Others besides Stalin, we understand, insist on the public being brought into closer contact with the artist, and given a say in what they should hear and see and read. Discussing "Burns and Popular Poetry," Edwin Muir has written:

"It is good that there should be 'poetry for the people,' as it advocates call it. But there is another side of the question, and I found it illustrated while turning over an old number of Criterion the other day, and coming on an editorial note by Mr. T. S. Eliot. A letter by the Poet Laureate and his friends had appeared in The Times under the heading 'Act in the Inn.' Mr. Masefield proposed making use of the country public-house for 'verse-speaking, drama and reading of prose, and thus encouraging a wider appreciation of our language and literature in its highest forms.' Mr Eliot was disconcerted by this proposal, as a number of us would be; for he had always thought of the public-house as one of the few places to which one could escape from verse-speaking, drama and readings of prose. If the public-house is to fall into the hands of the English Association and the British Drama League, where, one must ask bluntly, is a man to go for a beer?'"