Music: Improving the Internationale

Sir Granville Bantock, bearded, British, 73-year-old composer, laid hands on a sacred* song: the Internationale. Sir Granville thought the Internationale needed “more movement,” made a few slight changes. To make the song more suitable “for English choirs and for people to sing,” Sir Granville’s elderly, deaf wife, Lady Helen, wrote new words. Instead of Arise, ye starvelings from your slumbers; Arise, ye criminals of want (Russia’s official English translation), Lady Helen’s verses began Awake, O sleepers from your dreaming; Uplift, uplift your longing eyes.

London’s Soviet Embassy learned of the Bantock changes, disapproved, said so.

*To Russia, to Communists the world over.