The Square.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19376, 31 July 1928, Page 6

The Square.

It is not necessary to say much about the further statement by the Mayor in this issue. It is, of course, a much more ingenious defence than Mr Archer has offered before, and because it is so ingenious it is interesting. But when the personal and purely rhetorical passages are omitted, it boils down to this: that there has " not been from the " beginning a single and invariable " plan for the utilisation of the " Square"; and since " many of the " original ideas of our first citizens " have had to be modified," the Council is free to ornament the Square with lavatories if it feels so disposed. The answer to this of course is that the Council is not free to do what the citizens have so clearly said they do not want it to do. If the citizens of to-day were generally agreed that conspicuous above-ground lavatories are necessary in the Square, the " ideas of "the first citizens "—if they had ever expressed any on the subject—might have to be modified or ignored. But the opinion of citizens, as the Mayor now so well knows, is that the Council could find other lavatory sites, and that the idea of the first citizens that the Square should be made a beautiful and dignified civic centre need not, therefore, be abandoned. And when the Mayor talks about " a fight to a finish," he is simply forgetting himself, and his duties and responsibilities as Mayor. He says, and he may turn out to be right in saying, that there is no legal impediment in his way; but if that proves to be the fact, aid he uses it, with his present majority on the Council, to defeat the clear desire of the citizens, he will show himself not a Mayor but a foolish and petty tyrant.