Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-08-11 | Page 33 | Music Big Boon to Fighting Men

MIC BIO BOON TD FIGHTING B Violins, Gramophones and Other Instruments Sent to Boys at Front By WILLIAM J. BUTLER, Universal Service Staff Correspondent. LONDON, Aug. 10. There's a place in quiet old Bloomsbury with pathetic, heart-gripping heart-gripping stories of the tender love of English people for their men at the front, j There are mountains of music, violins, j gramophones and other musical instruments instru-ments so piled and piled that the men who are sorting them for dispatch to the camps In England and the trenches and billets in France lind themselves imprisoned impris-oned and snowed under. Thousands of Engiisn homes hr.vc donated do-nated their musical instruments pianos, violins and the like for the boys "out there." Among the pils lies a harp. Two years ago a oung English officer came home on leave and saw his harp idle and said to his wife: "I'll pack it and play it to my men." 1 lis wife was to send It to him. But a bullet took him as soon as he went back "over there." The other day his widow brought it to this collection of instruments just as he had packed it She said she knew he would like other hands to nlay the harp to his comrades, and so it ioes out to France. An eld lady came with a concertina and a large bundle of music. She wept. "Take these. They belonged to my boy. He is killed. He was my third and last son. They are all killed now. I have no use for "this poor concertina. I thougnt it might bo a gift for some other soldier who can play." The harp and the concertina will go to the army among that great consignment which is snt off daily by the staff to tho l aUonal collection of musical instruments and music for use in the Y. M. C. A. huts. Herman Darewski, honorary or-t;aiii2er or-t;aiii2er of the movement, is behind a pl;m for all English homes with little or no use for their pianos to donate them to the army. .Many already are complying, but scores and hundreds of pianos are ,till needed. As for music, every kind and every kind of instrument are needed. One mother wrote that music has put her soldier boy in immensely brighter spirits. It has banished all the horror and boredom of war. She said she never before realized what music meant to the "boys out there."