LONDON THE MAGNET: LONDON THE POOR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2455, 20 March 1909, Page 11 (Supplement)

LONDON THE MAGNET: LONDON THE POOR.

“You may count on the fingers the cities that have the power of drawing back, as does a magnet, those who, have once lived in them. Paris possesses it, and Rome, Venice, and' Aloscow, and San Francisco. One imagines the Celestial longing for another sight of many : pagoda’d. Poking, tho Indian pining for esoteric Delhi, tho Persiandooking forward to the day when lie will see once more the rose gardens and glittering tiles of Teheran. But not in all tho world is there another city whose memories are so potent, whose embrace is so unyielding, as London.” So writes one in the “Times” who has evidently been long abroad, and returns to London with enthusiastic gratitude. LONDON THE INEVITABLE. “To one who has loved London, liis return is as inevitable as the passing of the daysr He can be really happy nowhere else. It is for him the true ‘Gemmo of all joy, jasper of jocunditie.’ In America, Australia, Africa, his thoughts ever turn to the dear, delightful town, with its color and its wonder and its mystery, it’s storied walk, its splendours, and its shames. “They told me—the Englishmen whom I met abroad in - the course of an absence of many years—that I should ‘not know London’ when I came back. Not know London ! If all the County Councils in the Kingdom were to do their worst for fifty years, thoy could not mako London. strange. Some few streets have disappeared and others have been widened; there are more hotels for opulent Americans; additional statues of doubtful artistic value have been put up ; a memorial to the late Queen, of beauty that is not. doubtful, is being built; motors have made travel easier for persons who are unfortunate enough to be unable to walk; the bridge at Ludgate Hill bas been vilely painted; the AVe6t-end shops are a little more expensive, and one sees fewer silk hats than formerly. And, really, that is about all. One or two ‘landmarks,’ as they are rather stupidly called, have vanished, but the things that I loved are all here still.” LONDON’S POVERTY.

The writer then declares that London’s “glory is real to me.” Ho the element ’of unexpectedness which it presents, its changing beauty. “You can start from any point and go in any direction and never exhaust the possibilities.”

“In one respect, London is too much the same,” he says, turning to London the Poor. “The dreadful poverty of so much of the town has not been ameliorated. Now, as when I knew it before, the misery of the East End and other districts like it is teridfamog, deadening to the senses. one difference, it is better concealed. One can. travel from Kensington to the Bank and see only the surface of things —the fair side. The pitiful transactions and alarms of two million human beings are hidden. But the misery is not far to seek, and it seems, if anything, more acute than formerly. One day the Empire will have to pay for it all; for it is these people who, when they are ‘assisted’ to Canada, Australia, New Zealand—helpless, stunted, hope-less-make the name tef England a byword. WHAT THE COLONIES KNOAV. “And is there any quicker sense of guilt, any deeper sense of responsibility, on the part of those who should feel resjponsible, guilty? In one. of the daily newspapers I read on Christmas Day, ‘Everyone Happy.’ It was in a ‘headline’ over ail article dealing with Christmas charity. “This is self-hypnotism, and, if the more fortunate here do not realise it, tho Colonies are in a position to enlighten them.”