WHAT A COLONIAL SEES IN LONDON.

Evening Star, Issue 14631, 29 July 1911, Page 4

WHAT A COLONIAL SEES IN LONDON.

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HOW AN ANCIENT CITY 7 - IS RENEWING US YOUTH. [Specially Whitten foe the ‘ Evening Stae ’ BY De Vr. H. Fitchett.] London is something more than the capital of England ; it belongs to the Empire, and every Australian or Now Zealander feds—or ought to feel—that ho has a share in it. ITo is made richer by every new element cf strength that awakens in it. and poorer by all the forces in it which, niaka fw failure. And how Louden loo!- - to an Australian, reasonably familiar with the physiognomy of most of the great cities of tiio world, and who revisits it after an interval of seme six years, ought to be of interest to renders or. this .-ido of tho vorid. London is, in a word, a new city. It has undergone, perhaps, a greater transformati.in than any other great city cnat cun be mined has known during the same period. Many of its ancient features, of coaree. survive. Its crowds are as vast as ever: its streets as interminable, the scale of iiii life as overwhelming. Wo in Australia or New Zealand can hardly

- '] A Crowd on. the London Scale.— * | On. Tank Holiday, for example, a week I ago, no Ic.v, than 550.0C0 persons paid for ’ ! admission to what is known as tho White 3 i Cay—an exhibition supposed to he a re--5 | it x of the Empire—recently opened. ? 1 Who ii,:h cm- si on. on Australian coil, a * : of fieO.GOO! It is as though the ■ : on; tv population of Sydney, of Melbourne, 1 • of f or. Adelaides, or of five Auckland*, v.' a. omp'.io l in a single day upon a, pad- ■ : k c: about 63 acres. On Coronation 1 : lh;y -thiio is writton a week before it arrives • -experts jr..dii t a crowd of, Gay, ! i i.O3J.CC.) po-.ipij, with 40.CC0 police to j !:•■' n ordei, und 00.000 soldiers to lint; the C.oi'.gt. A crowd of 2.C00.0C0! What | :c.u.- a modern Xerxes might weep over jibe sigiit ! Put the- crowds in the streets C n o-rd.iMry days, and before Coronation 1 1 i..y arrive-;, are almost on a scale a; to,;- ' ! r:\in_-. !•, is customary to call London " cmiE. ' \\ h<> dors not know v.-hat letter—j and h-amiin!—pram Dc Quin try expended | mi that " Mtony-hoaatC'd stepmother.'' Osh,id | stupt. A’.‘<! tno scale, the unondiug rush [ ol i‘- crowds, dotci give London, in some j mooag a cruel aspect. To a visitor. t::c > vast city, in spite of its . —Seven .Million People. i may ha the kmoLu-t spot in the world. | I here tire so many people, and all go busy, i so absorbed. The stranger feds aa though lie were a single giain of human sand iu ftomo dreadful human Sahara. And it is tho quality of sand that its atoms have co relation to each other. Yet the present writer has always felt that Loudon is simply the most courteous and helpful city in the woild. It has a very “human” atmosphere. fStop a Londoner in tho busiest street ra the city, at tho busiest moment of tho day, and ask him for some bit of local information. He will stop, hstcu, give his whole attention to tho matter, go out of his way to be helpful ; and do it all with a frank cheerfulness nothing loss than delightful. What countless oeots ol gratitude all strangers in London owe to the patience and good temper of the hurrying and absorbed LonI doner. But it is the new aspect London j wears which arrests attention. It has j f —-A Changed Physiognomy,— i and Londoners themselves are unconscious | —or only imperfectly conscious—of the ! change, because they themselves are part : of it. But the newcomer recognises it, I and tines to analyse it. 'there is, for one 1 thing, a. new and quicker puke in the | whole visible life of tho city. Tho traffic | of the streets has grown in volume, but it has changed in character. It has gamed I enormously in speed. The taxicabs arc as thick as sandiiies, and as active. The motor omnibuses and the energy with which they are driven, tho new ‘electric tramway cars—the cleanest, quickest, and biggest in tho world—these give quite a new physiognomy to the street life* of London. Where eke in the world can such a scene be witnessed as, say, Oxford street, or Piccadilly Circus, or the streets that converge on the Bank present? These street.-, have always been packed, as a Canadian river is packed _ with drifting. But now the “ ico ” is gone; .tlna-ie ft reels are so _ many vehicular Niagaras. ! , ,IS “ r,3S 'iil. tho general street life of .London a new i-spoct. ihe quicker movement extonds to the footpath. To one v.iio comes back to London after an absence of live or six years the effect is as dough a familiar face hud in the in- j , teivai gained a quite now animation. A i ic ' T eagerness and purpose has ! j r l rt ‘B t lnto **». H ' lth ««> dd suggestion, iu- j j deed, of a quickened intelligence. : j —Coolness and BkiJl.—. i j And it is not merely a change in the pace ol tilings lh.it the spectator sees; it is a j change in the spirit. When aniysed there i are some wonderful moral elements in the , new traffic. An Australian stares with ■ bueathiess ami admiring wonder at the dash i vt “ lfe taxicabs, the adroitness as well ns j I t.io L'jbvCtl id Ihh*- liiike motor omnibuses, a.s ; | cl so many elephaMG on wheels. And it | is not a question of mere mechanic*!. The I i ■ivrn.ia i.utor.- in the scene—tlxe“ drivers | , cj.o iho dsivira—are mere wonderful than I ! lac things driven. ]he coolness. the steady 1 c.-rve. the quick sons'’*, the swift judgment, the unf.iliering vigilance, the skill that can grave *iie edge of disaster and vet escape it—-all th-se are nothing less than wondermi. 1 he Londoner was always a, good lighting nun. from the days of thd train banns downward.-. But ail the qualities of I good soldiership are visible in the streets of j ihr t jty, ;u taxicabs and motor omnibuses, j an'! nil busy in the service of peace. The i 1 new traffic will certainly develop; a new ; i human type of its own. It wili'be silent in speech, spare in build, with an Indian i quickness oi the senses and a sea captain's 1 cm parity lor coo! judgment and instant decision. I tow Traffic is Regulated.— ■ Then tho regulation of the new traffic i ‘mis visibly a now scale and intelligence. I I Order, method, sleepless oversight ran like j : invisible thread* through the apparent con- .’ fusion of the ncene In New York, the 1 1 tramway companies are said to extract huge j ; dividends from the unfortunate passengers who cannot find a seat, hut have to hang on tlie strajs; but in London no omnibus or j tiamway car is apparently allowed to carry j a single passenger fov wliom it cannot find i a scat. , I be spectator who has seen many j cities thinks of the street railways of I Chicago, the struggling crowds in tho tram- I way cais in San I’raneisco, of the triple I stream of lawless traffic which makes life i a peni at the entrance to the Place Ven- | ; dome, in Paris. Then he looks at the | figure of the London policeman, standing— I silent, vigilant, despotic—at fixed points I along all the London streets, and he re- j aihvvs that this torrent of rushing vehicles | is under the reign of law. j London Noises.— I The street noises of London have under- I gone a subtle change of note. The genera! j volume of sound is not less, but it is dilfe- j rent. The noisy battle of rough wit be- j twixt costermonger and omnibus-driver is | a thing of the paet. The man holding the ] guiding-wheel of the taxicab has no time to ! waste in speech. The new London driver j is, and will be. a silent man. The rattle of tho old omnibuses, the clatter of the iron-shod horse hoofs on the wooden blocks are gone. Instead, we have the hoot of the taxicab, the grind—sometimes as of a glacier on rock—-of the motor-omnibus. The new note of the London streets is certainly lees human and more mechanical than it was five years ago. —The Architectural Aspect—of London, of course, changes slowly. The spirit o! Sir Christopher Wren still dominates—not to say oppresses—the City. The n-w War Office, the great Church House which tho Wesleyaus are erecting in front of Westminster Abbey, show tho touch of Wren’s hand almost as much as St. Paul’s itself. It ifi part, indeed, of the merit of 1 Barry’s Westminster tower —in its way I almost as impressive as the west front of 1 Cologne Cathedral—and of the Byzantine ] opire of tho new Roman Catholic Cathedral in Victoria street, that they represent a i revolt from Wren's formula. But for i generations to eomo it is probable that ~

nearly all the churches and public buildings of London will bear Wren’s signature. Nothing, again, can change the lean, flatbreasted brick terraces of the Georgian era which afflict whole suburbs. _ Still, the arcnitectural aspect of London is changing. It has no skyscrapers of the Kow York type, and it is to bo hoped will never be afflicted with them. But the new hotels and the vast “mansions,” with their _ cliff - like scale and outline, are slowly giving a new architectural aspect to Jxmdon. And any day the great City may wake up astonished to find it has —A New Color Scheme.—

Suppose that by tho discovery of some new fuel, or some’new method of using our present fuel, London became smokeless. St. Paul’s and the Abbey, in that case, rould resume and keep the whiteness of their Caen stone as the Parthenon, after o.i X.O veins, keeps the whiteness of the marble' that knew the touch of Phidias. And all the famous statesmen and soldiers, dreaming iu stone or bronze on their pedestals, would become, in outward aspect, members of the white race again. —The Youth of London.—

In Loudon the living crowds aro curiously fresh-faced. It is that freshness of look due, apparently, to some antiseptic quality in the air, which makes Loudon always 'look young. There are abundant signs of age; at the groat social functions, fcut the streets are perennially young. What other great city in the woHd has the froshcurnplexioned crowds London knows? And this makes more absurd the violent contrast betwixt the complexion worn by the stain co of dead Englishmen on their pedestals and that of the actual living English. A foreigner who judged tho great statesmen and soldiers of our history by the effigies in et cno liondoners possess of them would certainly conclude that they belonged to some Goparato and negroid variety of the Anglo-Saxon race. Wellington, as he sits on his horse by the London Exchange, is as black as a Congo negro. Poor Queen Anno, in front of St. Paul’s, has to be ‘'cleaned” like a coal grate in order to keep a decent complexion. All the heroic figures in Tra—falgar square are dusky tinted. Judged by complexion, it is a one-armed negro in a cocked hat that looks so persist only towards Franco from the top of the Trafalgar Column. Tho forgotten George, in the upper right-hand corner of tho square, seems to have-just emerged from a bath of ink. It is a particularly inky variety of the black race who meditates on the gun under his foot, as Gordon : while Havelock,

a- lie stands near by, prim and at attention, hue the complexion of the sepoy he blew from his guns. Borne day—it must be repeated—London, by a single conquest, Ihe conquest of its own smoke—a feat certainly within the reach of science—Loudon will gain a new color scheme. Then tho v, oriel will luivo a surprise. It will be able to see how rich, hew varied—if not how stately—tho great city is. —Tho Now England.— But it is already a now London, withotu waiting for any artistic miracle of thin kind. If by the almanac it is one of the oldest in aspect and spirit, it is one of the youngest of tho great cities of the world. And not only London, • but—as the present writer, at least, thinks he Geos—England itself has grown younger. It carries u Titan’s burden, but it is certainly not the “wearied Titan” of Matthew Arnold’s verse. There is a now youth in its politics, in its social life, iu its business energy, and oven—in spots—in its literature. Critics may dispute over the wisdom «r folly of British politics, but no one can deny to them the twin elements of courage and magnanimity. What courage was shown in the gift of self-government to South Africa almost before the sound of the guns iu that Gad battlefield hud died away ! And what magnanimity Great Britain shows to all her children beyond tho seas. She lost America because she tried to impose a trivial tax on a single article of American consumption. To-day the Mother Land does not put a single farthing tax on any of her offspring. The pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. —Colonial Fiscal Policy.—

The self-governing Dominions put a Lax on every bale of British goods winch comes into their ports. “It is magnificent, but it is not war,” was the criticism of tho French general as he watched tho ride of tho .Six Hu nil rod at Balaclava. “It is magnificent, but it is not politics,” a critic might say as ho watches colonies which depend _ for safety upon the fleets of the ■Mother' Land - ' busy levying heavy duties upon ail goods which come to them from the Mother Land. But it is “polities”; and, tried by results, amazingly good politics. It secures the end of all wise policy; that whole-hearted loyalty of its mem hors which is tho first condition of health and safety lor any Empire. —A Pertinent Inquiry.— In the groat function in Westminster Abbey, just at hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, four times over—to east, west, north, and south in turn—will offer the challenge : : Bits, —l now present unto you King George, tho undoubted King of this Realm. Wherefore, all you who conic this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same ?

Now, if any human voice—archi-episcopal or other—could send that groat challenge across the seas to the outlying Dominions, and the answer came back in some vast wave of sound, can anyone doubt what it would be ?