LANDSCAPE PARKS 323 



Almost within the memory of living men has come the effective National 

 conception of the city as a complete organism which must provide for Planning 

 its inhabitants such things as they cannot provide for themselves for 

 complete and efficient living; and with this conception has come the 

 realization of the importance to the individual and so to the community 

 of beauty, and especially of outdoor beauty, and the duty which the 

 community has to provide it. We are now coming to see that this same 

 conception of a complete functional organism applies as well to the 

 state and to the nation ; that the lands of the nation should be studied 

 as to their various fitness to all the purposes which lands may serve, 

 and then so regulated that each may best serve that purpose, economic 

 or esthetic, to which in the general national scheme it is best fitted.* 



The complete organization of the area of town and city and state 

 and nation which shall bring this about, the wise administration which 

 shall make it possible, in the face of the dangers of public incompetence 

 and private greed, may be a thing of the distant future, but it is to 

 come. And the greatest opportunity for public service which is before 

 the landscape architect of to-day is that he may bear his share, by writ- 

 ten and spoken word and by actually constructed example, in the pub- 

 lic education and the molding of public opinion, through which alone 

 this good thing may be brought about, and by which in the future it 

 must be upheld. 



* Cf. Le Probleme National, beginning of Ch. X, in Louis van der Swaelmen's 

 Preliminaires (TArt Civique, 1916. (See References.") 



