UNDER MARTIAL LAW.
"Now mind, Mary, if a sentry asks you who are you are, you must immediately answer, 'Friend.’"
"Yes, 'm, but what am I to say if he asks me how baby is?"
Those mistaken persons who maintain that "music has no frontiers" have been sharply rebuked by the patriotic action of the management of certain concerts, who boldly opened the season by expelling all German music from their programmes. It is all very well to say that this is confounding the Germany that we honour and admire the the Germany of the other sort, of which we have had more than enough. The step has been taken on the highest patriotic grounds, and although the ban has been partially removed since the season began, it is clearly indicated that this conciliatory attitude will only last so long as the main German fleet continues to skulk behind the defences of Kiel. If there is any aggressive movement, then let it be understood that Tschaikowski's Pathétique Symphony will be worn threadbare by nightly repetition sooner than that we should have any truck with Brahms, Wagner or Bach. Already the occupation of Brussels has caused the scratching (at the very last moment) of the Schumann concerto.
Of course there is more in it than meets the eye. If all German music is eliminated there are bound to be prodigious gaps which must be filled up somehow. Very well. The result can only be a new state of activity in the home composing industry. This is no time for giving away secrets, but perhaps we may be allowed to say that the continued attendance last week of Sir Henry Wood at the offices of the Board of Trade can only mean that he too is taking his part in a comprehensive and well-considered plan for making way on German industries. Now is the time for the native producer to get to work. Germany must once and for all be ousted from this market. There need be no difficulty in obtaining samples, and we look to British industry and enterprise to do the rest.
We are not sure that neutrals should be allowed into this thing. An exception might be made in the case of Italy, but, apart from her, we should limit the exotic features in our programmes to the works of our allies in the field. It might give a needed fillip to the national music of Japan.
How it strikes our Contemporaries.
"Yesterday's eclipse of the sun was itself eclipsed by the world shadow. Shortly after noon a large inky blot obscured nearly three-quarters of the sun's surface and a violet haze hung over London, but very few people were heeding the phenomenon in the sky. The hawkers, even, were too busy selling patriotic favours to offer smoked glasses."—Daily Mail.
"Londoners did not permit the war to eclipse the eclipse. The hawkers’ cry 'Smoked glass a penny,' was heard everywhere, and there was a ready sale for the pieces of glass which enabled one to view the darkening of the sun."—Daily Mirror.
The allies should come to a better agreement than this.
"Spies Output Down Again," says a contemporary, and we were just going to congratulate the authorities when we discovered that it referred to a Petroleum Company.
