THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Oct. 13. 1914. 

Sir

I was present to-day at the meeting held in the Small Queen’s Hall to discuss the subject of  “Musicians and the War.”  I understand that a committee is to be formed to uphold British interests in music.  I hope that this committee will consider sympathetically the case of those foreign musicians who have long made their home here and have honourably and in a competent manner performed their duties.  It may have been a mistake ever to have appointed these foreigners to the posts they occupy; but the present is emphatically not the moment to rectify this mistake. These foreign musicians cannot return to their own country, they cannot enter any other  profession, the purses of the charitable will probably be closed to them, and, above all, the large majority of them are only in the purely technical sense our “enemies.” To dismiss these musicians from long-occupied posts merely on the ground of nationality would savour unpleasantly of the very un-British habit of hitting a man when he is down.
l remain, Sir,
yours faithfully,
Ralph Vaughan Williams