Nationalism and Art
The " shut them all out " clamour applies indiscrimi- nately to foreign musicians as to foreign musical-boxes, and the Ministry of Labour is undecided what to do about it. There is no doubt some ease for excluding foreigners from, for example, a theatre orchestra or a music-hall chorus when plenty of unemployed British artists are waiting to take their places. The Ministry, anxious to do its best for all parties, is, in fact, trying to discriminate between those artists whose performances have a dis- tinctive quality and those who have nothing special to offer an English audience. It might be thought that foreign performers who have no conspicuous merit would not obtain engagements here. It is by no means clear that the exclusion of a foreign performer means an engagement for a native performer. At any rate, the task of separating the sheep from the goats must be delicate and difficult, and hard cases are reported daily. But the intrusion of nationalist prejudices into art, however justified at the moment by economic pressure, is a detestable thing, and thoroughly alien to our English traditions.
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