In view of the intense musical interest and eagerness of the American people, of the vigorous and very rapidly expanding development of musical life in the United States since the Civil War, and the enormous sums which the nation spends annually for musical education, both at home and abroad, it would be irrational to expect anything less than the results above indicated. Musical education, which has played so vast a part in this development, shares, nevertheless, the general chaotic condition of American musical life. The absence of a National Academy of Music leaves the country still without any official standard of musical education, although high ideals and thorough courses are maintained in the music departments of the larger universities. There are several independent musical academies and conservatories of high standing, with a sufficiently broad and well ordered curriculum, and an unnumbered mass of nondescript music schools innocent of all normal standards. The same scale, from the highest excellence to downright charlatanism, is to be found in the field of private instruction, and one of the greatest educational problems which the nation faces is to bring some element of standardization into this field. This is a matter for state action, and in several states a movement is well under way for the licensing of music teachers. The development of music in the public schools, well grounded in the early part of the last century, has of late years been pushed with vigor and intelligence, and has led to unprecedented studies in the adaptation of music to the child, as well as to the composition of a great quantity of new and appropriate children's songs of excellent quality. The chief difficulty with national musical progress through the public schools lies in the fact that such a minute proportion of public school scholars go to high school and college, most of them losing all contact with musical education before reaching an age when their interest in it can be firmly established. This circumstance is now happily being continually more widely met from extra-educational quarters, in the present movement for music for the people through various channels to be referred to later. Professional educators are inclined to lay too much stress on school education as a means of developing appreciation in the mass, forgetting that the time must come when the chief musical training of the people, with respect of their ultimate enjoyment of music, must consist in a general public hearing of music of the highest order.