To: The Editor of "The Times".

Sir,

In your leading article of April 5th., on the future
of Portland Place, one sentence occurs against which I beg
leave to protest. The writer says: "The noble street is
bound, by the laws of change and development, to go". Sir,
these are not immutable laws, and the street is not _bound_
to go: if it goes, it goes by the wishes of the community,
for in this sphere the chief laws of change and development
are those which are amenable to, if not created by, human
will.

Pure economics is not the only guide: I take it that
a civilized society is one which devotes part of its
resources to something beyond the mere struggle for
supremacy, and the preservation of beautiful architecture
is an object, among others, worth some degree of commercial
sacrifice. I am not maintaining that Portland Place is the
most striking instance imaginable, nor do I think that
anything short of a revolution would now save this street,
but there is still time for leaders of opinion to build an
effective bulwark before the tide of reconstruction has
swept away the last traces of our inheritance of beauty.

Even if it were true - which it is not - that the
beauty of their surroundings is of no economic benefit to
those who live or work among them, surely civic pride and
national prestige - to say nothing of the free circulation
of light and air - have a practical value. The destruction
of old Regent Street is already suspected of having been an
unparalleled folly. I wonder whether the authorities
responsible would condemn all the world's most beautiful

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buildings - as, for instance, the Parthenon - if they stood in the way of their schemes of reconstruction. Could any conceivable modern "development" of the Acropolis site be a paying proposition for the city of Athens?

We are wrong in another strictly practical sense in constantly adding to the size of our buildings within a restricted area. We are in a vicious circle: congested traffic routes cause us to huddle together near the centre, and this huddling together leads in turn to more congestion of traffic. Early business communities placed their buildings close together partly in order to facilitate inter-communication: their legs were their only engines of locomotion, and if they thought that 20 minutes, at the most, might be allowed for going from one office or warehouse to another, their cities could be one mile across. Today the telephone has annihilated distance for many communications, and for the remainder the motor-car, with well planned streets *free from congestion*, would cut down the time of transit by at least seven-eighths: a city might have eight or more times the diameter of the old one without loss of efficiency. But in fact 100 years of mechanical progress have resulted in the average speed of traffic on 5th Avenue falling below walking pace for long periods of the day. London is rapidly approaching the same condition with much less excuse than New York, for here we are not confined upon a narrow island. I was interested to read lately in one of your contemporaries that New York engineers were at last coming to the opinion that the only possible solution of the traffic problem lay in forbidding further building and limiting the population of the city; nor was I surprised to learn that ground landlords, estate dealers, and civic authorities resolutely refused to recognize this simple truth. In England we should expect the latter class to

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take an independent view. A benevolent and far-seeing
despot would begin by forbidding us to cover another
square foot of ground or to add another cubic foot to the
total volume of our buildings within 5 miles of Charing
Cross, coupling this of course with the strictest
ordinances against additional overcrowding of any kind.
Then he would start weeding out.

However, the fundamental necessity is to recognize
the reality of aesthetic values and to understand that in
the field dealt with in your leading article we can control
the laws of change and development as we wish. If believers
in beauty reveal a "defeatist" mentality in face of the
enemy, they will deserve the fate which will surely over-
take them.

I remain, Sir,

Yours obediently,

9th April, 1929.

20, Portman Square, W.1

Sir,

The Dean of Manchester, in his splendid letter on "the spread of ugliness" in "The Times" of October 9th., must have profoundly impressed every reader by his trenchant reasoning and broad sympathy. Will you allow me, as an industrialist with some experience of a widespread and varied industry - i.e. textiles -, to affirm my sincere belief in every word he says about the fallacy "which equates efficiency with ugliness".

Efficient work can never be done without health, cheerfulness and some degree of spiritual contentment, and the present age, with its ever-widening spread of culture and nervous sensibility, will not see this while the thirst for beauty is stifled at every turn in daily life. Thoughtful business men have come to realize this all over the world, and the Dean might have added the United States of America to the list of countries which are ahead of England in this respect. Factory conditions have already been widely tackled: home surroundings, especially in England, present a still greater problem.

The Dean, and Mr. Robert R. Hyde, in his letter published on October 11th., have rightly named employers and controllers of industry as persons ultimately responsible; but we must go further and ask "who are the real controllers and employers?"

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It is hardly thinkable today that any owner of a private business who takes a pride in his life's work will tolerate conditions in that business which are a crying personal reproach; the great majority of industrial establishments, however, belong to joint-stock companies, and, rightly or wrongly, the hands of the executives are fettered. The business man's code of ethics may be generally faulty, but here it is rigid. The theory is that directors are paid by shareholders to make profits; not to spend them. They may and should take long views, but they have no mandate to spend shareholders' money on objects which are not demonstrably likely to be profitable, or which can only be called so by an act of faith: they must not pursue personal ideals and satisfactions; shareholders claim the right to do that individually with their own money. Possibly some boards of directors are unduly timid, and undoubtedly many are indifferent, but broadly speaking they will hardly move from their present position unless public opinion is at their back, and this will never be effective in such matters if the individuals composing the public turn tail the moment their own pockets are involved.

As between shareholders and directors so it is between electors and public bodies of all kinds, not excepting Parliament and the national executive. These bodies have even greater responsibility than directors of private industry, but, where beauty and ugliness are in question,

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one looks in vain for any breadth of vision. The moment the sacred principle of financial advantage is invoked, every other consideration ceases to exist. Worse still, the very appeals to this principle are not properly scrutinized; our representatives are hypnotized before it and helpless in the hands of their experts, whose special pleadings, if disinterested, are usually biased and based upon short and narrow views.

It appears then to me that it is investors in particular and electors in general who must be educated for the struggle against ugliness, and here, Sir, you and your colleagues hold the chief power today.

With few exceptions our leaders in the press as in political life seem to be overawed by the vague tyranny of unchallenged financial and commercial values. We await the day when Beauty may sway the result of elections, or claim of right the utmost deference from organs of public opinion, instead of being kept discreetly in the background like a doubtful guest, or at the best, introduced with apologies. Meanwhile the Dean's striking words "Beauty and efficiency go hand in hand" might well be set up in every board-room and managerial office in the country.

I remain, Sir,

Yours obediently,

20, Portman Square, W.1.

October 15th 1929.