Only, to realize this, one must be able to distinguish not only between movements, but between the artists of a movement.  That is what angry critics will not do.  That is why the admirable Mr. Dent—­whose brilliant lacerations of les six, and other exponents of Jazz, I sometimes have the pleasure of translating to his victims—­knew no better, the other day, than to bracket Poulenc with Miss Edith Sitwell.  Confusions of this sort seem to me to take the sting out of criticism; and that, I am sure, is the last thing Mr. Dent would wish to do.  He, at any rate, who comes to bury Jazz should realize what the movement has to its credit, viz., one great musician, one considerable poet, ten or a dozen charming or interesting little masters and mistresses, and a swarm of utterly fatuous creatures who in all good faith believe themselves Artists.

[Footnote Z:  Honegger, I think, was never officially of the band.]

The encouragement given to fatuous ignorance to swell with admiration of its own incompetence is perhaps what has turned most violently so many intelligent and sensitive people against Jazz.  They see that it encourages thousands of the stupid and vulgar to fancy that they can understand art, and hundreds of the conceited to imagine that they can create it.  All the girls in the “dancings” and sportsmen at the bar who like a fox-trot or a maxixe have been given to believe, by people who ought to know better, that they are more sensitive to music than those who prefer Beethoven.  The fact that Stravinsky wants his music to be enjoyed in the cafes gives pub-loafers fair ground for supposing that Stravinsky respects their judgement.  Well, the music of Brahms is not enjoyed by pub-loafers; but formerly the concert-goers were allowed to know better.  Stravinsky is reported to have said that he would like people to be eating, drinking, and talking while his music was being played (how furious he would be if they did anything of the sort!), so, when a boxful of bounders begin chattering in the middle of an opera and the cultivated cry “hush” the inference is that the cultivated are making themselves ridiculous.  Again:  if rules were made by pedants for pedants, must not mere lawlessness be a virtue?  And, since savages think little and know less, and since savage art has been extolled by the knowing ones (I take my share of whatever blame may be going) as much as “cultured” has been decried does it not follow that ignorant and high-spirited lads are likely to write better verses than such erudite old buffers as Milton, Spenser, and Gray?  Above all, because it has been said that the intellect has nothing to do with art, it is assumed by the mob of ladies and gentlemen, who if they wrote not with ease could not write at all, that there is no such thing as the artistic problem.  And it is, I believe, chiefly because all genuine artists are beginning to feel more and more acutely the need of a severe and exacting problem, and because everyone who cares seriously for art feels the need of severe critical standards, that, with a sigh of relief, people are timidly murmuring to each other “Plus de Jazz!”