The streets and windows were crowded, but by some strange freak of crowd psychology there was practically no cheering. The men marched block after block through silent staring crowds, where the sporadic cheers or clapping of the few served only to accentuate the silence of the rest. The reason for this cold reception will always be a mystery. Of course the battleships had been in no actual fights, but they helped the English to keep the Germans bottled up. Theirs had been the hard and thankless task of being always ready and never called.

Probably the crowd never thought it out. They were satiated with parades and cheering; the war was over and Oh, well, whatever the reason, the fact remained, and to the men who marched, there could come but one thought: Was it for this that they were kept outside, away from family and friends all of Christmas Day?

Shortly after this, Tom received orders as aide to Admiral X- in Panama. Two whole years of shore duty confronted us, and life seemed good indeed.

Travelling by transport can be distinctly amusing, if you don't get seasick and if you carry your sense of humor with you. The boats are usually filled to capacity, baths are few and hard to get to, and everything is graded strictly according to rank. Even the women go on the rank of their husbands whether present or absent. Of course with the berthing of the passengers it would have to be that way, but sensible women never think of it after that. There are quite a number of women, however, who use their husband's rank as a lever to get them all sorts of privileges, and they can't bear that any woman whose husband's rank is lower than theirs, should have a single thing in the way of comfort or privilege that they might not have.

The transport we sailed on had its quota of all kinds, and before the day was over the groups began to classify. First are the incessant card-players who play morning, noon, and night, oblivious of everything else. Then there are the ones who take the children seriously and sit around in groups talking of babies and clothes. Next there are the flirtatious

ones, whose private haunts are windand-light-shielded corners. And last, the much-caricatured, much-to-be-pitied seasick ones.

For the first few days, until we were well past Cape Hatteras, the last group held, by far, the greatest number. It was early in March, cold and stormy, and the deck was decidedly unpopular. About the third day out, however, the weather cleared, and in an hour the decks were filled, and pleasures, as usual, were the order of the day.

When we arrived at Panama we left the transport and took the train across the Isthmus, as the trip through the locks was apt to be long and hot and we were anxious to get settled.

The real naval station is at Colon, but Tom's duties as aide kept us on the Pacific side, and we were assigned to quarters on the army post. So that really for our two years' shore duty, we were more army than navy.

The quarters at Fort Amador are all quite new and very comfortable. From the windows of our bedroom we could see the silhouette of houses in Old Panama City, lending a touch of the Old World to the modern activities that surround the Canal zone. Right in the rear of our house ran the parade-ground, the centre of all activities on an army post, from "guard mount" in the morning to "colors" at night. There's always something doing, and over all is the sound of the bugle-call, ringing out for work or play, running like a silver thread through my memory of those years of army life.

Any army post is an essentially social spot, and in a place like Panama where the servant question is unknown and living is a joy, there were always parties and good times being planned, and our two years together went by on wings.

In the winter the Atlantic and Pacific fleets had their joint manoeuvres in the bay. Every available accommmodation was filled. The liberty parties from the ships completely overflowed the Isthmus. Prices soared, a condition inevitable to the advent of the fleet in any community. Class reunions, entertainments by the governor and army for the navy, and return parties on the ships made us live in a whirl.

HAT is ragtime? What is jazz? And whence and whither? Ragtime is no longer mentioned. "Jazz" has lost its original meaning. Paul Whiteman, artist in popular music, protests against calling the prevailing species of dance-songs jazz. But no matter what we choose to call our popular music, it is sui generis. We should not apologize for it. "A poor thing, but mine own," mumbled the shamefaced Touchstone. Yet, barring her inability to babble like her chosen lord and master, Audrey was probably quite as valuable a member of the human race as the fool in the forest. Perhaps her price was not above rubies, but she was at least worthy of the respect of a Touchstone.

Now, as for what is at present called jazz, we Americans have no need to whimper "a poor thing, but mine own." It is our own, but if it is a poor thing then we are poor things too, for it represents us with uncanny fidelity. What else musical have we created? The melancholy echoes of dissenters' chapels composed by Hopkins or the solemn platitudes of Lowell Mason? Was there a rural church in all Britain from which these might not have emerged? Or shall we pin our faith on the "Hora Novissima" of Horatio Parker, breathing the blessed spirit of the venerable festival of the Three Choirs, or the "Pagan Poem" of Charles Martin Loeffler, trumpeting classic memories of Lutetia in the language of all Gaul?

We refrain. We hesitate and are lost in the mists of speculation. For if we searchingly review the history of our musical rise and progress we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that we have assimilated the arts of all the nations of earth and made none of our own. History is tiresome even to people who do not share the sceptical views of Henry Ford

as to its value; but we must refer to it in order to declare that it denudes us of all garments of musical glory. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century we produced nothing which still moves before us. When the little group of New Englanders, our first modern composers, began its activities, the ears of all musical students were turned toward Europe, and they are still strained to the sound-waves from the east. The nations of Europe were not only nations, but peoples. They had the racial and characteristic backgrounds essential to the creation of their own types of art. They had folk-music foundations and long and painfully developed schemes of artistic musical architecture. Our would-be Mozarts and Schuberts had nothing national to build upon. We were a nation, but not a people. The melting-pot was seething and boiling with ingredients from the icy mountains and the coral strands. When we made a play it was patterned after Farquhar or Sheridan. When we painted a portrait we fixed our reverent gaze on Sir Joshua. When we fashioned a public building we bowed before the shrines of Wren and Gibbs.

Our students of music were nevertheless profoundly ignorant of the existence of the musical treasures of most of the European nations. The Italian opera and the German symphony loomed as master creations before them. Since Italian operas were obviously desirable chiefly because they were imported and but vaguely understood, whereas the native articles suffered from the shameless exposure of the language, the goal of our musicians became the concert platform. The Titans of concert art were Bach and Handel, Mozart and Beethoven; the treasuries in which their traditions were hoarded were the conservatories of Dresden and Leipsic, Berlin and Vienna. But Austria was practically terra incognita. Berlin was gloomily repellent. So the

youthful aspirants hastened overseas to learn all the secrets of the Saxons. And when they returned they gave us symphonic Mendelssohn and water or hardboiled fugues without salt or pepper.

We possess among our musical treasures some of the most elegantly groomed symphonies and perfectly trimmed string quartets that have proceeded from the mind of man. We have large, spacious, well-ventilated oratorios, wholesome and refreshing as country afternoons. Our operas have been anxiously made upon the Italian last and have altered their outlines with every slow shift of fashion along the Piazza della Scala. And what noble and uplifting tone poems, marching bravely behind the grizzled standard of Richard Strauss, as their forerunners paraded with the fiag of Liszt! Piano concertos and violin concertos we also own, reflecting every ray of glory from those of Mozart and Corelli to those of SaintSaëns and Tschaikowsky.

We have not stood still. We have made progress faithfully in the footsteps of Europe. We are nothing if not up-to-date. And style? Well, one may do some boasting about that, for there is nothing in the shape of style which we have not tried at least once. We are eclectic, above all things, and true to our mission as a melting-pot. Meanwhile we have missed one great thing-music of the people, by the people, and for the people. We could not produce that while the German maennerchor in every town was clinging to the fatherland classics, the Swedish and Italian and even Irish societies resolutely turning their backs on everything except what chanted the rhythms of their own lands.

So when an American composer felt it incumbent upon him to write a symphony in B flat just because all the ancient immortals wrote symphonies, he was compelled to invent absolutely colorless themes and develop them in architectural musical forms designed by Beethoven and taught with authority in the great temples of culture in Dresden and Leipsic.

But onward-looking Europe declined to tarry beside the biers of Beethoven and Schubert. She sought and found new melodic and harmonic diction in the wholetone scale dangled before her eyes like a VOL. LXXVII.-15

string of pearls by the delicate fingers of Debussy. And later came the prophets of the north with harmonic scales, harmony in two planes, atonal and polytonal mazes, and the bewildering procession of new creations ranging from the ecstatic poems of the polite Scriabin to the elemental disclosures of the rude Stravinsky. And with her eyes still scanning the purple horizons over the eastern sea America read the new message and took up the weak man's burden of imitation.

The ignorant people chattered noisily over the new things. "Why do they bring us this music which is not music?" some cried. "Let them keep to their Mozart, Beethoven, and even Wagner. We have gone as far as we are going." But missionary work was to be done in order that those who had nothing to say in music might bury their emptiness under a dazzling parade of the new devices. And so began the rise of the leagues and the guilds.

How beautiful is the spirit of brethren who dwell together in unity! What an inspiring influence is the good American "get-together" meeting! In all music there has been nothing more persuading than a Sunday-night gathering of one of these guilds devoted to the dissemination of the new gospel. Yet in the end it was not the valiant apostles of the new creed who wore the crowns of glory, but the unbridled prophet of the steppes, Igor Stravinsky himself. "Renard" and the "Histoire d'un Soldat" laughed their way into the memories of unbelieving recorders of musical incidents, while the solemn absurdities of the profound Varese, Salzedo, and Ruggles evaporated in the cold sunlight of the morning after.

Neither the grave and reverend seniors who brought from Europe the rubber stamp "approved by Carl Reinecke" or the youthful aspirants who dreamed they had found the fountain of eternal youth in the dead sea of Milhaud, Poulenc, and the so-called "Group of Six" produced anything that caused a single responsive throb in the heart of America. From Skowhegan to Port Jervis the spirit of the nation beat time to the rhythms of the jazz tunes, and when the inner brotherhood in Forty-seventh Street implores the people to harken to Ruggles's "Vox

clamans in deserto" or the "Octandre" of Edgar Varese, the graceless people rudely chant: "Why did you kiss that girl?"

There are signs of an awakening. The musicians have begun to discover that their ancient altars are in danger of being burned by the home fires. The Etude, a leading musical magazine, has enriched its columns with a symposium on jazz. Eminent musicians, such as Leopold Stokowski, John Alden Carpenter, Walter Spalding, of Harvard, and a score of others have said their say. Stokowski, the brilliant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, is of the opinion that jazz is here to stay. Well, that may or may not be. Its effects will surely last, though jazz as it is at the moment may pass into the dim chambers of memory or figure only in more or less accurate histories of the development of music in the United States.

But what lexicographer can catch and imprison within two lines of agate type the meaning of the word jazz? For the term has become involved in inextricable linguistic confusion. Ragtime was the syncopated music that rested on the basis of the old-time negro jig. The doubleshuffle and the clarion call of the floor manager for everybody to "sift sand" suggested new conjuring tricks to composers. Hardly anything of all that remains. How much ragtime can be found in Irving Berlin's latest gems?

It need not greatly concern the student of music where ragtime originated. Fred Stone, the comedian, said in an interview in the New York Times that he first heard it played on a piano by a negro in New Orleans in 1895. Mr. Stone believes that it was derived from a dance called the "Pasmala," which he suspected to be a corruption of "pas à mêle"-a mixed step. This dance featured the shuffling, dragging foot, and the short tone preceding the long one as in the typical ragtime snap. From this dance Bert Jordan and others developed dances which depended for their interest on the rhythms sounded by the feet and these rhythms were generally of the "rag" type.

Jazz, strictly speaking, is instrumental effects, the principal one being the grotesque treatment of the portamento, especially in the wind-instruments. The

professor of jazz, in the English of genius, calls these effects "smears." The writer first heard jazz performed by tromboneplayers in some of the marching bands in the days of our war preparation. Afterward the ingenious players of the popular music discovered how to produce these wailing, sliding tones on other instruments. Later came the incomparable Ross Gorman, who can evoke the laugh of a hyena from a clarinet and the bark of a dog from a heckelphone. But the caterwaul of the nocturnal tabby, the baying of the wandering "houn' dawg," and the unnecessary crowing of the 2-A.-M. rooster are not essential to jazz music. They have been made a part of it because such instrumental antics entertain the crowd.

The employment of curious devices for altering the tonal quality of certain windinstruments shocks the conservative music-lover more by its appearance than its musical effect. When a tromboneplayer places the bell of his instrument close to the mouth of a megaphone and obtains new and genuinely beautiful tonal effects, he is doing a legitimate musical thing which would be more subtly persuasive in dignified composition if the mechanism were not so baldly exposed. When a clarinet-player thrusts the bell of his instrument into a derby hat, thereby causing the tones to sound muffled and distant, he is not performing a new feat in jazz, but merely reproducing an effect dating back to Hector Berlioz's "Lelio ou le Retour à la Vie," made known in 1832. The composer directs the clarinetist at a certain passage to wrap the instrument in a leather bag, and informs us that he devised this singular "sordino," or "mute," to "give the sound of the clarinet an accent as vague and remote as possible."

The composition of the jazz orchestra is more pregnant in its promise for the future than the jazz itself. A symphony orchestra will contain about seventy-five strings to fourteen wood-wind and eleven brass instruments. A jazz band shows a decided preponderance of wind and it leans naturally toward those of the greatest flexibility. The flute and the horn are not much used. In its Æolian Hall concert Paul Whiteman's organization had eight violins, two double-basses (both interchangeable with tuba), a banjo, a celesta, two trumpets (exchangeable with