the strikers and the strikers' class were to be entj-usted with a good hardwood baton and a right to interpret the most misunderstood phrase in social 'science, the phrase "peaceful picketting." Of course, trou- ble would have resisted, bad trouble, too, if the scheme had matured and the unofficial force em- ployed—and the scheme was framed in such a way that that trouble would never have been brought home, for the force comprised a com- mittee in each borough and ,county area to be composed of "innuential and active "citizens," and the officers were to be chosen in consultation with the chief officer of police. One of the worst aspects of the release of such a body of men on strikers and demonstrators, who under the tact- ful handling of professional police officers would quietly disperse after blowing off steam" would be to transform mere exuberance into real nasty rdotousness and to engender, by the sub- sequent use that would have to be made of the real police force, an antagonism between the force and^the great mass of working-class citi- zens that would be extremely unhealthy for the good governance, law and order of the towns and country. Brit-ish Labour is too well organised and too conscious of its dignity and destiny to quietly allow the grafting of any American in- dustrial methods, either half-hearted or full- blooded; official, semi-official or private, into the stem of otii- national life, and, for once, the Gov- ernment has shown commonsense in relinquish- ing an unsavoury proposal that could but have been fraught with the most disastrous conse- quences.

I The Russian Question. I THE statements made in the House of Commons this week with reference to the Government's policy towards Russia and peace with her, should have awakened every Labourite to the necessity of a istill greater and more persistent agitation on the question of the nation's relationship with that great. empire, than that which ship-wrecked Mr. Churchill's dearest aspirations some time back. The statement that the British Embassy that received a peace-offer from the Soviet and, m accordance with instructions from the Govern- ment, returned it unopened at the very time that the Premier and his colleagues were busily deny- ing that any offer liad ever been received and that still more shameful pretext that not being at war with Russia, the Soviet to make peacfc must approach the bloody men, Roltchak and Denikin, wliom they would long ago have routed but for the support that this country accorded to those adventurers, reveal a policy is to the nation, as it is heartless on the part of the Government. Colonel Malone last Sunday in Merthyr referred to his fear that the hostility being displayed by the premier powers of the world towards Russia and her aspirations, were preparing a soil- that might produce a Napoleon that would dwarf the Corsican into insignifi- cance, and result in a final calamity within the next two decades stupendously more terrible than that of the world war of 1914-18. We our- selves felt-that Lieut.-Colonel Malone was press- ing his analogy from the French revolution much further than was legitimately allowable; but when crass class prejudice exhibits the malicious intensity that goes to the extent of attempting to compel a great and gloriously conscious em- pire to drag itself through the mire and dirt of sneering contumely, and contemptuous inatten- tion, then the reaction might very well be any- thing at all. Our capitalists' wa.r against Rus- sia is as real and well-known tas was our war against the Central Powers, and our need for peace is as great, if not eventually greater, in the one case as in the other. In face of the perfectly well-known facts Of, our armed inter- vention, of our persistent engagement in con- spiracy with murderous ruffians who without our assistance could never have organised their mobs of savage reactionaries and kept them in the field, and of our policy of blockading the great Empire of the North, in face of those facts, we say, an attempt to play upon the fact that no exchange of formal declarations of hos- tility have been exchanged are a.s mad, as non- winners dancing on a deep pond skinned with a one-night snap-frost coating of ice. Nay, it would be infinitely more foolish for the madman who did that would pay the penalty in his own person and the world would be the richer by the disappearance of one poor fool, whereas, in the case of contemptuously flinging hack into the face of Russia her offers of peace on terms that are more than just. as we have done now on about a dozen different occasions, may very well have to be paid for with interest by ourselves and our children after us. Paid for, that by the workers of Britain who have not a tiling to gain, and who are losing much both financially and morally, by the present policy. Their mad- men tactics of international tomfoolery, have got to stop for everyone's good, and the sooner we stop them, and sense the possibilities of similar harm from the hands that to-day work such mis- chief, the sooner will the air grow healthier for ourselves and for posterity.

These Altered Days I J. H. THOMAS STOPS LADY CICARETTE I SMOKERS. Time was that a man felt uncomfortable even in a smoking compartment if ladies were present when he lit up for the evidences of asthma- tic affections amongst the lady travellers was sin- gularly universal. But that was in the past. Things have been revolutionised since then, and no surer sign of the completeness of the revolu- tion is to be found than in the fact that at the second day's sitting of the Trades Union Con- gress last Wednesday Mr. J. H. Thomas, as chairman, had to interrupt the proceedings whilst he extinguished some young lady cigar- ette smokers in the gallery. "Will those young ladies in the gallery note that sanoking is not allowed either down here or up'there? After that the interview with the lady who prefers cigars to chocolates, and a matured briar whilst house-work is in progress, sounds like the truth.

TWO UNGRATEFUL SONS. I Two Pengam men named Lewis, earning over £ 9 per week on an average, were summoned to pay something towards the maintenance of their aged father, who is in receipt of 50s. per week out-of-door relief. Mr. Richards, warrant officer for the Guar- dians, told the Merthyr Stipendiary on Tuesday that the two mep refused to pay the Guardians 10s. a week each, although another married bro- ther, Thomas John Lewis, agreed to pay 5s. The Stipendiary made an order against the two sons to pay 10s. per week and costs.

Colliery Officials' Session. >1 CARDIFF MEETINC DEMANDS 9 RECOGNITION. 9 There was a good ititondance of members of the South Wales and Monmouthshire Colliery Officials Union at Cardiff last Saturday when Mr. J. Ritson, of Northumberland, the President. of the Colliery Officials' Association of Great Britain, attended and addressed the meeting. Mr. D. Lewis, of Nine Mile Point, in welcom- j ing the National President, dwelt upon the need for organisation amongst the officials, and stated that in his opinion the South Wales owners were making the greatest mistake of their careers in refusing the recognition of the union, that had ■ been so freely accorded by the masters of Lan- j cashire, Cheshire, Northumberland and Durham. Mr. J. Ritson in his speech on the urgency of organisation agreed that until a few years ago 1 the officials had got on very smoothly without organisation, but of late the workmen by reason of organisation had secured something like 140 I per cent, advances in wages, whilst the incre- < menjt to the officials had only been somewhere ] from 20 to 25 per cent., rising to 75 per cent. in some cases.. Yet the cost of Living pressed as hardly upon the officials as upon the workers. Mr. T. Helstead, of Lancashire, the general secretary of the Union, said that while officials were prepared to give of their best to the em- love rs, still they expected a fair return for their services. He prom-ised the active assistance of the National Union in the fight for recognition | in South Wales. i

— ? Care of School-Children. ARE MERTHYR SCHOOLS HEALTHY? I Some of Merthyr ischools are in a bad state of repair, if all the complaints heard at the Build- ing and Sites Committee on Wednesday ixe,any- where near the mark. The continuous wet weather has been finding out the weak spots. At Ahermorlfli* the whole school wants re- roofing. a.s the water comes in, the children have to hang their clothes on damp walls, and there are other things which are not conducive to the health of the children. At Troedyrhiw the play- 1 grounds are in a horrible state and want re- f levelling and all the big holes filled up. At pre- sent th<> series of \?ater holes are a (isngc-i- to the children. The Trelmrris representatives sub- mitted a long list of needs for their schools. Thei-e the teachers catch the water leakages with buckets, and 3.11 the water (taps are so worn that water is continually running. The cookery mis- tress has a cooker that w ill not cook, and conse- quently theiSe a re no cookery lessons. It was decided to effect immediate improve- ment in these mattters, and get the architect to brjng up a. report as to the cost of other matters requiring attention. The schools from Merthyr Vale to P-ant also want some attention, either in lighting, in ven- tilation, or inSlOffioe detail which is not conducive to the health of the youngest children.

Tenders Sio,%v. II RHYMNEY ARCHITECTS REPORT ON I HOUSINC SCHEME. Apparently not even the £1.)0 subsidy that has been promised to enterprising builders of houses can tempt that body of tradesmen to activity for at last week's meeting of the Rhymney District Council it was reported ,by the architect in con- nection w ith the housing schemes -that lie was experiencing great difficulty in securing tenders. Six builders had submitted their names, but owing to labour troubles and the unsatisfactory Government methods of dealing with the ques- tion, tendering was very slow. In view of this statement the. time for receiving tenders was extended for a month. Permission has been re- ceived to borrow. £ 2,000 in connection- with the scheme.

Fernhill Workers. REFUSE SEVEN-HOUR WEEK-END NICHTS The request of the Fernhill management to its colliery w orkers to put in a seven-hour turn on Saturday and Sunday nights in place of the six- | hours for each of tho-<? turns that has hitherto ■ been paid for at fnU seven-hour rates, resiilted 1 in a mass meeting of the Fern.hiU workers at m Treherben lat Saturday, at which it was de- cided to refrain from working these nights until the management flwvd reinstated the six-hou* shift for full-time payment.

SOCIALIST PERSECUTION IN AMERICA. < What is described as a spontaneous reaction against Socialists and Socialism is in progress in the United States. Socialist demonstrations appear to be systematically broken up by service men, and the National Executive of the Socialist Party has been discussing what measures to take for the defence of free speech. A New York f message states that the Committee will seek an interview with the Attorney General in order to lay before him evidence of the difficulties they have encountered in holding meetings of workers to demand the release of political prisoners.

CHANCE OF ADDRESS. We are asked to announce the change of ad- dress of the Pontypridd I.L.P. secretary. All Communications must, be addressed to Mr. R. T. Williams (secretary pro tern), Maesgarmon House, Newtown, Pontypridd. i