SCOTLAND TO-DAY

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2715, 24 June 1925, Page 5

SCOTLAND TO-DAY

V.-The Glasgow Sanday A MIGHTY PEOPLE—AND THEIR DULL, CITY. (Observer’s Special Commissioner. “There isn’t much excitement today,” said an hotel liftman apologetically on Sunday morning. Ho was right. The Glasgow Sunday was much as ever —a day when .the stimulus of work was withdrawn and the combined weight of dreary architecture and negative morality sat heavy upon the soul.

Glasgow is not a city to dream in, and when its industry imported the Irishman who must have his dream-ing-time, it took to itself a full cargo of social discord. A scheme of life based on “gear and grace” (“Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word”) could not assimilate a race touched to lighter, if not to finer, issues. The Irish submission was a slow and sour one, mitigated by shebeening and its crude consolations. But there were others who could' not fill the void of the Sabbath with gluttonous "diets of worship,” and became the sullen prisoners of the inelastic code. Unction and ugliness turned many a mild and harmless bohemian into a social mal-content. There was once a little girl who resigned herself to the prospect of reaching Heaven only by the hope that she might occasionally "go out and play with the little devils.” It must be a very strong-minded people among whom the Glasgow Sunday would not win the little devils some popularity. Though there is counterrestraint. In no city are “temptations” of any kind less tempting. In Glasgow if nowhere else, Vice is a monster of such frightful

mem As, to be hated needs but to be seen. The concrete result seems to be in football terms, a draw. Glasgow has little ill behaviour, but a heavy load of boredom for those who come short of its own Jpraefervidum ingenlum.

The two classes tend to sharpen their respective features by mutual resentment. A Saturday evening paper prints a page and a half of church notices and there is more intense church-going in Glasgow to-day than in any other Scottish city. That I take to bo in part a reaction to the Irish question. The Presbyterian is moved to assert himself, much as one will attend the Hnglish Church in a foreign resort (by way of ‘.‘showing the flag”) who would scarcely think of doing so at home. But Sunday only accentuates that starvation of the senses which on week-da3 r s persecutes every unoccupied hour. There is so little to please the eye, so little .pattern of life to excite the interest, bo little selfexpression in the collective movement so much that is featureless in the spectacle. The lack of tradition is strangely vivid in a leading thoroughfare like Argyle street. For all its size and bustle it has the air of some Far Western town in which no standards are yet established, and where the newest arrival might as easily set the fashion as the oldest inhabitant. ‘‘Gear and grace” have let slip the moulding of these million j lives. No other formative vision has taken their place. Highly-engined respectability and hang-dog indifference confront each other uncreatively, each on the defensive. But what a power of mind, heart, and will is concealed behind this surface so lacking in carriage gesture, and art-form! The cross-word puzzles in Glasgow newspapers are addressed to a strenuous people. The London cross-word is a mere flattering digestive. The Glasgow variety at once diverts the blood-stream to the cortex —which every physician will tell you is a thing to be avoided after dinner. Such straws show how the wind blows. Wherever you go with serious purpose you meet purposeful intelligence and efficiency. Whether it is a big draper explaining why “narrow shops make bad rtock,” a caterer describing his employment of Industrial Psychology, a shipping firm displaying their organisation/ or a public official giving you the “hang” of his department there is the same concise and lucid expression, the same forceful enthusiasm,, the same receptiveness and deliberation keeping pace with action. The Glasgow Corporation is something of-which no one can speak lightly. Its tramways make the taxi almost a superfluous institution. It has got tile factory chimney under such control that the smoke problem has been reduced to that of the domestic hearth and what is blown across the city from neighbouring and more negligent areas. It has torn out masses of building to give the air-space which last century thought a vain thing; it builds new houses that are cheerful and civilising, and I cannot believe that it would not empty the slums at a rapid pace if Labour gave it a fair chance. The Socialists constantly cite its achievement as an argument for Collectivism, and they certainly have recourse to many a worse.

Although the city's note is one of heaviness administration has none of that failing. The Poor Law regime is, like the municipality, flexible in resource and bouyed with imagination. The Woodiloc Asylum on its airy site, seems to be governed with as light a touch as the. delightful day nursery and kindergarten with which the Corporation mitigates the Cowcaddens. But takes a place by itself. Are you making an appointment by telephone with a business man’s secretary? Before you have finished she will have found you are a stranger, given you your route, and told you where to change trams. Everywhere one njoets with not only courtesy, but real, willing, interested help; it might be a ctiy populated entirely by gentle nurses and Boy Scouts. And the Glasgow voice is full of kin&ness and music (finite apart from the pure Highland speech which is so often heard and is a -separate pleasure). Its proficiency in the new “verse-speak-

ing” exercise need bo no surprise. The city must be loaded with undeveloped art. Aching for an hour of civilisation after a day’s slumming, I stumbled on an amateur performance of Offenbach (an oasis in a wilderness of cinemas), and never heard anything less amateurish in my life. And yet Glasgow is a place from which men flee when their business is accomplished. For human nature’s daily food is top-heavy wit,h worthiness. Just now it has a lamentably largo “idle class.” It seems to need a smaller one at the other end, capable of leading It in entertainment and expressiveness, as when the tobacco lords paraded the Broomielaw “in scarlet cloaks curled wigs, cocked hats, and bearing gold-headed canes.” There is such a distressing faintness of colour about company directors. People Spoke of the Students Hospital Carnival of a few weeks before as a refreshing outburst of youthful spirits that took the town by storm. That seems what the Americans call a “pointer.” The next benefactor of the Univesity should establish a Chair of Fun.