It is quite true that we are continually improving our musical status. The effect of all our fine music may indeed be observed, but our progress is undeniably slow, particularly when we remember with what a liberal endowment we start. That endowment is very little less than other peoples possess. Our children are musical, and there is no reason why we should not be. Moreover, the strain of ideality which runs through American life, however naïve it may be, would seem to make us especially qualified to love and understand music. III. WHAT WE MIGHT DO I have indicated in a former chapter something of our needs as regards the musical education of children. The problem before me now is how to persuade American men and women into active coöperation in making music. It is obvious that there is only one way of doing this, and that is by singing. Only an infinitesimal number of people can play musical instruments, but nearly everybody can sing. To play requires constant practice. Singing in groups does not. In their right estate every man and every woman should sing. Now my urgent appeal for singing does not mean that every village, town, or city should turn itself bodily into a huge singing society. Some people will sing better than others and will enjoy it more, or have more time for it. But there are constant opportunities for large groups of people to sing--in church, on Memorial Day, at Christmas time, at patriotic gatherings, or at dedications. Nothing is more striking on such occasions than the total lack of any means of spontaneously expressing that which lies in the consciousness of all, and which cannot be delegated. What a splendid expression of devotion, of commemoration, of dedication, of sacred love for those who died in our Civil War would a thousand voices be, raised up as one in a great, eternal, memorial hymn! What do we do? We hire a brass band to be patriotic, devout, and commemorative for us. This inevitably tends to dull our patriotism and our devotion. To live they must spring forth in some sort of personal expression. In a village I know well, this custom mars an otherwise deeply impressive observance of Memorial Day. The “taps” at the soldiers’ graves in their silent resting places, the sounds of minute guns booming, the long procession of townspeople, the calling of the roll of the small company of soldiers who marched away from that village green half a century ago, with only an occasional feeble “Here” from the handful of survivors, the lowering of the flag on the green with all heads uncovered, all eyes straining upward--these make the ceremony fine and memorable. It needs to complete it only some active expression on the part of every one such as singing would provide.