CORRESPONDENCE
A LETTER FROM MANCHESTER
[To the Editor of the Spzeraroa.1 SIR,—Really one ought to begin with Pericles and continue with allusions to Bacon and Sir Thomas More. Because Manchester starts a Civic Week next Saturday (October 2nd) and presumably a city has a Civic Week in order to explain how nearly it approaches the ideal. That is what Pericles did when he cracked up Athens, and a few years ago we had a Lord Mayor who circularized Pericles on a Christmas-card in *order to show us what we ought to be. Manchester can go some way with Pericles, too. "We throw our city open to all the world" (have not jealous rivals always reproached us with our foreign colonies ?) ; "we claim to be a model to others rather than a wily from theni " (" what Manchester thinks to-day, &c.") ; amid our graver occupations we
provide abundant relaxation for the spirits in the public games which we hold" (we have the champion cricket county, two League football teams and greyhound racing with an electric hare). But here we part company with the Athenian. "We," said he, "need no Homer to praise us." Well, we do, and not having, one, we are holding a Civic Week to do the job ourselves. Thoroughly, too. It is not known in what mind the idea originated, and there are churls who say that boosting is more appropriate to Zenith or Gopher Prairie than to a city which has just taken steps to preserve its fragment of Roman wall, which a little time ago had its mediaeval Hanging Ditch scheduled as an ancient monument, which through its scholars and its treasures at the Rylands Library celebrates each noble anniversary in humane letters, and which now has a flourishing society to prevent any more of the old, historic buildings either here or roundabout from falling into the hands of vandals or Americans. But there is no reason why boosting should be boasting. (Some people say Pericles rather piled it on.) It can be done with discretion, and, we hope, with taste.
Manchester has a history : there will be a Pageant in ten scenes, with 3,000 participants, to prove it. Manchester lives largely by cotton (there will be a Textile Exhibition), but not by cotton alone. There are a score, or a hundred, other industries and a Ship Canal that makes Manchester a seaport, so there will be a Pageant of Industry whose symbolism will suggest that we have the vision of something more than pence and are proud through our trade to be the neighbours of the world. And so we are ; who has looked down into the vault of a warehouse in a back street here in Manchester and not received a thrill as he saw the great packing-cases lying with their destinations stamped in bold black letters on them— Smyrna and Shanghai, Lima and Buenos Ayres, Bagdad and Samarkand?
We shall have a Military Tattoo—not in order to rile the pacifists, though it has riled them, but, simply because it makes for colour and exhilaration. One would have thought that the memory of the mud and blood of the trenches was too near and vivid to be weakened by brave music and a military display ; might not a man or a boy see the finery of a Georgian Grenadier without wanting himself to taste the flies and dirt of modern war, and can he not tingle tg the roll of drums without longing for the romance of personages ? But there are more things for the mind than the Tattoo. There will be special concerts, exhibitions of pictures by Manchester artists, exhibitions of prints, maps and books regarding Manchester. The Classical Association will be here, presided over by Lord Hewart, an Old Mancunian and Chief Justice who has ever been an intimate companion of the humanities. The Presi- dent of the Board of Trade, at luncheon with us, will be able to explain how he has undermined the system of trade which made Manchester great. All kinds of institutions and manu- facturies will be thrown open for inspection. If visitors come from far afield, Joy will shake hands with Profit. Even if they should not, the citizens of Manchester have a great oppor- tunity. For a modern industrial city is a microcosm, and if they used all the opportunities of this week for studying their own city, they should emerge wiser and therefore richer men. Enumerating all in the city that is worth exhibiting to the outer world, we shall discover how much of it we do not know ourselves and also, perhaps, how much we would rather not exhibit. If Civic Week is an occasion for Periclean pane- gyrics, it might be used also for silent prayer.
One of the Exhibits during the week will be a model of the new Art Gallery which is to be built on our best vacant site. It is a large site at the top of the hill that slopes up from the Irwell river, and the gallery will be visible for a fair distance round about. This is not an advantage that could be taken for granted in Manchester, for whereas the ancients had a habit of planting their best monuments on any commanding sites that they had got, we or our forerunners have usually taken care to hide our good buildings where they could only be seen with the eye of industry, for which reason many of our citizens have never seen them but with the eye of faith. Raving determined to have a noble Art Gallery we have reaped our reward in the shape of the pictures which Mr. Albert Rutherston has given to the city because he regarded it as a worthy trustee. The Exhibition of these pictures has just closed, and now some of them will travel out to inspire students and artists elsewhere in their pursuit of beauty. The construction of the Art Gallery will automatically bring with it another blessing, for a temporary Library, a monstrous makeshift, stands on the accepted site and it must " go " when the Library comes and a worthier elsewhere, takes its place. The present gallery, by the way, will shortly be pre'. vented with the Epstein bust of Mr. C. P. Scott. rt is also among the current news that Sir Hamilton Harty, of the Halle Concerts, has been complaining about jazz". Both sides to the controversy have displayed some spirit. The question is whether the pro-jazz party should be Condemned for thinking that jazz is the whole of music or for thinking that it is music. One ought not to condemn anyone for reading the popular Press but only for thinking it is literature, and reading nothing else. And so with jazz.
The city grows and grows. First green fields and then an arterial road. Then tram lines to carry the population when there is one, and then a housing scheme to supply the popula- tion to supply the trams. So Manchester advances upon Cheshire. Before long that county will require its own society for the prevention of cruelty.—I am, Sir, &c.,
YO1UR MANCHESTER CORRESPONDENT. Manchester, September 29th.
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