Victory has been proclaimed too soon; for whatever the optimistic representatives of the young school may say, victory has not yet been gained; and it will not be gained for some time yet—­not until public taste is changed, not while the nation lacks musical education, nor until the cultured few are united to the people, through whom their thoughts shall be preserved.  For not only—­with a few rare and generous exceptions—­do the more aristocratic sections of society ignore the education of the people, but they ignore the very existence of the people’s soul.  Here and there, a composer—­such as Bizet and M. Saint-Saens, or M. d’Indy and his disciples—­will build up symphonies and rhapsodies and very difficult pieces for the piano on the popular airs of Auvergne, Provence, or the Cevennes; but that is only a whim of theirs, a little ingenious pastime for clever artists, such as the Flemish masters of the fifteenth century indulged in when they decorated popular airs with polyphonic elaborations.  In spite of the advance of the democratic spirit, musical art—­or at least all that counts in musical art—­has never been more aristocratic than it is to-day.  Probably the phenomenon is not peculiar to music, and shows itself more or less in other arts; but in no other art is it so dangerous, for no other has roots less firmly fixed in the soil of France.  And it is no consolation to tell oneself that this is according to the great French traditions, which have nearly always been aristocratic.  Traditions, great and small, are menaced to-day; the axe is ready for them.  Whoever wishes to live must adapt himself to the new conditions of life.  The future of art is at stake.  To continue as we are doing is not only to weaken music by condemning it to live in unhealthy conditions, but also to risk its disappearing sooner or later under the rising flood of popular misconceptions of music.  Let us take warning by the fact that we have already had to defend music[260] when it was attacked at some of the parliamentary assemblies; and let us remember the pitifulness of the defence.  We must not let the day come when a famous speech will be repeated with a slight alteration—­“The Republic has no need of musicians.”

[Footnote 260:  At any rate, certain forms of music—­the highest.  See the discussions at the Chambre des Deputes on the budget of the Beaux-Arts in February, 1906; and the speeches of MM.  Theodore Denis, Beauquier, and Dujardin-Beaumetz, on Religious Music, the Niedermeyer School, and the civic value of the organ.]

It is the historian’s duty to point out the dangers of the present hour, and to remind the French musicians who have been satisfied with their first victory that the future is anything but sure, and that we must never disarm while we have a common enemy before us, an enemy especially dangerous in a democracy—­mediocrity.