ONE of the most original and successful efforts on behalf of the funds of the Institution was carried out at Bedford on 27th June. It was an historical pageant organised by the Bedford Rotary Club, and was followed by a military tattoo. The proceeds of the pageant j were devoted to the Bedford Branch, ! and those of the tattoo, in the evening, to the Bedford County Hospital.

In arranging and carrying out the pageant the Rotary Club had the help of the Mayor and Corporation, officers and men from the 2nd and 5th Battalions and the Depot of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, the O.T.C.'s of Bedford School and Bedford Modern School, the Bedford Rugby Union Club, Athletic Football Club, Swimming Club and Amateur Operatic Society and the Bedford Fire Brigade.

Thus the whole town gave its help.

Bedford has a very old history. It was a frontier town between Saxon and Dane when the latter held all the eastern and northern part of England, and it was incidents in the warfare between Saxon and Dane which the pageant depicted. It showed Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, and his sister Ethelfleda, wife of the Ealdorman of Mercia, meeting at Bedford to discuss their military operations against the Danes, and welcomed with games and a joust. This pageant of pleasure was followed by a Danish attack on Bedford, the Danes coming up the Ouse from Huntingdon in their boats.

It was a pageant partly on water and partly on land. It depicted incidents in that long warfare, between two of the peoples from whom the English are descended, in which the sea-spirit of the English was first shown. As such it was very appropriate that the pageant should have been in aid of the Life-boats; and the past and present of this ancient sea-spirit met on the Ouse, for on that same afternoon the Danish galleys came up to attack Bedford, and a modern Life-boat, after taking part in a procession through the town, was launched in the river.

It is not all towns that have so old ahistory as Bedford, nor all whose history could be so appropriately staged to help the Life-boats, but we hope that others may follow the fine and generous example of the Bedford Rotary Club, and hold similar pageants in honour of their past and in aid of the Life-boat .Service.

The exact sum received by the Bedford Branch was £386 18s". 5rf., and we take this opportunity of publicly recording the hearty thanks which have been conveyed to the Rotary Club..