"THE CITY"

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 157, 31 December 1940, Page 6

"THE CITY"

FAMOUS SQUARE MILE

HEART OF THE EMPIRE

BRUISED BUT NOT BROKEN

(By G. 0.)

For a description of the scenes in the City of London—most of London, in fact—today, recourse may be had to the Book of Revelation. Vials of German wrath by angels out of the Bottomless Pit are being continually poured over it by day and by night, drenching this square mile enclosed by the walls of the ancient city. Death and Destruction ramp through its streets, fire and smoke and poisonous fumes fill them up, and dust and rubble and gaunt, trembling walls line its famous ways, chasms (some with bridges flung across them) gape in streets by which Kings and Queens and potentates have passed to the Guildhall, passed through crowds raising chorus of a million cheers overpowering brazen strains of martial music, passed beneath fluttering banners and festoons, all expressive of welcome and joy—meaning joy and nothing else.

Now, of the Guildhall only blackened ruins remain. Details of its destruction are awaited anxiously. Londoners and others overseas who knew this ancient hall will ask what of the great paintings, themselves of priceless historical value —were they removed before the blitzkrieg? What of the wonderful librax-y and its treasures, are they safe? Gog and Magog have gone, for so have these mighty fallen. Gigantic symbolical figures they were, to whom childish imagination attributed a sense of smell for all Englishmen and a gleeful, inaudible longing expressed in "Fee-fy-fo-fum!"

The Mansion House is an elegant building on an imposing site; it faces the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange; it stands on one of several angles from which radiate ways east, west, north, and south. Here then may be located the heart of the City of London. But in point of age the Mansion House is a parvenu compared with the Guildhall, the origin of which goes well back into the fifteenth century. The Guildhall is down a side street, King Street, off Cheapside. It was originally built and adapted for purposes of guilds, trade organisations of great wealth (some of them), power, and influence. Trades unionism today probably owes much to these guilds of ancient times —but this is a digression. The Guildhall of London was not only a banquet house, an art gallery, a show place. Justice was here dispensed, and much of the City of London's internal affairs were conducted in offices also here situated. But the main HalL^the place of regal and splendid gatherings and entertainments, the place for Lord Mayor's banquets at which statesmen often made momentous disclosures of policy, this hall, they say, is destroyed..

Far more than for state occasions has the Guildhall been the stage. Here great scenes in the history of England, as well as that of the City of London, have been enacted. If only its walls could speak, if only its beams could whisper, of what stirring incidents in the life of the British people could they tell; incidents far transcending any arresting, overpowering scene in a stage play; acts and scenes spread over centuries, and fashioning the civil and religious life of the British people. Rights and privileges, freedom of thought, speech, and action fought for and debated and lost and won in this very hall. Here in certain famous trials stood the anvil, as it were, upon which inherent rights and freedom of Englishmen and Londoners have been beaten from white heat to red into something staunch, tough, and lasting, bending but never breaking.

Here in 1814, when Napoleon had been overthrown, the Emperor of Kussia and the King of Prussia were entertained, and the dinner was served on gold plates. Here, perhaps, with the overthrow of those. other and worse dictators of 1940, might too have dined together, as guests of My Lord Mayor, and passed the Loving Cup, too, from hand to hand, not only King George VI of England and 'his gracious and lovelyjQueen Elizabeth; but her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, the King of Norway, the King of the Belgians, the Presidents of Poland and Czechoslovakia (for the time being) and, possibly. Marshal Petain! If such a feast is yet to be held it will obviously not be in the ancient Guildhall.

One such a festive gathering at the table of the Lord Mayor of London is not beyond the will and means of The 'City when the time for it shall come, as come it will. The City always "did things well," not pompously, not with ostentation, not with any trace of bombast, but "well"—the best of food, the best of wines, the most gracious of service, and the -most generous of feelings. The heart of the Empire, as represented by The City, has been bruised, but it beats, it will continue to beat, for it is not broken.