SHOULD PARIS BE BROUGHT TO LONDON?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3142, 6 November 1922, Page 7

SHOULD PARIS BE BROUGHT TO LONDON?

(By an Anglo-Frenchman). Londoners are compelled! day by day to see the biggest metropolis that everexisted as a blotched, sprawling, inert: body flung across'the mouth of the Thames valley. Why should not London, with tai greater natural and artificial resources than Paris, be proportionately greater in beauty, in brightness, in "esprit. Look at the Thames to start, with. Any honest Frenchman will give it supremacy over his miserable grey worm of a Parisian Seine. The Thames is lovely. The Thames is majestic. The course of this beautiful stream is however, unnecessarily disfigured by ugly, loose ends of architecture, Hallbuilt or disused wharves and warehouses lurch against the water. Factorv chimneys belch unnecessarilv across the river's path the stench and soot of a dozen or two industries. Hideous" and unnecessary noises come from hooters and sirens and the shrieking machinery of dredgers. It has often been said that the climate makes the open-air cafe of the Continent an impracticable ideal here But it is not evident why we should; not bring into London a little of the boulevard spirit that infects Paris all tho year round. Li there any serious reason why London should not be made more attractive to visitors by making her exterior brgihter? Socially, Londoners will compare well with the people of any other city in the matter of private parties, dances, games, lectures, and the hundred and one forms of recreation available to a. big community. English people take their pleasures quietly, but very happily. Let there he chairs and music in Trafalgar Square and the big. empty, dull court in front of the British Museum; let us have stringed orchestras in all the picture galleries. Turn the straight, broad. wasted Huston road, into a Boulevard SaintMichel, with double avenue of trees and numerous tea gardens. whither the. students and journalists and artists of Bloomsbury may wend arm in arm! Let street decoration become a matter of municipal responsibility, and let. us paint the houses with brighter color, every street yielding a striking "coup d'oed. Every year there should be at least a pageant of all the boroughs within tho metropolis, and a pageant of the schools .a pageant of the churches, a pageant of the peoples of the Fmpire. At certain times there should be in certain open places dramatic performances and dances, as well as the- present musical performances of bauds and orchestras. Such a series of suggestions may easily be lengthened. What is important, however, is the spirit of the Londoner. If there were such a thing as a Londoner, London would undoubtedly become the ideal metropolis it was intended to be.