Let it be clearly understood that in putting forth the foregoing statement we hold no brief for Germany. War was the deliberate policy of a large section of her statesmen, soldiers, sailors, and industrialists, and that policy has brought its own Nemesis, but the choice which lies before the statesmen of Europe at the moment is between a possibility of peace and contentment for some generations to come and a certainty of war-more devastating even than the last-in the not distant future.

And the choice will not lie open for long. When the agony of the war was fresh in men's minds there was, even in Germany, a strong and growing desire for peace. The war spirit was subdued, not dead, but now the galling yoke of subjection which is imposed on Germany is steadily encouraging the spirit of war and of revenge and suppressing the spirit of peace by commercial prosperity. A new generation to which the horrors of war come by hearsay only is taking the place of men and women who have themselves suffered those horrors. The true facts are slow in reaching the mass of the British public, and it is for this reason that we earnestly call attention to the foregoing pages.

-T

ད

Art. 3.-THE SPIRIT OF LONDON.

THERE is an impression astir that London is in a state of transition, and 'vagrom' rumour for once is right. Living memory hardly recalls a time when things were otherwise. London, like Gilbert's Strephon, is a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms,' and change is the law of its growth. At present it is busy with a thousand problems, some of them momentous, but all needing decision, and many demanding action. Housing and traffic and other troubles are magnified and multiplied in London's case, apart from the problems peculiar to its site and character. There is a piecemeal reconstruction process going forward, which the war has both necessitated and delayed. But something of the kind was in being before the war arrived, and even then the work was notoriously in arrear, though big and ancient cities, like big and ancient buildings, keep the 'singing masons' busy all day long. London in the full sense covers over a hundred square miles, and every mile has its elements of conflict and commotion. Nevertheless,

under all this striving there is a unitary and living consciousness which, if vague and intermittent, makes for reassurance with all who know the city's past and are bold enough to peer into its future. In cities as in men, the only acquisition that is truly good and enduring is the growth of the soul.' And not even crowding signs of transition can dim the fact that there is an indomitable spirit animating London, a spirit matured and unimpaired after a thousand years of evolution, and equal, so far as we can see, to retaining for centuries yet the power and pre-eminence it has rightly gained.

A century ago London outstripped Paris in the sum of population, and there are few respects, chiefly of a superficial order, in which the victory has not since been confirmed. London shudders at thought of the Haussmann method of rebuilding a city on a geometric plan; nor could it ever have been made, like Berlin, a background for 'goose-step' reviews and military 'stunts.' Inchoate and unwieldy as it seems, it prefers to believe, like Topsy, that it 'growed,' but the story of that development is outside our scope. The past may be safely

th

left to the historians and prophecy to the romancers. But if there is anything in Butler's rule of probabilities, the capital that has come unscathed through the greatest ordeal in a long career, has no occasion to be disturbed fr at the outlook, if it wisely consults its air defences, health, and general well-being. And it may be worth the pains if we try and assemble some of the reasons and considerations for this vein of optimism in regard to the greatest hive of humanity ever known.

First, a word as to the more urgent problems of the day. London's traffic has reached such a pitch of congestion, especially in the central thoroughfares, that its incomparable police may well hold up their hands with something more than the performance of routine duty. Imagination quails at the thought of what may come when, as already in America, the number of our automobiles reaches the average of one to every eight of the population, unless we honeycomb the ground with subterranean parks, and this, apart from outlay and labour difficulties, is an expedient formidable enough in view of the network of underground traffic already in existence. New tubes are burrowing their way to and fro, and experienced brains are busy with various reforms by way of relief. They condemn the permanent authorities for their past submission to the status quo, but it has been no simple task to restrain the hands of transport enterprise. London, having asserted its civic independence in early times and since, has had to pay the penalty by letting its authority go into abeyance in other matters. The effort to overtake arrears of responsibility in matters of local administration, by unifying these powers under a County Council, has been modified in two important respects. The new body had to defer to an historic and indestructible City Corporation; and the ambition of steering clear of party politics has been thwarted by a succession of events into which we need not enter here. Only those who have had occasion to plough through the thirty annual volumes of 'London Statistics' are aware of the vast range of activity they cover. The increase of thirty millions in the rateable value of Greater London during the past half century, is a faint indication of the labour and responsibility involved in bringing order out of chaos, a process which

le

Co

reare

arte

Fence

WO

will outlast our time. With every effort to reduce and bili concentrate, there are thirty species of local authority within the administrative county of London, and they range from the City Corporation and the Masters of the Benchers of the Inner and Middle Temples, to the Conservancy Boards and sixty-four urban district councils, some of whom have shown themselves recklessly improvident in their financial operations. Nevertheless, the County Council has justified its existence and the trust reposed in it, and it is hard to see how it can be superseded with advantage, London being the monster organism it is. Even in the erection and equipment of a colossal palace across the Thames, the Council may be justified in a few years' time by the growth and spread of the enormous area it administers, and if such an organisation neglected to look ahead it would belie its mission. A great estate and small ideas, as Burke said, go ill together, and whatever may be said of London's main governing body, it has not often revealed the pusillanimous mind.

at b

In respect of London's architecture the problem should be simpler; but here, counsel is darkened by the riot of public opinion. Not without disturbance, Eros has forsaken Piccadilly Circus, and Psyche has disappeared in the shape of his attendant nymphs, for the flowergirls who had their station on his island of pavement have been bestowed elsewhere. Truly, if the removal of a decorative fountain could produce so much clamour, authority may well be chary of pronouncing its mind on weightier affairs. The transformation of Regent Street is another instance of the .way in which asthetes forget for a while that the sovereign rule in architecture is adaptation to a purpose. Nobody of impartial mind welcomes the emergence of a composite crescent ablaze with plate glass and gilt ornament which will look like a travesty of the 'Rue des Nations' in the Paris Exposition of 1900; and the general dissatisfaction may precipitate fresh changes at no distant date, so that the last state of Regent Street may prove worse than the first. In any case, the verdict rests with traders and tenants who object to waive their competitive habits for the sake of a frontage that would stamp them all alike; and when business firms like these agree to differ,

their 'unanimity is wonderful.' Fortunately the phoenix 0 process in the case of our Main Street, the Strand, brings about a widening which has long been indispensable, and one devoutly wishes the result could escape that scorbutic epidemic of aggressive signs and firework puzzles which at so many points is coarsening London by day and making it hideous by night.

Two structures, dearer to the heart of London than any at present in the balance, are Waterloo Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral, and here, curiously enough, a temperamental difference of policy between the older and the newer type of authority comes conspicuously into view. Rennie's handsome bridge, one that Canova declared it was worth coming to England to see, is only a century old, as the name implies, yet it suffers from its own solidity, an absence of crown or camber, and the soft nature of our river-bed. This anxiety is one of the penalties we have had to pay for the possession of Father Thames, maker and sustainer of London, and the stream which, as Mr John Burns once said, is so much liquid history.' But Waterloo Bridge has also suffered by being made a beast of burden under the incalculable weight of field and garden provender swarming in from our southern counties several nights a week to Covent Garden; and it has had more than its share of the crossriver traffic by day through the absence of sufficient means of contact with the Surrey side. This lack of transpontine resource is receiving attention, but enterprise is deliberate in things like this, and in the mean time both bridge and cathedral languish, as all may see.

Universal interest shows that these monuments are a world-question. Americans express amazement that the fate of two such old-world buildings should disturb the peace of mind of compatriots who have never seen either, and should presumably be more concerned with the new and impressive cathedral of New York. Alarmists cite the lesson of the Venice campanile when it fell 'like a gentleman' twenty years ago, and only after many warnings. Technicians insist that Wren's guarantee of his masterpiece was limited to a couple of centuries, and declare that time is up.' Moreover, we remember that Wren himself was severe upon the demolitionists