THE WICKEDEST CITY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16846, 23 September 1922, Page 3

THE WICKEDEST CITY.

NOT DEFINITELY FOUND. NONE ANXIOUS FOR THE CLAIM. The irir-kedeßt ritv in the world is hke the “better 'ole” (says a writer in the Melbourne “Age”;. If some i people knew of it they would go to it. It is preserved from overcrowding or.lv been use there is such diversity of opinions as to its exact location ' Sea soned travellers tell you confidently where ,t is to he found, but no two mention flip same place Since the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah ceased to ascend, the right to fhe distinction has been a matter of dispute London, I’a.-ii, Berlin. .Naples Moseow the t.tle might be implied to cacti, and not he seriously misplaced. Sm. sand and sorrow” is supposed to describe Cairo. But to he alliterative is not necessarily to he accurate. You bare only to change it to "sin, sorrmv seek the world -s wickedest city at any point between i c Poles. Some people would undertake to find it for you under the Southern Cross, not to' lie ton precise. Chicago has been described as “ hell y/ith the lid off.” Buenos Aires as an international <<*sspool,” Constantinople fk s . " morn * latrine of Kurope.” Kipling calls Calcutta ihe “ Citv of Dreadful Night.” Clearly the search for The supreme city of evil is likely to he even note arduous than the search for the ritv celestial. as described in John Bunvan’s immortal story. AN INTENSE CURIOSITY. it M'on t m;i tter if it is never definitely found. A’ct it is a curious fact that timid, tepid ly-pious .souls frequently display an intense curiosity as to its existence. Presumably they vision a city whose streets arc an enlargement of New York’s “Great "White Wav.” They would not inhabit it, but ihe thought that it exists seems to thrill their imagination. In Byron’s poem the elderly - virgins a sic a certain question during the sack of Ismail, half honing for the thing they afrected to fear. Something of that feeling keeps alive the question : Which is the wickedest city in the world? The answer is to be found in Betsy Prig’s reference to Mrs Harris There ain’t -no such person.” Just after Dr Johnson published his dictionary, a lady said accusingly, ‘‘There are a great many had words in your dictionary. Doctor.” “ You have been looking for them, Madam ; you have been looking for them.” retorted the shrewd philosopher. Similarly, tinperson who knows which city concentrates the greatest wickedf has been

looking for it. There are men have been forty years in. India without seeing a tiger They weren’t looking for one.

Discussion has sometimes raged as to which was the wickedest juried in history. Some people say it was Jerusalem about 33 A.D. Not a' few would insist it was Berlin in 1914. Variety can be imparted to the controversy by wondering which is the wieko »<\3t class in society. The verdict will inevitably l»«> affected by the adjudicator s p-r sonal status. The class to whisa he belongs i» unlikely to be consider'd the mo- 1 guilty" STANDARDS OF GOOD AND EVILS. Futility is stamped on the faces of all such questions. Every age, race, class and city is apportioned its share of potential wickedness. Humanity ,- s engaged in perpetual struggle with that formidable trio—the world, the flesh and th-> devil. And in every city you can find levels where the struggle is going on only feebly, and often not at all. The world, the flesh and the devil hold the floor. But each man takes his own standard of good and evil about with him • a.nd the standards of some are. so strangely constructed that the wickedest city in the world could easily be each citv they visited Tt is desirable to remember that the city is a comsoite. Man himself is perplexingly complete. Guatama the Buddha, despite the beauty of his ascetic teaching, died from over-eating. Alexander the Great, having no more worlds to conquer, disdained to conquer himself and died dead drunk. I When the extremes of good and evil ! ran he found so glaringly in the inI dividual, the citv mav he expected to 1 display them on large-scale lines. | Everyone knows the two curates who [ considered it an act of Hare devilry to i | travel in a smoking compartment. Be I tween them and these gentlemen who | furtively sand bag and gar rote their j ! fellow citizens there is a wide margin i for varying degree* of wickedness. For some people Mon to Carlo is. evil incarnate. however elegant. Others claim ! to have found in church courts an I coteries a personal bitterness and jealousy of which the habitues of Monte Carlo would be honestly ashamed. Each side sees only the other’s wickedness. A POP CL A R AND STUPID THEORY. The constant association of wicked ness with the*city suggests a special and inevitable intimacy between the two. The city has long submitted to he slandered. The country is good, the city is evil; so runs the popular and stupid theory. It seems impossible to dissipate the cant which circulates as to the country’s all round superiority. The philosophy is that man was made to live in the country, hut he lives in the cities for his sins, and there he continues to add to his rins. When wickedness is to be contem plated, the spectator is always invited to look at the cities. It is there impressive because concentrated. It is Q o easy to forget that, if the. ascertained mass of it could he equitably distributed. the unit’s share might not be greater than that which the country admirer and dweller lias often to shoulder. For,- if the newspaper? are to be believed, there seems to be a considerable amount of sin and sorrow in the country. Evil is easy in the city. But the country need- not assume airs of goodness when it merely j lack? facilities for practising wickedj ness. THE CREDIT SIDE OF CITIES. The country inclines to be forgetful and ungrateful when thinking 6f the cities. Doubtless they deserve to be debited with great wickedness. But there is a credit side to that account. “ Cities,” said Dr Guthrie, the famous Scottish divine, “ have been as lamps of life along the pathway of humanity. "Within them science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls freedom has fought her noblest battles. Cities have been the cradles of human liberty, the active centres of almost all church and State reformation.” Dante was free to choose his home in all the wide world, but to be out of the streets of Florence was, for him. exile. Socrates never cared to go beyond the bounds of Athens. Emanuel Kant demolished the philosophic systems of the past and laid a lasting basis for succeeding thought, yet for fifty years he had never slept beyond the walls of his old-fashioned native city. The world’s cities need not be so persistently thought of in terms of wickedness. That men pass from a natural life to an unnatural life, that the;, drop honest pleasures for artificial pleasures, when they elect to live in cities is a smug suggestion which should now he- hastened or. its way to oblivion. That desire for the city’s mass and movement is fundamental to our being Its intensity is overwhelming in youth, and maiden, ay. in sire and matron It. is a natural longing for companionship. for the sense of warmth and protection which the great cities give.