MIGHTY LONDON.

Evening Star, Issue 12882, 3 August 1906, Page 11

MIGHTY LONDON.

Consider hi a moment a little simple comparison. The continent of Australia, With its half-dozen States, Governors, MgJßliturbs,Railway Systems, and the like, nasatiSrfea^f•/,*&>at three millibu square miles. Tn£ metropolitan area is well under seveivhundred square miles. Australia's population is somewhat uuder four millions, and that of the metropolitan district nearly seven millions., In other words, Australia about one person to the Bquare mile, and Londoh carries about one hundred thousand to the same space. Thus it will be seen that there are a good many people to be looked after in London. As for the wealth of London, that is not so eaey of computation ; it is fabulously great—greater than the wealth 'of many large countries. Its more rateable value for police purposes, and without inoluding its golden heart—the Cityis about fifty millions sterling; but that is no more than a drop in the basin of London's prodigious wealth. Its administrative expenses are far greater than those of the whole of Denmark. We have fully one hundred thousand criminals in . this London of ours, and a police force of some sixteen thousand men of all ranks stand between the hundred thousand predatory creatures and the six aud a-half million of unarmed working bees and gaudy drones, the misers, spendthrifts, idlers, women, children, invalids, crossingsweepers, millionaires, and the rest of tbe targe preoccupied army of makers, dispensers, and accumulators of unrackonable J wealth. We have some sixteen thousand guardians of the peace in the metropolitan area. Sick leave, ordinary leave, special duty, aud other matters account for a couple of thousand, leaving about fourteen thousand for actual duty. These are employed in eight-hour shifts, since even the London policeman must sleep and eat. Thus the maximum num ber of our guardians on duty at any given moment is about four tbousand seven hundred. There are fully a hundred thousand of the recognisably predatory humans to engage the attention of the four and a-half thousand metropolitan police. There are, unfortunately, many hundreds of thousands of the permanently idle and generally hungry. The relation between hunger and Nature's first and most undeniable law is terribly intimate. The handful of men in blue whose duty is our protection patrol the huge and densely peopled jungle we call Loudon unarmed and unafraid. The hundred thousand human animals of prey pjpwl in and out beside the guardians, like wolves about a Bheepfold, outnumbering the shepherds by twenty-five to one. The monstrous, pitiful battalion of the unemployed and unemployable stand about us,in a circle, wan, dull, and motionless, yet forced always to consciousness by the war raging within them between the narcotic of despair and the irritant ol hunger.. .That is London. It is one of the most-terrible, the most awe-inspiring, tie most splendid, and the most tragic pictures that the world has to show. Literand art have nothing to compare with it for poignancy of tragedy and romance, dignity and misery, spleudor and pitifulness. It is London—the most amazing mass of contrasts iu alt Christendom, the most wonderful example in the world of the powers and the weaknesses and the blessings and the curses of modern civilisation. It is London, and baffles him who would describe it as surely as it defeats the ambition of the man who seeks completely to master its manifold intricacies. But it is as well that tb< se of us who live within its far-flung- lines should learn to understand as much as we are able of its mysteries. No other subject of study could be more fascinating, more rich iu variety, and in the lore of men and women than London. The men who have studied the whole of its surface, its most obvious characteristics, are very, very few. In the nature of things, the vastneas of the Metropolis makes this • inevitable. The strange thing is that the great bulk of London's respectable millions should know practically nothing whatever about the under structure of the living world they inhabit. They know a certain set ot streets, a certain set of men aud women of their own particular order, and a certain class of surface customs, rules, and characteristics of London life. It is as though they were content to believe that the soil of this part of England consisted of wood-pavement and asphalt, aud never realised that primeval clay lay beneath the well ordered smoo'.hness of the strtois. Just so primeval human nature—simple, savage, cunning, crude, and immoral —lies beneath the surface of London society—beneath all the well-ordered smoothness of demeanor whioh characterises the vast majority of respectable and preoccupied Londoners. A certain set of watchful authorities are keenly alive it this fact; the business of their lives so never to lose sight of it. They keep the countless wheels of the huge machine working freelv and smoothly. - London's vast wealth or law-abiding citizens and of treasure lies on the surface." The forces which make for dissolution are beneath thes urface. The business of tho authorities is t6 prevent those forces ever breaking through to the surface, where, in our densely populated London, they would be as dangerous as a band of armed maniacs in a china museum.—' St. James's Gazette.