pings from the illustrated press. It may be that a miner is a
complicated machine for cutting coal and voting on a ballot-paper. It
may be that coal-owners are like the _petit bleu_ arrangement, a system
of vacuum tubes for whooshing Bradburys about from one to the other.

It may be that everybody delights in bits, in parts, that the public
insists on noses, gaiters, white rabbits, bits of fluff, automata and
gewgaws. If they do, then let 'em. Chu Chin Chow for ever!

In spite of them all: A People's Theatre. A People's Theatre shows men,
and not parts. Not bits, nor bundles of bits. A whole bunch of roles
tied into one won't make an individual. Though gaiters perish, we will
have men.

Although most miners may be pick-cum-shovel-cum-ballot implements,
and no more, still, among miners there must be two or three living
individuals. The same among the masters. The majority are suction-tubes
for Bradburys. But is this Sodom of Industrialism there are surely ten
men, all told. My poor little withered grain of mustard seed, I am half
afraid to take you across to the seed-testing department!

And if there are men, there is A People's Theatre.

How many tragic situations did Goethe say were possible? Something like
thirty-two. Which seems a lot. Anyhow, granted that men are men still,
that not all of them are bits, parts, machine-sections, then we have
added another tragic possibility to the list: the Strike situation. As
yet no one tackles this situation. It is a sort of Medusa head, which
turns--no, not to stone, but to sloppy treacle. Mr. Galsworthy had a
peep, and sank down towards bathos.

Granted that men are still men, Labour _v_. Capitalism is a tragic
struggle. If men are no more than implements, it is non-tragic and
merely disastrous. In tragedy the man is more than his part. Hamlet is
more than Prince of Denmark, Macbeth is more than murderer of Duncan.
The man is caught in the wheels of his part, his fate, he may be torn
asunder. He may be killed, but the resistant, integral soul in him is
not destroyed. He comes through, though he dies. He goes through with
his fate, though death swallows him. And it is in this facing of fate,
this going right through with it, that tragedy lies. Tragedy is not
disaster. It is a disaster when a cart-wheel goes over a frog, but it is
not a tragedy, not the hugest; not the death of ten million men. It is
only a cartwheel going over a frog. There must be a supreme STRUGGLE.

In