THE LURE OF LONDON.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14044, 29 April 1920, Page 2

THE LURE OF LONDON.

(By Alban H. Godwin.! From time to time I read about the "magic of the metropolis." I am still trying to discover what evil genius has inspired all these rhapsodies. l,ondo:i. to be sure, has uncommon powers of attraction, but these are not all on the .surface. Strong, ambitious men from the four corners of the land, are lured by her, and they make the pilgrimage that leaus tiient into the toifs of the syren. From her ample bosom thev seldom want to escape. Whv should it be? Speaking as one who hat been hypnotised during the last lew months, who loves nob the capital, but who has already a feeling that the provinces hereafter are bleak, I can only marvel at the strange fascination of the detestable p'lace.

Hut why? Its bigness, its teeming population, its motor-ridden thoroughfares? well, these mav arrest the imagination for a while, but they soon give one such an uncomfortable feeling of being an unmightv atom in the vast metropolis. Its wealtli. its blase its artificial gaictvf Yes: it has all the.se, but they are at the command of only the for- ; tunate few. For the average man it exacts for its pleasures an exorbitant price. Friendship? ,',...,, , ' >'o city can be more 1 frigid to tlie *traii"er 'who enters its gates. "They have not the gift of friendship here ? .-aid a- fellow northern exile tp me the other day. London just throws the newcomer among its mjjriads of atoms—one more lonelv. mesmerised soul, left to recover from the stupor at leisure. Super-brain-power, initiative, and concentrated cnergv? The. very idea is a joke For these oiie looks, not to "Whitehall or five miles around it. but to the north. . ~ . , Except for the elect. :t has no .social life, and one looks in vain for any sign of corporate spirit, or yet for any public interest that transcends the village pump. No community is more parochial in outlook—how wearying this stomal conversation about, its tubes ,-iikl its omnibuses.!—or is more tepid in enthusiasm for the interest of the irrc«at world beyond. Londoners, after all. are made up ehieflv of those hybrid provincials who have'paced the great south road to what thev think is. and what olten mav be. the citv of opportunity. In numbers they and their children must exceed the purebred cockneys. For London thev cannot possibly have any native affection, and soon they also succumb to its own listless spirit, which would become deadly but for these constant drafts of fresh blood from the hardier provinces. Soniebodv spoke not long ago about I the "hvpuotic eye." Well. London has thai peculiar property to an uncanny 1 deo-rec. She allures to herself most of the nation's best mental and physical element's by this elusive magnet—this civic "hvpuotic eve.'" Seeing that, without this continuous northern gull-stream of brains and energy, the capital would surely die of inanition within two generations, nature seems to have fortified her with this as an instrument of self-preserva-tion. , . It is her elixir of life—the means of 'the perpetual renewal of her youth. Without it she would have sunk long ago. like most ancient places, into a mere Canterbury or "Winchester. -