throw more light than anything else on many great
problems, notably the problem of war, and that in this investigation the
conception of the duel would have a very prominent place. May we not say
that, just as the individual honour of each of us, unless we are members
of the self-styled upper classes of a few countries, is now supposed to
be able to take care of itself, so the blood in a composer's veins will,
if his music is worth anything, be able to take care of itself also?
Neither honour nor artistic personality is affectable by external
considerations which are on a different plane of value. And music indeed
is the most specifically international, or supernational, of all the
arts; it has not, like literature, any barriers of language, nor, like
painting or sculpture or architecture, any local habitation. Musical
separatism is not a natural quality; it needs careful and continuous
fostering. And I know from personal experience that, all through the
war, there was no difficulty at all in carrying on concerts in the
programmes of which works by living German composers, and songs in the
German language, were included in their due proportions just as before.

Another great factor in modern European thought with which I would
attempt to correlate music is the factor of religion. No one will deny
that the last generation has seen profoundly important changes in
religious thought: whatever may have been the eddies and backwaters, the
main stream has run, and still runs, like a cataract. These changes may
be very differently judged by different types of men, all of them
equally firm believers in the supremacy of spiritual ideals: some may
definitely regret, some may, with the help of such conceptions as that
of progressive revelation, steer a middle course, some (among whom I
would number myself) may definitely welcome. But in whatever light we
may regard these radical refusals of the old allegiances, we shall
naturally expect to find their influence in music, which has had in many
ways so intimate a connexion with religion. Indeed, the conception of
music as in some special way the handmaid of religion dies very hard. It
is still possible, in April 1919, for distinguished musicians, when
appealing for funds for the foundation of a professorship of
ecclesiastical music, to put their names to the statement that 'the
church will always be the chief home and school of music for the
people'[71]: and this when the facts about