the English of genius, smears." The writer erformed by trombonethe marching bands in ar preparation. Afters players of the popular how to produce these cones on other instrue the incomparable Ross n evoke the laugh of a rinet and the bark of a elphone. But the caterurnal tabby, the baying "houn' dawg," and the ing of the 2-A.-M. rooster to jazz music. They have rt of it because such ins entertain the crowd. ent of curious devices for 1 quality of certain windcks the conservative muby its appearance than When a trombone

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flügelhorns), two trombones, two horns, and three players operating the whole family of saxophones, a family of oboes, and another of clarinets. The great range and variety of sonorities within the powers of such an orchestra must be apparent to any one possessing even a layman's knowledge of orchestral effects.

This jazz orchestra is American. It has impressed itself upon the artistic European mind just as the ragtime and jazz music has captured the popular fancy of Europe. Can any such thing be said of any other American musical creation? In the admirable compositions of the learned Athenians who walk in the groves of the Boston Common one finds all the urbanity and all the lofty contemplation that characterize the works of the fathers. But has Europe hearkened to them? Has a European musician stretched out the arms of his flagging inspiration toward them and clasped to his throbbing breast their needed support? Alas, no! But ragtime and jazz rule the feet of France and Britain. And only last winter there came into the presence of local musiclovers a composition by Igor Stravinsky called "Symphonies for Wind-Instruments," which betrayed that famous experimentalist as an attentive listener to the seductive breathings of the saxophones, clarinets, and stopped trumpets of the jazz band.

e bell of his instrumen: uth of a megaphone and genuinely beautiful tonal ing a legitimate musical uld be more subtly per ified composition if the e not so baldly exposed -player thrusts the bell of nto a derby hat, thereby es to sound muffled and : performing a new feat in y reproducing an effect Hector Berlioz's "Lelio ca ie," made known in 1852 irects the clarinetist at a to wrap the instrument in nd informs us that he de ar "sordino," or "mute" ind of the clarinet an a nd remote as possible." ion of the jazz orchestr t in its promise for the f z itself. A symphony atain about seventy-f en wood-wind and eleve ts. A jazz band shows rance of wind and i bose of the great

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Our jazz music is unquestionably our own. It expresses our ebulliency, our care-free optimism, our nervous energy, and our extravagant humor-characteristics which our foreign critics tell us demark us from the rest of the world. Our composers have in recent years disclosed a desire to embody in music national thought, aspiration, and emotion. Goldmark's "Gettysburg" symphony, Hadley's "North, East, South, and West," Schelling's "Victory Ball," and the negro rhapsodizings of Henry F. Gilbert and John Powell are the fruit of earnest efforts to be truly American, while John Alden Carpenter's "Adventures in a Perambulator" and Deems Taylor's "Through a Looking-Glass" publish the finer qualities of American humor.

But almost no American

Those who have endeavored to follow the kindly advice of Doctor Dvořák and make the folk-music of the negro the basis of their compositions have failed to conquer the public because that public declined to embrace the slave music when dressed in the unbecoming robes of Teutonic tone poems. The arts do not descend upon the people, but rise from them. The opera was the true child of Italy as the symphony was of Germany. The opera was before La Scala and the symphony before the Dresden Conservatory. George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," for piano and orchestra, disclosed certain possibilities of jazz, but Liszt after all cannot father an American son.

Much of the music beloved of the people and called jazz is not jazz nor even closely related to it. The sentimental songs, which seem to awaken responsive chords in the souls of people apparently devoid of all sentiment and sunk in hopeless vulgarity and sordid views of life, are for the most part without traces of an origin similar to that of jazz. They are descendants not of the jig and the doubleshuffle but of the negro's religious melodies, his "Roll, Jordan, Roll" and "Come Tremblin' Down." The semihysterical emotion of the "spiritual," given over into the hands of "poor white trash," has been transformed into maudlin sentiment which one would expect to find lauded not by serious commentators but by the industrious society of "sob sisters." These tearful ditties are prone to fall into slow waltz tempo, unknown to negro music, while the real jazz seems unable to break away from the tyranny of the fox-trot.

If jazz is to rise to the level of musical art, it must overthrow the government of the bass drum and the banjo. It must permit itself to make excursions into the regions of elastic rhythms. When Paul Whiteman gave his now historic concert in Eolian Hall, Victor Herbert was the one composer who pointed out definitely the way to freedom. If jazz must be wed to the dance, then let it seek new dance. forms and rhythms. Mr. Herbert's suite of dances was a triumphant demonstra

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beau sabreur whom I and admiration as he stitutional aboard an vivid as if I had seen General de Charette, 1 Zouaves in vain, but e on the Loire, is the hind, and I can see him hour by hour, slim of nd, straight as an Iroliffet I remember, too, long after he had ridden ield of Sedan; for, while im was strewn with the zure-coated Chasseurs struggled from it in a saved for a ripe old age rgeon, who placed a sil im where the wall of his en. Like General de ro of Sedan remains in leal of the aristocrat to or France is a dutie

éral Boulanger," mai ur by a march sung by all idol of the eighties nother ilk, whom I onc ps Elysées acknowlede f the crowd, but lacking turn his popularity He had been in Ame ‣ centenary of the s ›wn, and had sat a: 1 city drinking with a fe til the early hours & upon a black charger. a a hero in my eyes, £ by subsequent events ldiers, however, such ot alone in their far ge and tact at cru if those who are ement of intr

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an argument concerning the European outlook, that our ambassadors ought to be chosen from among the criminal lawyers of the land. Yet no sooner had this cynicism passed my lips than I was both shamed and heartened by the recollection of two French diplomats I had known in years gone by.

One of these Frenchmen was Monsieur Jules Cambon, Ambassador of his country in our own land for a time and, during a fateful period, its representative in Berlin. Only a few weeks before he was handed his passports by a brutal enemy and, at the same time, denied the courtesy, customary in such circumstances, of a safe conduct to the French frontier, my wife and I happened to pass through the German capital on our way to take ship at Hamburg. Years had gone by since we had known Monsieur Cambon in Washington; yet the thought of annoying one in his arduous and exalted position by attempting to recall to mind Americans, whom he had quite likely forgotten altogether, did not occur to either of us. He happened, however, to hear a few days after our departure from Berlin of our visit, and even in those fatal days found time to write reproaching us for having passed through that city without making "an old friend,” as he expressed it, aware of our presence. Small wonder that he appears to me as the embodiment of French courtesy.

The other diplomat I had in mind is Monsieur Jusserand, "Ambassador of the Republic of Letters," as he was aptly called when representing his land in Washington, and who, by the tact and understanding shown during trying years, endeared himself to American hearts. In the earlier weeks of the war, when it became apparent that the enemies of his land were conducting an unscrupulous propaganda in our midst, I had the temerity to write Monsieur Jusserand suggesting the name of an American correspondent who had recently been expelled from Berlin as that of a man well qualified, both by sentiment and experience, to direct an Allied Press Bureau. His reply was to the effect that neither

the British Ambassador nor he had

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advisability of inaugurating a press campaign, it being his belief that the enemy would do more harm than good to himself by the underhand methods he was pursuing, since in a land of truth and justice such as ours the righteousness of the Allied cause would surely prevail in the end. If there were more diplomats possessing the prescience and tact of Monsieur Jusserand there would be less reason than appears, alas, to be the case at present for concurring in an opinion held by Grotius centuries ago that diplomacy is either useless or mischievous.

From distinguished diplomats to an American painter is a far cry, yet a vision of a lofty studio filled with the likenesses of noted men and women comes to mind without rhyme or reason. "A beautiful disorder," runs a French proverb, "is an effect of art"; and this describes the impression I retain of the studio of G. P. A. Healy, as well as of the man himself; for I recall him in ill-fitting clothes, wearing one of those flowing ties which the French term so aptly une cravate flottante. But I remember him too as one of the most courtly of men and also as a painter of more skill than he has been generally accredited with possessing. He was an artist, moreover, who painted not only his own generation in his own land but many of the crowned heads and great men of Europe as well; his chivalrous personality having made him a sort of courtly ambassador-at-large of the United States at a time when our land was looked upon abroad as a wilderness inhabited by boors and savages.

Puvis de Chavannes, Bonnat, and Carolus Duran I knew in the humble way in which a young man knows the exalted of a generation older than his own; but when I try to recall their personalities, only the shiny bald head of Bonnat and the suavity and ample beard of "Carolus," as he was familiarly called, stand forth with any distinctness. Of Puvis de Chavannes, the only one of this trio whose work I look upon to-day in the light of greatness, not a trait remains in memory. Raffaelli and Madrazo, too, were painters