British Composers
SIR,—Sir Gilmour Jenkins's suspicion that I have read no more than the title of Dr. Vaughan Williams's Who wants the British Composer? is not, in fact, justified; but even if it were, how would my original contention be affected ? Dr. Vaughan Williams was speaking to a large international audience, very few of whom can have followed the stages of his fight for the recognition of native music in this country; and his statement that England gets her painting from France, her music from Germany and her dances from America; however it may have been understood by his friends, can only have made a lamentable impression on visitors from abroad. I still think it supremely ironical that one of the main agents in our musical recovery as a nation should have committed himself on such an occasion to so very misleading a statement. It is possible that, as Sir Gilmour says, those who know the composer can afford to smile at the suggestion of bitterness, just as those who have read Who wants the British Com- poser? may doubtless conjecture that what he said was not precisely what he really meant; but his audience was not composed of his personal friends or those acquainted with his writings, and it is the effect on this vast majority that I deplored in my article, and still
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