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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: a moment that I learnt my art from English men of letters. True,
they showed me how to handle English words; but if I had known no
more than that, my works would never have crossed the Channel. My
masters were the masters of a universal language: they were, to
go from summit to summit, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
and Wagner. Had the Germans understood any of these men, they
would have hanged them. Fortunately they did not understand them,
and therefore only neglected them until they were dead, after
which they learnt to dance to their tunes with an easy
conscience. For their sakes Germany stands consecrated as the
Holy Land of the capitalist age, just as Italy, for its painters'
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