The Lord Mayor's Show.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20083, 12 November 1930, Page 10

The Lord Mayor's Show.

The Lord Mayor's Show was apparently specially Imperial this year, and specially picturesque, but it is difficult to believe that the centre.of interest was either the Lord Mayor himself or his gild coach. Even the charging elephants would not attract as much attention us the magnifioenfc eoaehman 3

unless something lias happened to London since New York established its claim to be the world's greatest city. And in any case New York has not been holding processions for seven hundred years. It may be true—the evidence is very strong that " there " will never be, within twenty miles of " Charing Cross, a population as great " as was enumerated this year within "nineteen miles of New York City " Hall." That is the solemn verdict, according to the Observer, of Dr. Walter Laidlaw, an American census expert who went recently to London to make ft population survey, and it has taken London's breath awav. But London has had luavors, and Mayors' Shows, since King John, and Lord Mayors' Shows since before the Bat.tle of Bannockburn. It is true that the Mayor was not always able to drive in a coach, or to be accompanied by elephants. There was a time when the roads were so bad that even horsemen negotiated them with difficulty, but there was always the river, with its barges and bargees. And if there were not always Aldermen, as well as Mayors, the Court of Aldermen dates back to Alfred the Great. The Mayor of New York stands in about the same relation to the Lord Mayor of London as a flash hack to a horse with a pedigree, as the mounted Red Indians in this week's procession crossed the Atlantic to prove. It is impossible to challenge a man with 735 official ancestors, who takes precedence of everybody but the King, whose sword is older than the Great Charter, nnd who, when he sighs for an airing, Pteps into a chariot made before Washington left home.