Music: Join Our Happy Throng

The posters appeared all over Israel: HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO SHOW THE FOLKS BACK HOME WHAT ISRAEL’S ELEVENTH INDEPENDENCE DAY WAS LIKE. The smaller type advertised a 7½-minute documentary film presenting the highlights of Israel’s Independence Day celebrations for the benefit of visiting members of B’nai B’rith. The souvenir film package sold briskly for 80 Israeli pounds ($37 at tourist rates) until a visitor from England made a startling discovery last week: the background music for much of the film was Sir Arthur Sullivan’s fine old hymn, Onward, Christian Soldiers.

Red-faced officials at the Israel Motion Picture Studios, Ltd. tried to explain. Nobody working on the picture was familiar with Onward, Christian Soldiers, they said, and in casting about for background music for the film’s climactic military parade in Tel Aviv, they had hit on an RCA Victor recording by Arthur Fiedler of T. M. Carter’s Boston Commandery March. What they did not know was that Composer Carter had used Onward, Christian Soldiers as his motif. The studio quickly pointed out that there are some Christian soldiers in the Israeli army (said one film maker: “We are a democratic country”), but a further check only increased their embarrassment: not a single Christian, they learned, had marched onward in the Tel Aviv parade.