6 MAY 1955, Page 9

IN SOME WAYS we deserve to be called barbarian. We

support an excellent Royal Fine Art Commission and withhold from it the power to do anything effective in the areas where its corrective influence is most needed. In the City of London, for example, where the opportunities provided by the destruc- tion of war are being set aside and the task of reconstruction botched by piecemeal development. What can one feel but shame, looking at the revolting barracks which have already raised their forbidding walls in the city, contemplating the horrors to come? The Commission in its thirteenth report expresses concern, and well it might. It will be consulted of course, but will its opinion be heeded? Not if the City runs true to form. The precedent is its treatment of Wren's plan.