still more at stake in this issue. Those who, as I do, hold
that the best chance for the political future of the world lies in the
weakening of national and racial as well as class consciousness, must
needs regard very suspiciously any of these modern attempts to force
music into channels which are deliberately designed for it by
non-musical considerations: the fettering, by set purpose, of art is a
very considerable step towards the fettering of life itself. England may
sometimes have failed in kindness to her own artistic children, living
and dead; but at any rate we have been free from the curse of a narrow
jealousy and have steadfastly held to the proud faith of the open door
and the open mind. The ideal--so violently dinned into our ears
nowadays--of a national school of composers may very easily mean a
wilful narrowing of our artistic heritage. If an English composer with
nothing to say for himself imitates Brahms or Debussy, it is obviously
regrettable; but he will not mend matters by imitating Purcell. And,
after all, the musician who (save occasionally when seeking texts for
his own individual discourses) borrows his material from his native
folk-music stamps himself, just as much as if he borrowed from any other
quarter, as a common plagiarist incapable of inventing material of his
own. If we may adapt for the purpose Johnson's famous aphorism about
patriotism and scoundrels, we may say that racial parochialism is the
last refuge of composers who cannot compose. Let us assert once more the
supreme beauty of folk-music at its best; but it is often childish, and,
anyhow, childish or not, it is after all the work of children. And any
of the world's activities would come to a strange pass if children--or
any races or classes which, through lost opportunities or the oppression
of others, are still virtually children--were to dictate principles of
intolerance to those who, by no merit of their own but as a plain matter
of fact, can possess the wider vision. Let a composer steep himself as
much as he can in his native folk-music, as in all other great music,
and then write in sincerity whatever is in his own marrow; but anything
approximately like a chauvinistic attitude towards music, as towards
any other of the things of the spirit, means either insensibility to
spiritual ideals or unfaithfulness to them. Let me take an analogy. I
have always felt that a philosophical and historical study of the idea
of honour would