How is the Empire?

James Bertram and Rona Bailey spoke on Saturday evening about "Socialism and Colonial Countries",—Mr Bertram dealing with the Far East he knows at first hand, and Mrs Bailey with youth movements in India, Africa and elsewhere, whose representatives she met at the WFDY Festival in 1947. The national revolutions of Malaya, Korea, China and the Philippines, protruded themselves as the main topics of the session. There was a general agreement that national self-government was a necessary prerequisite for peace and socialism and that Korea and the Philippines fell into a general Asian pattern of colonial revolt to these ends.

The late evening was filled with music—records of Robeson singing "Joe Hill" and "The Four Generals" being popular. There was also a lecord of Robeson delivering a magnificent address in London last February on the world situation—"The only thing that will work is Peace!" Every now and then, to press a point home, his voice would fade out, we would hear the voices of Wallace. Roosevelt, or Foster Dulles; and as a general background and theme, welling up to a mighty chorus at the end of the fourth and final side, was Robeson with an American Choir, singing the Anthem of the United Nations. The words brought cack those wonderful, terrible years when the Nations were United in the fight against the Hitlerites:

"The sun and the stars are all ringing
With song rising strong from the earth.
The voice of humanity singing
The hymn of a new world in birth,"

to the old European folk-melody made famous by Shostakovich's arrangement.

The Club resolved to have a copy made of these recordings, and a collection was taken up for this purpose.

Saturday night was spent by those faithful who stayed on the premises in a certain degree of comfort, despite a tendency in the small hours to mistake the sleeping-quarters for a circus tent.