ure, the most perfect educational weapon yet devised with
which to combat all the forces that make for musical degradation. And,
apart from all this half-unconsciously wrought music, we have been shown
the value of the bypaths in art, of the work of the great men of the
younger races like the Scandinavians and the Czechs and most of all the
Russians, who do not speak the older classical tongues but have, all the
same, abundance to say that is well worth the whole world's hearing. It
is to our immense gain that we have now come, far more than ever before,
to realize that in the house of music there are many mansions. And, once
again, we have been taught the duty of being fair to the men of our own
blood, past and present. Particularly in our own artistic history there
has been visible a strongly marked tendency, such as no other nation
has shown in equal measure, to neglect and depreciate native work in
comparison with foreign, even when the latter might perhaps be worse.
But I think we may say, without self-laudation, that British composition
is now worth some considerable attention from ourselves and others; it
was, not unnaturally, wellnigh forgotten during its sleep from the death
of Purcell till the rise of Parry--a fairly sound sleep, during which it
occasionally half-opened its eyes for a moment or two--but it is wide
awake now. We are still slow to learn the lesson; but we have come to
realize, at any rate theoretically, the duty of doing what we can, in
the spirit not of favouritism but of justice and knowledge, to disprove
the proverb that a prophet (and an artist also) has no honour in his own
country and in his father's house.

So much to the good. But to-day, more than ever before, many voices are
urging us to go farther--and, I think, to fare worse. Artistic racialism
has always been spontaneous, so far as the art is great. No composer who
is worth anything can be dragooned into being patriotic: he will go his
own way. Some are attracted more than others by the general types of
phrase or the general emotional moods exemplified in the folk-music of
their own race; but that is a matter for neither credit nor discredit.
Individuality includes race as the greater includes the less. The only
vital consideration is the value of the output in the general terms of
all races; and indeed all great folk-music, like any other kind, speaks,
for those who have ears to hear, a world-language and not a dialect. And
there is