TRIBUTE TO BRITISH ARCHITECTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 23 January 1939, Page 3

TRIBUTE TO BRITISH ARCHITECTS

“SECOND TO NONE” High commendation of the work of British Architects was paid recently by Sir Fabian Ware. "There is probably nobody who, in his public work of the lust twenty years, owes more to architects than 1 do," he said. “On the one side, in the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission, they have brought me nothing but success and I have basked in their reflected glory. The task with which I was charged wa? that of commemorating worthily in foreign lands die dead of the British Empire who fell in the Great War. We rilled on architects, some of them with names already famous —Lutyens, Blomtield, Baker, Burnet, Lorimer, Holden—to help us and the memorials and

[ cemeteries they designed circle the J ! world; they are admired by all foreign j 1 peoples and have taught them that our j British architects are second to none. "The people have learned that they . • should again build properly; many ol f the local authorities have set a splendf id example by themselves building y | properly. But there is this danger; in j almost cases they are confining them--1 selves to mere imitation, often slavish , 2 imitation of the past. That means the | r sterilisation of aesthetic development, t The architect’s mission is to prevent ; that. In a form more durable than is ' j permitted to the rest of us the j architect gives expression to the soul i of the nation; his work is the link, the i strongest visible link. between the! > soul of the past and the soul of u»l born generations. And yet many of the [ ■ local authorities refuse to employ him: 1 ■ they do not wish to pay his fees. The j 1 poor fellow has got to live! It is, j

| however, surely not too high a price to [pay for the salvation of the eternal jsoul of England. Some of these author - i ities will not even make use of the I panels of architects that are freely | provided. “I am convinced, therefore—profoundly convinced—that the time has | come when the employment of architects must be made compulsory by all I local authorities. I know the general j objection to any compulsion that appears to diminish those English liberties which our ancestors have | won for us throughout the centuries and for which we are ready to give our lives. But don’t let us forget this: ! when we fail to apply compulsion in ' detail, where proved esential. we arc playing into the hands of those who | would impose on us the greater com--1 pulsion of the model of the totalitarian j State, which is the enemy of all human I freedom.”