The San Francisco call., 1898-08-13
WHEN WE ARE SADDEST.

N URING this brief war whose victorious career | is now hastening to glorious close, We have - felt every emotion of patriotism, every impulse of military valor, have been sensitive to every senti ment of liberty, humanity and national grandeur; have been reused by the exercise of noblest facu
 ties to the utterance of right words the perform ance of great deeds in every department of human endeavor except two: have not written good songs nor set what we have written to good music.
 It is most fortunate for in ali respects that not among those kind of folks who cannot sing the old songs for we of that nature misfortunes at this epoch would have been overwhelming. It is only by the inspiration of the old songs and to the melody of the old tunes that have been able to march to victory at all. Had we been compelled to rely wholly upon the poetry of the occasion and the music of the day to give expression to feelings in the war, we should have shocked the sensbilities not only of the tuneful Spanards in Cuba but even of the Philippine Islanders, accustomed they are to the lugubrous chanting which accompanies their tribal "devil dance"
 Truly we Americans of this generation are saddest when we sing. In the department of poetry popu- lar inspirations are primitive in the extreme. We can point with more pride to our slaughter-houses than to our poets, and perhaps we would have a fuller pride in the slaughter-houses custom permitted the of their mechanism poets as we'll as on pigs. Nor when consider the kind of music our composers have fashioned for songs would the poets be pted much when sent to the slaughter, for they might well mingle their voices with the squealing of stuck pigs to have their poems min gled with the squeang of such tunes
 It would be cruelty practiced upon the public to rehearse here many specimens of recent poetry for the purpose of illustrating the wreched sadness of 1t all Let 1t suffice that of these songs pleads Break it gently unto mother, if bullet lays me low, that fell to serve my country; don't forget to tell her SOL that another tells how loving vol unteer the of his departure for battle leaves his pet dog in charge of his sweetheart and sings, Treat her well, Mary treat her well, do she is all that loved except, darling, you. If to fall fighting my fate should be, she will remind you sometimes of me-
 These mild specimens may be borne but fully refrain from quoting anything from the war songs of George Alfred Townsend and the nnumer- able modelled upon Kiplng's "Recessional" A very little of such stuff goes a long way and have had much of it of late The fact that produce such songs in such quantities and nothing better constitutes of the most curious problems in our intellectual development.
 There readers in America than in any other country more writers of average ability than in any other country, more general culture among the people than anywhere else, pianos and banjos and all forms of musical instruments--why is it then that produce under the impulse of an ardent patriotism reused by neither good poem good tune? Why is that when we would be jubilant must sing either foreign song coon song, and that when sing of our war songs 1t mpresses the nearer something intended less to cheer ourselves than frghten the foe into fits?