“It is a blessing”—a friend once told me—“that as a rule you musicians should be inarticulate.” I need hardly add that my outspoken friend was himself a literary man. The answer, which of course did not then occur to me, might have been: “Well, what of it? if we take it that the only thing worth bothering about is the ineffable,” though I doubt whether my friend could have agreed. He went on: “Look at all the nonsense your best people have uttered as soon as they generalize upon characteristics and, above all, upon the merits of their own or other nations' music. From Rousseau, if you take him to be one of you, to Debussy's Monsieur Croche Anti-dilettante, one could make a staggering anthology, and that is leaving contemporaries in peace.” True enough. Clearly, we must needs take the literary man at his word, but who would dream of taking a musician at his? The English: that unmusical nation par excellence, is a notion still deeply rooted in Continental minds. English music since Delius leading the world in “quality and quantity” is a more recent view, propounded by no mean authority on this side of the Channel. The extremes, I suppose, compensate and cancel each other. Still, one often wishes to exclaim with Swift: “I have hated all nations, professions and communities, and all my love is for individuals.”

For all practical purposes opera in America was, for a long period, a mere luxury product for the few, a social event much more than an artistic undertaking. It had not played any significant part in the spiritual and cultural development of the nation. To Europeans, opera in America meant only the making of as much money as possible in the shortest possible time. To Americans it meant the display of the most precious jewels and the most expensive gowns of a few hundred privileged families at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. And for the rest of the population it meant practically nothing.

It is inevitable that the passing of the Education Act, 1944, and the production of the Norwood report on ‘Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools’ and the McNair report on ‘Teachers and Youth Leaders’ should raise the question as to the position which music is to occupy in schools of the post-war period to which we are all so eagerly looking forward.

Nothing could better demonstrate the importance of Switzerland in the world's cultural life than the fact that this ‘isle of peace’ is the only place on the European Continent where music is fostered in a truly international sense. This cultivation springs from the old traditions of the Swiss cities, where music has always been kept alive.

‘Western Approaches’ is among the two or three outstanding British films of the war period. It is a triumph of intelligent direction over the difficulties of using ‘naturals’ instead of professional actors. ‘Western Approaches’ comes unscathed through the gorgeous technicolour, in spite of many sequences being stiff with visual falsehoods, in the picture-postcard conventions of Messrs. Raphael Tuck & Sons. The film is full of magnificent sequences, true and convincing, and provides the composer, Clifton Parker, with many opportunities of contributing to it even within the scope of the naturalistic drama. This is, I believe, Clifton Parker's most important film score to date. It is highly effective and is always apt, and it reveals quite a new side of a composer who had previously been known—and far less known than the quality of his music merited—only as a composer of light music. To his task in ‘Western Approaches’ Parker brought a fine sense of orchestral colour, plus skill and taste in handling his medium. Although it seemed that his music broke little new ground it nevertheless was always vital and significant.