erating company and the French and Eng- tunnel by electric explosion, filling it with lish railroads connecting with the tube. poisonous air, and other defensive means. But it is upon political grounds that strong There is, however, always the possibility of opposition has been maintained for years a combination of circumstances by which against this enterprise. That graphic and shrewd and daring conspirators might cut vigorous English writer who signs himself wires, overcome sentries, and hold the tunnel "Ignotus" contributes to a recent number ends until an army had been rushed through. of the National Review a ringing denuncia- The danger of such an attack, of course, detion of the scheme, which he entitled "The pends chiefly upon the destiny and policy of Risks of the Channel Tunnel." He admits France. "Ignotus" is compelled to relucthat the revival of this scheme was one of tantly admit that France, with her great rethe inevitable results of the recent improved gard for England, may "ultimately be relations between France and England. Ad- obliged, by various reasons, to throw in her mitting the force and desirability of the en- lot with Germany.". tente cordiale, this writer, however, questions whether it is wise, under existing Euro pean conditions, to "rid England of her insularity." The military danger of the Channel tunnel, he declared, would be small if the English people were trained to arms and organized for war in the way that all great Continental nations in Europe are trained and organized. There is nothing, however, he declares, to prevent a foreign raiding force from striking a sudden blow and securing control of the French end of the tunnel. The British fleet would then be of no service, and the whole British scheme of defense would be upset. It is true that the Committee for National Defense, in considering the scheme, has under advisement plans Moreover, the timid people who are frightened at the mere idea of trusting themselves to the sea, are just as likely to be frightened at the idea of spending an hour in the close atmosphere of a tunnel nearly thirty miles long. To run a grave national risk for the sake of protecting some thousands of tourists from the very transient discomforts of seasickness would indeed be the climax of dementia. "The Times"" Objection. The London Times is among the most radical of the journals in opposition to the tunnel scheme. As to the possibility of destroying the tunnel after it has been seized by a foreign foe, the Times is skeptical. Britons, it declares, cannot even know that their plans for its destruction would work, since they cannot blow up the tunnel or let in the ocean so as to see whether their mines or sluices are in order. To quote: The tunnel, besides, would not be attacked openly with beat of drums. It would be taken by strategem and by surprise. Those who say that such a thing is impossible cannot know anything about war. But there is danger of a different kind. It is not necessary that the tunnel should be taken by men marching through it. Quite as probably it would be seized by a force landed independently. No navy, however powerful, can absolutely guarantee us against a raid; one of the chief difficulties of which,-the severance of its communications by our fleets,-is done away with by a tunnel. The invader would have an absolutely secure line, and for us the sea and the navy and all the safety they imply would cease to exist. The other end of the tunnel might be taken by surprise as well as this one; or this one, if taken, might form an alternative route for invading France. The tunnel may end in France, but it abolishes the Channel for the whole Continent. Course of the Tunnel. The Nuova Antologia (Rome) in a recent number gives an editorial account of the present status of the work on the Channel tunnel, contributed by one of its engineering OVER-CHANNEL AMENITIES. MADAM LA FRANCE (to King Edward): "How will you come to visit me, Sire? Under the water, by tunnel, or over in the old fashion? KING EDWARD (gallantly): "It makes no difference, madam, so long as I visit you!" From the Amsterdammer (Amsterdam). The course of the tunnel will not be straight, [See the map on page 350] and the level will change considerably, since electric traction can overcome difficulties of that kind very easily. The tunnel will consist of two round galleries about fifteen meters apart, of a diameter of from five to six meters. It is calculated that seven years of steady work are necessary to complete the work, which would be impossible were it not for the great increase of engineering knowledge due to experience in making mountain tunnels. Referring again to the Graphic article already quoted from, we quote the following paragraph concerning the eminent French engineer, Thomé de Gamond, the "father of the Channel tunnel": Others before him had toyed with the idea; with de Gamond it was the devouring passion of a lifetime. For twenty years his fertile brain devised scheme after scheme,- tube, bridge, and tunnel, and he won the sympathy and support of both Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. He even dared to beard Lord Palmerston, whose reply was characteristic: "What! you pretend to ask us to contribute to a work whose object is to shorten a distance which we already find too short!" and when the Prince Consort expatiated on the advantages of the scheme, Pam cut him short with the discourteous remark, "You would think quite differently if you had been born in this island." To such a pitch of enthusiasm was de Gamond carried that he repeatedly dived to the bottom of the Straits to obtain specimens of the geological formation, and on one occasion he was attacked by conger eels, and narrowly escaped death. His daughter to this day receives a modest pension from the French Channel Company. Attitude of the French People. As to the feeling in France regarding this tunnel scheme, but particularly regarding England's disinclination to complete it, we quote the graphic words of Mr. W. T. Stead, in the current English Review of Reviews, as follows: There is a disposition on the part of the French to regard the opposition to the making of a tunnel across the Channel as a slight upon the entente cordiale. It says little, they say, for the faith of our dear friends across the sea in the sincerity of our friendship when they recoil with horror from a proposal to make the tunnel. Against this there has been the usual outcry on the part of all the old fogies, who would, if they could, wall themselves off from the rest of the world by a Chinese wall reaching up into the heavens. More serious is the contention of the military au thorities, who protest that the tunnel would be a formidable addition to the dangers of foreign invasion. Most serious is the argument of those who say that, while they absolutely reject all the objections made by the old fogies and the soldiers, they are still of opinion that it would be unwise to make the tunnel until the public is a little wiser than at present. Those of us who have struggled for years, more or less unsuccessfully, against invasion panics, dread, not unnaturally, such a reinforce ment of the materials of panic-mongering as would be afforded by the Channel tunnel. We do not dread a French invasion, but we do fear the panicky nervousness of our own people. Would There Be a Great Commercial A writer in the Contemporary Review, Mr. Walter H. James, disputes the contention of the tunnel-scheme advocates that the tube would be a boon to British and French commerce. He dismisses as idle the assertion that, in case of war, with the British coast blockaded, Englishmen could obtain their food through this tunnel. "But little calculation is required to show that a pair of rails would not bring the food supplies for 36,000,000 people, although doubtless it could be of some use." To quote him further: One thing it is certain the tunnel will not do. it will not break a hole in the wall of hostile tariffs which France has erected around her. At the present moment trade goes much more France. In all probability the tunnel would only from France to England than from England to intensify this. WITH the lapse of forty years the prog- of New England are pointed out, and the ress of the South in its relation to conclusion reached that "racial antagonisms the negro problem is not as demonstrably are present in almost every locality in which satisfying to the student of sociology as the the negro is felt as a race." The aristocracy opportunities in that period seemed to war- of the South, with its virtues and its limitarant. What to attribute this to opens up a tions, is departing; a new democracy, hasquestion that is economic and psychological, tened by industrial development, is arriving. involving not only a discussion of the indus- The attitude of North and South is less symtrial changes in the South since the period pathetic than before to the negro, and, to of reconstruction, but the variant personal make his lot infinitely worse, there is springtraits and mental characteristics, likewise, of the Southerner himself. These elements are correlated and inseparable; nor could they well be otherwise. Accustomed to slavery as an institution, an inheritance, for that matter, abolition left him bereft of his property and compelled him to assume the reshaping of a new industrial system and, a new nationality! If, as sometimes has been said, the Southerner is a man of hard and intractable consistency, of stubborn mind, unable to deal successfully with life, because. possessing none of the resources of self-correction, it must not be forgotten that his trials were bitter, his sacrifices great, and his moral confusion almost insurmountable. For him, an inheritor of tragic change, it was no easy task to turn his back upon the traditions of generations, to alter the very habit of his thoughts, and set himself to build a new society. That was something his critics never faced, and, even admitting that in the former Confederacy there are still men who have never learned the art of forgetting, the reemergent South of to-day is sufficient answer to those who would asperse her leaders. MR. EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY, OF ALABAMA. In this transition of heroic significance ing up, in increasing numbers, an evil negro. there was, says Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy leadership given to "the preaching of grievin the January Sewanee Review, a contro- ances and the fostering of hate." In conseversy of life and fate and duty. Magnanim- quence, negroes become suspicious, restless, ity, moral adaptability, and immediateness and unreliable. In the South to-day agriculfinally triumphed and made it possible for turists believe that the negro may be ultithe South to solve her perplexities. "There mately ignored; industrialists, that he must is no test," says he, "of any culture like the be employed,-when white labor becomes test of dealing helpfully in everyday terms more expensive. Thus does he present the with real things. What is to be social changes among the whites which gave said by the South about a worthy negro who the plain people the ascendancy, and among is getting on in the world?" With this as the blacks which increase their influence in a text he contributes an able paper on the certain directions, and the industrial changes tasks and difficulties that confront a public of both which "are drawing them too far leader in the South to-day. Race prejudice, apart in the country, and forcing them too the growth of our common nationalism, and near together in the city." These changing the commercial, industrial, and agricultural conditions, Mr. Murphy apprehends, are influences contributing to the problem's ad- but a larger opportunity for passion, and, if justment are capably and earnestly presented. unchecked by other forces, will pause at none Assuming that the growth of racial animosities must operate to the disadvantage of the South's interests, and that this will be increased through the arrival of white industrial and agricultural labor, he points out that the South cannot ignore the negro question, and in dealing with it warns it against the demagogue who "employs the negro as the instrument of his own self-exaltation." Its business revival, industrial changes, breaking up of isolation, increasing national life, challenge of new occupations, broader enterprises, and joy of material conquest, all lend encouragement to a sane solution of this vexing problem. Extremists and sensationalists are passing, and younger men with more aggressive confidence and new hopefulness are coming to the front. "Their growing influence is as certain," says this writer, as the final power of truth and wisdom and right reason. Our need is not peculiarly the need of men'great' in statesmanship, letters, oratory, but of men in every phase of occupation, however inconspicuous, who are great 66 in the steady daily power quietly to impress themselves within their concrete world as forces of simplicity, discrimination, firmness, and good sense. The South has been a land of great leaders. Many leaders, moved by great loyalties, is even better." This new leadership will have magnanimity, or a desire to be generous and helpful; it will have adaptability, the power to fit itself to new occasions; patience, knowing that its democracy is on trial; discrimination, to keep clear the line between worthy, and worthless negroes; a sense of proportion, to deal with real things in a real world, and immediateness, to deal with one task at a time. All these will enable it to evolve a wiser and better policy than heretofore, when sentiment, disposition, and habit held sway. Passionately dedicated to the protection of the white race, Mr. Murphy asserts that this new leadership will pledge to the weakest and lowliest of every race the best chance which can be wrested from that fate which has bound us to a common soil. RICHARD STRAUSS AND THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE. POPULAR interest in the musical genius and personality of Richard Strauss has been stimulated by the recent performance of the opera "Salome" in New York as it never could have been by innumerable critical and controversial articles on the art of the composer. The drama of Oscar Wilde, treating as it does of Oriental passions of love and hate so daringly expressed as to make the non-critical mind forget the exquisite art of the language, has been wedded to marvelously subtile music by the German composer, music which adds great power to the sensual appeal of the drama's action. Whether wisely or not, it is a matter of opinion and controversy,-the trustees of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York have forbidden the further presentation of "Salome" in that great auditorium. This incident has aroused a great deal of interest in the composer, Richard Strauss, and makes timely a descriptive and analytical article on the subject of Strauss and his music, which appears in a recent issue of the Deutsche Mon tsschrift (Berlin). (Berlin). The writer, Mr. R. M. Breithaupt, in his prefatory remarks, a serts that the most significant thing about Strauss is that he is "still in process of development, in the full vigor of creation, and we cannot tell whither he will turn, what further fruits this wide-spreading, powerful tree may yet cast into our laps." We quote below the concluding portion of the article, which summarizes the composer's achievement, and speaks of the possibilities of future musical developments. Where this music will lead and where Strauss will finally end we cannot say. We can only divine. The infinitely extended conception of tonality since Wagner (notice, for example, the wealth of the C major tonality of the prelude to Tristan and Isolde) will perhaps draw everything within the realm of its resolving force. With Strauss all generic contrasts of pitch appear still quite naturally modified. Max Reger, however, is already working to resolve all existing harmonic bases and to prepare a new cosmos (in the harmonic sense). It may be that the contours of the old classical forms will be still further obliterated. The modeling of the themes will grow fainter and fainter until everything will melt into a limitless film of shining, floating harmony. The eight-measure period as already to most as nothing but a rigid formula. We prefer to-day the unconfined, the level. Perhaps the old motive will temporarily cease altogether and music really become an "endless ing plains, flaring lights, gaudy reflections, and melody"; musically, one spot of color. Gleamgrotesque play of color will dominate the time, well as the sixteen-measure sentence appear until once again the conqueror appears, the great painter and modeler, who will put an end to all this impotent effeminacy, and will oppose to all this coloring, solid values, positive thematic conceptions, daring invention, and inspired melodies. Music is for many to-day a purely instrumental problem, and its instrumentation merely a sort of physical experimental science of the development and discovery of new acoustic phenomena. It will be years before we shall have worked our way through the instrumental principle and shall take up old treasures, for instance, Händel's proud vocal power, once more. It must be admitted that we owe much to the specifically peculiar gifts of Richard Strauss, the influence of which will make itself felt in the future. One may even deliberately declare: From the Musical Courier. RICHARD STRAUSS. The Music of "Salome." One of the most courageous and incisive criticisms of the music of "Salome" can be found in the following, from Mr. Lawrence Gilman's recent article in the North American Review. Admitting the brilliance of the composition, Mr. Gilman says: Strauss, too, was necessary. Not as necessary, it may well be, as Hector Berlioz, the father of modern instrumentation, but surely as necessary as countless artistic apparitions that must commonly be reckoned as transitions to the general great artistic development. Strauss has refined the color-scheme to an extraordinary degree. His instinct for the picturesque is unremittingly engaged in counteracting as far as possible any differences which may still exist between the various groups of instruments (string and wood instruments, brass wind-instruments. and instruments of percussion), in blending completely the various types of sound with each other. In the art of the most delicate instrumental transitions, in the treatment, for instance, of the groups of wood instruments and their mingling, in the creation of that modern, satis- the intrinsic essence of music is vocal in its fying coherent orchestral tone which strikes nature and will ever remain so. the ear like an adjustment of all the refractory phenomena of sound, he has, in reality, done perfect work. A song like Morgen, with the witchingly conceived nuns' harmony, no one could instrument as he did. It has a melodiousness; a tonality, in short, a harmonious coloring which one cannot conceive could be more perfect. On the other hand, all his imitators and worshipers are genuine bunglers, these modern would-be members of a guild appearing, indeed, as contrasted with their leader, as might an honest whitewasher or house-painter as compared with a real artist. But this instrumentation is the measure of his capacity and his limit. In it we have a perfect reflection of the time. Furthermore: we should be objective enough to acknowledge unreservedly that Richard Strauss has essentially enriched the style of characterization and revealed to us new sides of the music of description and representation. Whether this art, viewed from the esthetic and cultural standpoint, signifies anything really great and profound or perhaps even the regeneration of mankind, the future and history can alone determine. Certain it is that no art has ever been accounted great whose sole claim to admiration lay in its technique. Certain it is, besides, that where composition is too rapid and too abundant, too little is or can be experienced. We shall only then breathe anew and attain the basis for a new art when we shall succeed in restraining the limits of the formal and instrumental and learn It is when one turns from the bewildering magnificence of its orchestral investure to a consideration of the actual substance of the music, the fundamental ideas which lie within the dazzling instrumental envelope, that it is possible to realize why, for many of his most determined admirers, this work marks a pathetic decline from the standard set by Strauss in his former achievements. It is not that the music is often cacophonic in the extreme, that its ugliness ranges from that which is merely harsh and unlovely to that which is brutally and deliberately hideous; for we have not to learn anew, in these days of post-Wagnerian emancipation, that a dramatic exigency justifies any possible musical means that will appropriately express it: to-day we cheerfully concede that, when a character in music-drama tells another character that "his body is like the body of a leper, like a plastered wall where vipers crawl. like a whited sepulchre, full of loathsome things," the sentiment may not be uttered in music of Mendels 2. |