s from the sale of programmes should go into the National
Exchequer, but should be earmarked for a Pension Fund for the relief
of composers on their compulsory retirement at the age of sixty.

Examined by Sir Leonardo Spaghetti Coyne, Mr. Hole said that he was
not aware that the mortality among monkeys employed in the piano-organ
industry during the late War was excessive. But he agreed that
the fearlessness shown by the monkeys at the Zoo in the course of
air-raids deserved a special decoration.

Mr. William Susie, who next occupied the chair, was examined by
Mr. Moody MacTear on the question of the nationalisation of Royalty
Ballads.

Mr. MacTear, quoting an estimate by a Fellow of the
Thermaero-statistical Society, that the ballad composers of the
country could produce one hundred and ninety thousand million ballads
in five hundred and eighty years, asked the witness whether it would
be legitimate that a royalty charge should be made on every ballad
produced during that period for the benefit of certain individuals of
future generations. Mr. Susie replied that the State had recognised
the right of royalties and therefore he saw no good reason for
discontinuing the charge.

_Mr. Gladney Jebb_. Are you aware that there have been more cases of
influenza amongst people who have attended Royalty Ballad concerts
in 1918 than amongst all the troops who served on the Palestine Front
since 1916? Mr. Susie challenged Mr. Jebb to produce his statistics,
and it was arranged, at the suggestion of the President, that Mr. Jebb
should be given facilities to proceed to Jericho and collect them.

After the luncheon interval Mr. Cyril Blunt read a report, which he
had prepared at the request of the Commission, on the Nationalisation
of the Folk-song Industry. He said that it was a scandalous paradox
that this natural and obvious reform had hitherto been successfully
resisted by unscrupulous individualistic action. Folk-tunes were
the product of and belonged to the People, but they had been seized,
exploited and perverted by composers, who should be forced to refund
the profits they had derived from their robbery. The conservation of
our national musical resources should be jealously guarded, and the
collection, notation and harmonisation of these tunes carried on under
rigorous State supervision. At the same time the State might issue
licences for the symphonic use of folk-tunes, the profits from the
sale of these licences to be