We have repeatedly referred to the characteristic fluidity of culture in the United States, to the fact that it is in a constant state of rapid development and under the lash of incessant self-criticism. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of these facts which runs through the whole of our cultural life; but while it is easy to understand that one of their effects has been the extraordinary musical development of the past forty or fifty years, it must also be noted that they bring with them the danger of attitudes not entirely favorable to genuine artistic achievement. There is the easily and occasionally noted lack of spontaneity, not only in artistic judgment, but in relation to music itself. In a drive toward maturity, one can lose sight of the necessity for a full and rich musical experience. The danger lies, then, in a search for shortcuts to maturity, while actually maturity can be the result only of experience: in striving, as we sometimes do, to arrive at judgments in advance of genuine experience, which can be acquired only through love, that is, through an immediate and elementary response to music. The American public may gradually learn to surmount this danger as American listeners acquire more and more experience. However, the musical public is in constant growth, and we can scarcely be astounded that that public, being in part musically inexperienced, has not as yet learned to have confidence in its judgments. Newspaper criticism, therefore, wields far greater power here than it does in other countries; and a marked predilection for abstraction in musical ideas may be noted. We readily embrace or reject causes or personalities, and readily form our judgment with relation to them, rather than to individual works of art. While this is a tendency characteristic of the period in which we live, it seems to be carried to a greater extreme here than elsewhere.