How much we have owed on these tours to George Barrère! He has always been for me a model member of an orchestra. He is a great artist—perhaps the greatest on the flute that I have ever heard—but no rehearsal is too long for him, and the inevitable contretemps of travel are accepted by him with imperturbable good nature. I have described elsewhere with what difficulty I was enabled to import him from France seventeen years ago, owing to the opposition made by the New York Musical Union, but he has more than justified his claims to American citizenship since then, not only by his artistic work, but by the group of American pupils whom he has gathered around him, who are devoted to him and have received and made their own much of his artistry. He is a delightful mixture of Gallic wit and American humor. He was asked once: “If you were not a musician, Monsieur Barrère, what would you like to be?” and he promptly answered: “An orchestral conductor!” A wicked remark, but as he has since then become the conductor of Barrère’s Little Symphony Orchestra I can give him tit for tat. When the war broke out I found that as we had thirteen nationalities in the orchestra, including all the nations at war, relations might often become strained, especially on our long tours when the men are forced, in the sleeping-cars and at the concerts, into constant and close companionship. I therefore gave them a little talk in which I explained that as they were gaining their living in this country and as they were artists for otherwise they would not be in the New York Symphony—their first duties were toward their art, toward me, and toward their families whom they were supporting in honorable fashion, and that therefore for the time being it was for the good of all to sink their political differences and their various attitudes toward the war, and to live in harmony with each other. This talk had good results, as during the entire four years of war I cannot recall any serious difference or quarrel between them.