Sharp Stokowski

Patriotic anthems have a way of making trouble for symphony conductors. Great Karl Muck was driven from Boston for not playing "The Star-Spangled Banner'' at a Wartime concert. Arturo Toscanini was beaten by Italian youths when he refused to play the Fascist Hymn in Bologna (see col. 2).

In Philadelphia two months ago a great outcry followed Leopold Stokowski's announcement that at the next Youths' Concert he would play Soviet Russia's ''Internationale." The American Legion publicly protested. Broker Francis Ralston Welsh, rabid antiCommunist, called Stokowski a Red. William Curtis Bok, the Orchestra Association's vice president, tried to smooth things over by saying that he thought Stokowski would change his mind, that "it was probably just one of those things that pop into his head."

But last week Stokowski did not change his mind. He played the "Internationale"' and invited the youthful audience (aged 13 to 25) to sing it. Some stood up and hummed haltingly along. But no tempest broke. Stokowski had outsharped his critics by having the words printed in French because, he said, he had been "unable to find an adequate English translation." The translation which Stokowski found unsatisfactory: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,

Arise, ye wretched of the earth, For justice thunders condemnation,

A better world's in birth.

No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall,

The earth shall rise on new foundations, We have been naught; we shall be all.

'Tis the final conflict,

Let each stand in his place, The International party,

Shall be the human race.

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