SPIRES AND DOMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 3, 4 January 1941, Page 6

SPIRES AND DOMES

THE LUST TO DESTROY

ATILLA AN AMATEUR

HERITAGE OF NATIONS

(By G. 0.)

London at 4 o'clock on a summer morning is not nearly the same city as seen by traveller or business man. Minions of morning newspapers, their particular tasks done and (possibly) a pint of bitter taken at an all-night house near St. Bride's, step briskly through still and nearly empty streets where the air is sweet and the rumbling thunder of printing presses grows fainter and fainter, bo pass these people who work by night to places where they sleep, where blinds are drawn to shut out the sun and the voices of children are hushed. Such people might not be able to express their emotions in terms of Wordsivorthian beauty, but they are not all insensible of the magic of London's awaking to another summer day. They are not all indifferent either to the glories of the city in form of steeple and tower, spire and dome. Alas!- the past tense must be used, for what they now see are rents and holes, and ashes where many of these glories used to be, and over all are thick clouds of dust and lingering smoke. Years ago Siegfried Sassoon showed that the German lust for smashing things beautiful and good was inherent in the race and in this he so excelled as to make Atilla seem a gentleman and amateur by comparison.

. . . tho dragon sings Anrl beats upon the dark with furious wings; And, stung to rage by his darting fires,

Reaches with Rrappling colls from town to

town; Ho lusts to break the loveliness of spires

And hurls their martyred music toppling down.

So did the German strike in France and Belgium, silencing sweet carillons for ever; so has he done, and foully done and is still doing, in all Great Britain today.

Coventry will arise from its ashes, | but mention of its name will ever be j associated with foul and wanton cruelty. To Manchester, Birmingham, and Merseyside they will register for ever deeds of which ancient barbarity has no such records. But the tragedy of all this wickedness —to mention only the churches —is that buildings by men to the worship and glory of God have been destroyed, never to be replaced, and these, the precious heritage of people of all nations, not excluding Germans. Those edifices, sacred and .secular, that have* gone had their parts in the fashioning of British character, the building up of British tradition; yet they were, so to speak, only held in trust by the British people. No person of British nationality, for instance, can tread the floor of Independence Hall in Philadelphia wholly unmoved by the fact (express it clumsily as he may) that here, in this very place, so still amidst the1 roar of traffic, a great deed was accomplished, a great scene in British history was enacted; also that |he, a solitary Englishman, is in some | sort affected, indeed, benefited, by 'the stand here taken for Liberty. In a way, the place belongs to him in common with his people. In a way, too, Cologne Cathedral, and quaint Nuremburg, belong also to peoples for whom the Germans act as trustees and custodians. So could the foreigner feel and many, perhaps Germans among them, did feel as they trod softly the aisles of St. Paul's. To one and all the doors iof the churches of London were open; jtheir glorious works in metal and i wood, in glass and precious stones were i there for all to see and wonder at. Indeed, the churches were open for any Who felt the need to rest and kneel, as many did, and snatch a few moments from a busy day for prayer. So in St. Paul's and at Westminster Cathedral were worshippers to be seen upon their knees. God alone could know whether they there found what they sought—courage, hope, peace, guidance, joy, faith. But they did so use these churches when there was no public worship. These buildings were far more than places for tourists to see, and art students to frequent, more than ancient monuments to piety and notable examples of ecclesiastical architecture and the handiwork of mastercraftsmen.

Frequent references have been made in the news to destruction of the churches designed by Wren, to the blasting of the high altar of St. Paul's, the burning of St. Bride's, of St. Vedast's, St. Lawrence Jewry, and many others, including Bow Church in Cheapside. It would be difficult indeed, if "military objectives" were not the aim of the German bombers, to hit any part of London and miss a church. Before the Great Fire, London had far more churches than were built or rebuilt after that disaster. Of the churches built after the fire over 50 were by Christopher Wren; but it was a Scotsman, James Gibb, who designed the glorious building of St. Martins-in-the-Fields and St. Mary-le-Strand, both churches as familiar to people from Britain overseas as are their local places of worship.

But to Wren's and some other city churches particular interest attaches, because of their popular association with interests other than worship. St. Vedast's, for instance, is in the great softgoods warehouse region; St. Magnus's tower overshadows Billingsgate; St. Bride's steeple looks down on the offices and works of great London newspapers; and St. Anne's by the Wardrobe is almost next door to "The Times" office. All Hallows Barking (not a Wren church) is associated with shipping business. The ancient St. Saviours across the river, now Southwark Cathedral, is in the centre of the hop and potato trade; and St. Sepulchre's, near old Newgate's prison walls, suggests public executions and the tolling of its bell for those dying on the scaffold.

Comment on London's architecture is

a matter for the fully informed, but its rebuilding, after all this terrible and continuing destruction, will not be shocking to the sensibilities of the Londoner of today or of tomorrow. The Londoner with rich ripe memories of his city (and that of Westminster) as

it was, say, 50, 40, or 30 years ago, "pre-war" London, knows very well that it was always being rebuilt. Many . buildings of past centuries remained, survived the Great Fire, yet right up against them, or right in face of them,

up went modern structures in steel

and stone and glass and of as many floors as authorities would permit or the people directly concerned required. The passing crowds in their thousands paid no heed to them. A general impression may be had of Paris, but not of London. Broadway, the Bowery, and Harlem can be seen and mind-pictures of them registered, not so London. There should be a special London course at the London University and degrees . granted for successful students. Architecturally