LONDON

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 May 1933, Page 5

LONDON

CHANGING AND UNCHANGED. It is said’ that London is being rebuilt; it is true to say that it is always being rebuilt, though more rapidly in some decades than in others (writes C. J. Prescott, in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). Most of it was restored after the Great Fire of 1666. But the London of the Stuarts was not that of the Georges. Victorian and Edwardian London showed great changes, and in the life of the present King further enormous changes have been made. There has been constant demolition. If one looks at pictures of old London, and those not very old, it is surprising to see how many of the former landmarks have disappeared. The splendid Kingsway, one of the finest streets in the business centre, was built about thirty years ago on the site of the old slums and rookeries. The old halls, Exeter and St. James’, have gone, and quite recently the Hotel Cecil, famous in the war, has been demolished and on its site stands the huge pile of the Shell-Mex Building. It is not always that these buildings were worn out and unusable, it is simply that the sites were needed for other purposes. If the old palaces remain many of the splendid homes of the aristocracy have disappeared. A wealthy man built a magnificent house at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds. Within ten years it was sold for £10,461, and pulled down. Someone has said that a hotel is like a battleship, it is obsolete in twenty years. This is an extreme statement, but it contains a measure of truth. Regent Street, the Londoner tells you, would not be recognised by the man that knew it twenty years ago. z For one thing, London continues to grow. Within the lifetime of old men, its population was said to be three millions; to-day Whitaker’s Almanac gives it at eight millions. To accommodate these new residents, it has stretched its tentacles in all directions. What were once outlying villages are now part of the great city. Rows of streets of every kind, from the plain two-storey balcony and verandahless houses of the normal type, and the high four-storey houses of the wealthier suburbs, to the garden suburbs laid out to provide sweeter conditions of lite, have been built by the mile. New bridges have beeii flung across the Thames. And within the original area new buildings are continually replacing! old.

Gigantic hotels have sprung up to house the countless visitors that pour into the great city. The enterprise of her merchants continually demands evei’ larger premises to display their goods, and to give walking room for the multitudes that crowd in to inspect and. buy them. Shipping for the moment is under a cloud’, partly due to the subsidies given by foreign countries to their shipping firms. But the colossal scale of London shipping has called for ever more docks. To-day it takes the train more than an hour to bring Australian passengers landed at Tilbury into the city, and it passes by dwelling houses the whole way. The life of the Empire reflects itself in the buildings. The Australian Commonwealth, once called into existence, must have its imposing Australia House in a main thronged thoroughfare. And South Africa is erecting a huge pile close by Nelson’s Monument in Trafalgar Square. Many buildings remind the Londoner of the many foreign countries included in the Empire.

WAR MEMORIALS. Great wars always leave their impress on the city. The Napoleonic wars are responsible for Trafalgar Square, with the Nelson monument, and the great memorial in St. Paul’s to the Duke of Wellington. The Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny are kept in mind by the statues of the heroes ot those conflicts. And it was l impossible that the Great War should not find its memorials. They are found in conspicuous places. The Cenotaph in Whitehall is a new thing, to which homage is done every day. The magnificent recumbent statue of Lord Kitchener in its own little chapel in St. Paul’s Cathedral is a fascinating object and an artistic triumph, while the plain slab in the nave of Westminster Abbey, under which lie the remains of the unknown warrior, makes an. appeal to the imagination and the emotions quite unique. Who was he? What was his name? Where did he live? What battalion did he belong to? How did he die? There is no answer. And just because there is no answer, he is a typo and a reminder of the tens of thousands that, lie buried in France and Flanders, and Gallipoli, and no monument in the Abbey draws so many visitors as this simplest of all simple memorials. But there is a London whose history, running back for long centuries, defies the changing hand of time. No matter what the dynasty or what the

reigning King, the climate remains the same, and the main landmarks are untouched. Waters from the hills have never failed supply the Thames, which is more disposed to flood its banks than allow its waters to be dried up by that unthinkable thing, an English drought. The skies are what they were a thousand years ago, the sun smiles genially in summer, and the dose, narrow streets reflect the burning rays, making everything uncomfortably hot. But grey skies predominate in the winter; the sun is often concealed for days at a time. Mists lie thick ■ upon the city, and now and' again a heavy fog covers everything as with a blanket. And the main landmarks are as they were. A few places call themselves hills, but it is a title of courtesy. In contrast with these are the low-lying flats, difficult to drain and easily flooded. The atlases give maps of the London of Shakespeare’s time, of Pepys’s? and of Dickens’s. The differences are superficial. The Thames is > unaltered and unalterable, and if we had a map of Caesar’s time it would not be essentially different. CONSCIOUSNESS OF LONDONER. But of the unchanging things in London, nothing perhaps is more striking than the consciousness of the Londoner. The term primarily applies to the citizens, rich and poor, who live in it all the year, but it may fittingly include those who come up for the season and spend the rest of their days in their country homes. Like everything else, that consciousness has its surface changes, but in the main it is like the great deep ocean currents, unaffected by wind or tide. From earliest days so much has been centred here. It is the home of the King and the Court, it is the assembling place of the Lords and Commons The great Law Courts to which final appeal is made are here. And as a result of this, it is the centre of. all that misuses a beautiful word’ and calls itself Society. Pageantry and splendour and all that money can buy ar e to be seen here as nowhere else. A hundred 1 years ago it was content ■ to let. Oxford and Cambridge be the eyes of the nation. To-day it is a great seat of learning, with a large Uniyer-' sity, numerous colleges and ancient schools, while Art and Music have found a welcome home. These have had many patrons, but London recognises to-day how much it owes to that oft-misunderstood Prince-, the husband of Queen Victoria.

And it is a city of Churches; th© city proper is crowded with Wren’s creations. Three great cathedrals have their prelates here, and probably every denomination has its headquarters.

Civic patriotism is a laudable sentiment, whether found, as it is, in little towns or in great capitals. And civic patriotism is very strong here, perhaps no single citizen can take in the full significance of all the thronging interests that find here their centre. On the other hand, it would be difficult to find one that escapes entirely the influence of his surroundings. The very fruitshops are a lesson in geography. The Londoner would be a miserable soul if he did not respond in some degree to the wealth of memorials of the past and to the vigour of the thronging life that surges through the streets and crowds the public buildings and the dwellinghouses.

This consciousness is something that lives on from century to century. Dr. Johnson might be tempted to make an occasional visit to Litchfield, and one great pilgrimage to the Highlands, but his “Let us take a walk down Fleet Street” reveals the heart of the enthusiastic Londoner. If he came back to-day he might find Fleet Street an inconvenient place for a pleasant and quiet stroll, but his heart would be claimed just as much by the old city.

It might be difficult to resolve the London consciousness into all its elements. There may be a touch of pagan pride, but there is also the instinct of those pious ancestors that inscribed on the Royal Exchange, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” and on the dome of St. Paul’s erected a. huge cross.