THE NEW AND THE OLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 211, 5 September 1924, Page 11

THE NEW AND THE OLD.

It is a common complaint that the architect lags far behind in the rapid advance in which others appear to share, and a-, a ready scapegoat he is often blamed for any instance in which building enterprise has appeared unready for events, though in reality he may have been impatient to get ahead and ready with a plan before others would even consider it, says the British "Builder." However, at times the architect does ask himself, perhaps a. little morbidly, "Have we advanced at all since the time of Wren? Are we ever to follow and never to lead?" And the thought of the new things that science is able almost daily to reveal lends an added bitterness to* the question.

Yet we need have no fear, for the helter-skelter of science will never suit the surer and more ordered progress of art, which finds its true expression when the whirlwind subsides. We may, in

! fact, leave our friends of the fiddle and paint brush to dance wildly with the times in discord and cubist horror. The discord will fade into thin air and the daub can be burnt when we have again found ourselves, hut our work is to remain for our children's children. What a bewildering world of possibilities is opened up by the development of broadcasting! This laying-on of information at the main, what will it bring forth? Shall we value the results so highly after we have turned on the simple tap as when we had to work hard, dig deep into books and libraries of books, and make long journeys in the quest? Shall We in time rather grow weary of anything cftllinar foT effort and turn with relief to a" lighter . entertainment. The biggest British cathedral is under construction at Liverpool, and will break all records, so 'tis said. The torso, the ambulatory, the choir, the nave and the aisles are all so huge that this monster edifice will dwarf York Minster and make even Westminster .Abbey look insignificant. £50,000 has been spent on tlie Lady Chapel, £500,000 on the main body of the building and millions more will be lavished to prove the civic pride as well as the ecclesiastical loyalty of Merseyside. The "Empire Review," of London, finds fault with the new cathedral in these terms: "And this while the stipends of the 'ocnl clersry of the Church of England remain beggarly and inadequate. Yet the cathedral 'is called the Church of Christ, after One whose values were qualitative rather than quantitative."