the party on a Free Trade basis if we make the defeat of the Protectionists as complete as possible at the General Election. Therefore I hold that the more strongly and earnestly a Unionist Free Trader desires to remain a Unionist and to bring about the ultimate reunion of his party, the more ardently should he work to prevent the return of Protectionists, whether Balfourites or Chamberlainites, at the coming General Election, and to ensure a crushing victory for Free Trade. The greater the defeat of the Chamberlainite and Balfourite policy the more certain is the ultimate reunion of the party. Therefore the aim of Unionist Free Traders should be to oppose strongly candidates for Parliament who will not pledge themselves to withstand the policy of Protection, no matter under what apparently amiable and innocuous guises it is presented to them, and to give an active and effective support to Free Trade candidates, irrespective of party.

It is clear from what I have said that those who mean to remain both Unionists and Free Traders must lose no time in perfecting their organisation throughout the constituencies. They must not think that the duty of Unionist Free Traders is merely to save the seats of the patriotic and high-minded men who sacrificed their political and official careers rather than abandon Free Trade, and left the Ministry last autumn. All that is possible must be done to save their seats; but a greater and even more important object is to secure a Unionist bodyguard for Free Trade in every constituency, and to use every endeavour to defeat Protectionist candidates at the poll. Our ideal should be to reduce the Protectionist vote in the next House of Commons to the lowest limits, and to make the plébiscite for Free Trade --for such the next General Election will in fact be-as overwhelming as possible.

IV

Personally I have no doubt that the organisation of the Unionist Free Traders and their apparent ability to turn a great number of elections will have the result of indirectly modifying the views of the Liberal candidates on many important political questions. That is, the existence of the Unionist Free Traders will encourage Liberal candidates to stand up against the faddists and extremists. But though I strongly hope and desire that this result may be indirectly produced I am equally strong against the Unionist Free Traders officially bargaining with the Liberals in regard to the views of their candidates and for this reason. If such direct bargaining takes place it will mean that the Unionist Free Traders will to a certain extent become responsible for the details of Liberal policy on other matters than Free Trade, and they will become insensibly drawn into an alliance with the Liberals so close as to suggest fusion and amalgamation. My desire is that no such intimate alliance should take place, but merely that there should be a working and fighting agree

ment, i.e. political co-operation for a specific purpose, that of defending Free Trade. We want to remain free and untrammelled by any strict or formal alliance. I say this not because I have any particular horror of a great part of the Liberal creed, or in any sense or form regard Liberalism as the unclean thing. I say it because I hold that our object and duty is not directly to modify the Liberal policy or to take any responsibility in regard to it, but at the present to maintain Free Trade and in the future to reunite the Unionist party. If we become in any way responsible for Liberal policy this task may be rendered infinitely harder or even impossible. Again, if as a party we should attempt to dictate as to the views of Liberal candidates instead of merely co-operating heartily with them on one issue, they in return would very naturally desire to dictate the policy of those Free Trade Unionists who will be returned by the co-operation of Liberal votes. We must not interfere with them or they with us. Each must trust

the other, and act in confidence and in good faith.

I hope I have made the position and aims and objects of the Unionist Free Traders clear. To state them once more: We are both Unionists and Free Traders, and mean that both the Union and Free Trade shall prevail. But with us Free Trade is no mere counsel of perfection, no academic opinion. We mean to make our Free Trade views effective by voting and working for Free Traders irrespective of party wherever they are opposed by Protectionists. That is our immediate object. Our ultimate object is equally clear and equally dictated by our determination to maintain Free Trade. We realise that unless Free Trade is held by both parties in the State to be, like the Monarchy, beyond political dispute, Free Trade cannot be absolutely safe. Therefore we mean to remain Unionists and to use every endeavour to reunite and reconstruct the Unionist party on a Free Trade basis. This, we believe, we shall be able to accomplish after Mr. Chamberlain has led the Unionist party to the ruin which, unhappily, is inevitable at the next General Election. The position of the Unionist party resembles one of those surgical cases in which a bone which has been broken and badly set has to be broken again before it can be properly rejoined and healed. To adopt another metaphor, only after it has been purged in the fires of a General Election can the Unionist party be reunited. The more complete is that process of purgation by fire the stronger will the reunited party prove. Therefore the Unionist Free Traders can adopt no half-measures and no timorous courses, but both in the interests of Free Trade and of their party must strike with all their might against the evils of Protection.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY, Editor of The Spectator.'

THE POPE AND CHURCH MUSIC

A REJOINDER

It was inevitable that any protest against the Papal motu proprio on the subject of Church music should arouse the displeasure of those who regard a Papal decree as being something more than an expression of human opinion and individual intention. It was inevitable, too, that musical technicalities should be introduced into a question which, if examined coldly and without the bias from which neither the professionally religious nor the professionally artistic can be altogether free, resolves itself into a matter of personal taste and, I may add, personal temperament.

I may perhaps be excused if I regard it as also inevitable that the addition of the words- a Roman Catholic protest '-to the heading of my article in the June number of this Review should have excited the wrath of a section of the Roman Catholic body whose mouthpiece the Rev. Ethelred Taunton makes himself in his reply to me under the title, suggestive of that of a popular play now running at a London theatre, The Pope and the Novelist.

I have reason to believe that had it not been for the words' a Roman Catholic Protest'-which appeared as a sub-title to my original article Mr. Taunton and others of his communion would have been content to regard that article in the light in which it was written. They would perhaps have recognised the fact that I disclaimed any intention of appealing to the clerically minded, and that I wrote merely from the position, as it were, of the man in the street, who may love music and its expression without being an expert in its science.

I feel that in replying to Mr. Taunton's strictures upon the effrontery of a novelist presuming to criticise the action of a Pope I am somewhat at a disadvantage, inasmuch as I am replying, not to a Roman Catholic layman, but to a Roman Catholic priest.

Mr. Taunton in his article bases his argument against the justness of my 'protest' largely upon personalities. I would fain have kept such matters at a distance as being neither profitable, relevant, nor, I would add, dignified. He alludes to me as a bored convert. I frankly admit the impeachment, so far as my experiences of modern

English Roman Catholicism are concerned; but as I live chiefly among Continental Catholics I am happily little affected by the ennui which he rightly describes me as feeling. I would only observe that had Mr. Taunton substituted a stronger term for that of bored" he would have more correctly described my condition.

Mr. Taunton goes on to say, with a touch of sacerdotalism admirably in harmony with the times of St. Gregory: 'I will not say for a moment that the laity, hereditary Catholics or neophytes, have not got their rights,' and again: 'While I have sympathy with any movement which seeks by legitimate methods to obtain that recognition of the rights of the laity which the Church has always acknowledged, I will have nothing to do with the bored convert except to wish that he would take his boredom elsewhere.'

I do not forget that I am replying to a priest, and I am happy if I have afforded Mr. Taunton an opportunity of scoring a point to his credit with his ecclesiastical superiors at my expense. I would remind him, however, that indifference is a far more difficult matter to treat than boredom, and that there are countless Catholics in the world, as there are countless Protestants, who remain within their respective communions merely because they are indifferent to priestly pretensions. I wish, to quote Mr. Taunton's own words, to do my spiriting gently, and I trust he will not think me discourteous towards his order if I suggest that, since it is not converts only who are bored, he might with advantage search for the true cause of the boredom.

I will, however, pass from personal matters to the consideration of Mr. Taunton's replies to my definition of the recent Papal edict on Church music as an artistic and psychological blunder. Mr. Taunton here becomes more interesting, inasmuch as he is expressing his views on a subject which must appeal to many, and he allows himself momentarily to forget my unfortunate individuality in his defence of a branch of that art to which he is well known to be deeply attached.

Mr. Taunton reminds me that I have made an admission-an admission which he qualifies as being unnecessary-to the effect that I am no musical expert. I would submit that in this fact lies the strength of my argument. I have entrenched myself behind human nature, as the man in the street has, fortunately for human progress, ever entrenched himself. At the same time I think I may say without undue vanity that my musical education has not been wholly neglected, and that music to me has ever been the first of the arts, although I cannot, of course, meet Mr. Taunton on strictly technical ground.

He asserts that I have missed the true gist of the matter; that the spiritual or even artistic point of view has not troubled me at all; and that I have forgotten the elementary fact that music was made for men, and not men for music.

I agree with Mr. Taunton that music was made for men; but does he not forget the elementary fact that all men are not priests;

that all men have not the clerical temperament; that many, nay, perhaps the majority of human beings are emotional rather than genuinely religious, and that their religion can only be stirred through the senses?

I am aware that a religion which is of the senses alone is regarded with reasonable distrust by those whose faith rests on a firmer basis. Nevertheless and here Mr. Taunton must forgive the novelist—the majority of men are swayed by the senses, and the majority of men are not priests. Pope Pius X., I would submit, in inculcating the principle that all ecclesiastical music should be modelled as nearly as possible to the Gregorian form, has forgotten this fact, and Mr. Taunton ignores it.

Mr. Taunton declares that I have altogether misunderstood or misrepresented the Pope's attitude towards Church music.

Writing, as I do, with his Holiness's 'Instruction' before me, I must affirm that I have done neither the one nor the other.

Pius X. observes that it is fully legitimate to lay down the following rule: The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration, and savour the Gregorian form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy is it of the temple.'

And again: The ancient Gregorian chant must, therefore, be largely restored to the function of public worship.'

The Pope goes on to state that the qualities possessed by the Gregorian chant are also possessed by the classic polyphony, especially that of the Roman school as represented by Pierluigi da Palestrina. This classic polyphony, the Holy Father observes, agrees so admirably with the Gregorian chant-the supreme model of all sacred music—that it has been found worthy of a place side by side with it in the more solemn functions of the Church.

I can assure Mr. Taunton, and others of my Roman Catholic clerical critics who adopt a less honourable form of criticism than he, that I fully understand the true aim and scope of the Pope's juridical code of sacred music, and I think that the clauses from which I have quoted admit of no misinterpretation. It is idle to assert that Pius X. means one thing when he obviously means another, and Mr. Taunton's quibble about the Pope not confining the music of the Church to plain song, 'as one would think from Mr. Bagot's article,' will scarcely deceive any attentive reader of the Papal motu proprio. If modern music is admitted at all into the offices of the Church, it is only under such stringent conditions as to make it almost indistinguishable from the Gregorian form except to musical experts, who, it may be observed, are not so numerous as Mr. Taunton seems to imagine.

I cannot, of course, expect to convince Mr. Taunton and his friends that I am not so inartistic, or so incapable of realising that music has a spiritual side, as they profess to believe. The compromising words—