LONDON'S LORD MAYOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

LONDON'S LORD MAYOR.

i ADORNED BY RICH ROBES. BUT LATEST STYLES SUIT WALKER. RULERS OF TWO LARGEST CITIES IX THE "WORLD. (,By RICHARD LAW, in the New York ' "Herald-Tribune."; i . j Tiic Tiiglifcliman, it is said, rejects [ the in.-titutiou where the American ad--1 mires the man. and it this is ;u it i- > nowhere more clearlv indicated than in i the comparative status of the Mayor ot New York and the Lord Mayor of London. Tor the Lord Mayor is not. save > incidentally, a man at all: he is a symbol. Bat the Mayor of New York is, tirst and foremost, Jimmy Walker. 1 During some stormy centuries the Lord Mayor was the champion of the rights 1 of the citizens of London against the crown, the baronage, and even the Parliament. To-day he is still a magistrate ' ill name, but ho is not an executive in the sense in \* hieh Mayor Walker is an executive. He makes no great decisions and he controls no patronage; even the Lord Mayor's secretary is a permanent official. But lie is a figure of great significance as the dispenser of the city's hospitality, to tlio poor and distressed, or to the great ones of the earth. Once a year, at his inauguration, he entertains at a banquet at the Guildhall the Prime Minister and other officers of State and the ambassadors of foreign Powers. In the name of the city lie welcomes home statesmen returning after the negotiations ot" treaties, or sailors and soldiers returning from the wars. And in his gift is one of the greatest honours which England can bestow—the freedom of the City of London. The Lord Mayor, in short, is an imports.it part, and not the least picturesque of that elaborate ceremonial which is so essentially a characteristic of English life. Perhaps you \Vjll see him at the Lord Mayor's Show riding in his gilded coach in pageant through the crowded street# as he has ridden every year for 100 years past. Perhaps you will see him at a Guildhall banquet, crimson and black and gold in his robes and chains of office, around him. beneath the high vaulted roof, the glitter of uniforms and jewels and quaintly carved orders. A sudden hush falls as tlie toastniaster calls in ringing tones, "Mv Lord Mayor, your excellencies, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the Prime Minister."' With G,,g and Magog, the twin giants who look down from the gallery with a disdain which centuries have been unable to interrupt, you survey the scene. And it is impossible not to be impressed with the as:e°ld dignity of the Ix>rd Mayor s office. = In New \ork it is not the office which impresses you, but the Mayor. And of all the adventures which may befall the itinerant Englishman in America, perhaps the strangest, as it is one of the most pleasant, is his first meeting with Mayor James Walker. He is unable, as he waits in the anteroom, quite to rid himself of his preconceived notion of , what a Mayor should be. something red and gold and perhaps a little ponderous: and the quiet eighteenth centurv spaciousness of the City H.ill seems deliberately to encourage him in his illusion. But at length the door opens, and where you are looking for a Mavor .> ou see an absurdly han om bov. "It is very confusing. It is his boyishness which most <>f all impresses the stranger. Mayor Walker dresses like a boy; he is just* a little bit more than well dressed, as a boy when he first awakens to the realisation that there is nothing in life so important as clothes. He stands like a boy, never still, dancing lightly around the room, raising himself on his toes as though to stretch his growing muscles. He laughs like a boy, and makes strange bovish noises with his lips. I watched in vain to discover how he contrived them; the secret was hidden from me because I am too old. To see Mayor Walker in action, the centre of a group of men. is an intellectual as well as au aesthetic delight, even when there is nothing of any profound import in his remarks. His features are never still. His quick, humorous eyes rove questing from one face to another, resting for a moment on vours with an unexpectedly searching gaze. He may not appear to be listening to what is being said, but he hears. And you would say that he knew what was being thought. He is obvijuslv acutely sensitive to what is going on around him, to slight changes in facial expression, to slight inflections of the voice., He seems to absorb the spirit of the meeting throu-.. the pores of his skin. In some ways this kind of second sight might make him an uncomfortable person to deal with, this Teter Pan among Mayors.