A National Music-Drama: The Glastonbury Festival

Extract

A nation must cultivate its own peculiar resources and characteristics before it can count in the intercourse of peoples. A nation which depends for existence or benefit upon the production or resources of other nations is bound to run grave risks. During the War we have had reason to regret that we have allowed so much arable land to become pasture. That is a neglect of national development that we begin at last to understand; but it is not so generally recognised that to depend upon other nations for our art is every whit as dangerous to our national welfare. The evil first becomes evident in our inferior æsthetic sensibilities, but it soon affects us in material ways as well; and so it happens to-day that German workmanship in pianofortes, as well as in musical compositions, is generally preferred, even in the Army.