LONDON 



By Florence Craig Albrecht 



Illustrations from photographs by Emil Poole Albrecht 



THERE are so many Londons in 

 one London, where begin with 

 them? The London of Roman 

 and Saxon, of Xorman and Plantagenet ; 

 the London of Chaucer and Shakespeare, 

 of Lamb and Dickens and Thackeray ; 

 the London of clubs and hotels : the Lon- 

 don of factories and sweat-shops ; the 

 London that administers the affairs of 

 empire, and the London that dances and 

 plays cricket. There is the summer Lon- 

 don of the tourist ; there is social London 

 revelling in May : there is the November 

 London of smoke and fog, busy and in- 

 hospitable : there is today a darkened Lon- 

 don, somewhat apprehensive, but grimly 

 determined, a London different from any 

 we have known. They are each London, 

 and all London — the greatest city in the 

 world. 



THE WORLD'S GREAT CITY 



Older capital cities than London there 

 are a few in Europe, greater there are 

 none. Putting aside all unproven tradi- 

 tion, its history begins with the coming 

 of the Roman legions. Rome, seven cen- 

 turies old, was in her pagan prime, but 

 Paris, then Lutetia, was an island hamlet 

 in the Seine ; Vienna was a small Roman 

 camp ; Berlin did not come into existence 

 for many a century thereafter : Madrid 

 first appears a thousand years later ; 

 Brussels was founded in the sixth cen- 

 tury, Amsterdam about the 13th of our 

 era. These count not at all in London's 

 age. 



And while we are busy with figures 

 let us give a few more and have done. 



The city of London, the commercial 

 heart of the metropolis on the site of 

 British hamlet and Roman town, meas- 

 ures about a mile square. In the clay- 

 time its inhabitants number more than 

 300.000 : at night not a twelfth that num- 

 ber sleep there — land is too valuable for 

 residence. During one day a million and 

 a half of people pass through its gates. 



Beyond it and across the river spreads 

 another London, of five million people, 

 over 130 square miles (approximately 

 14 x 10 miles ), and beyond that "Greater 

 London," the district covered by the 

 Metropolitan and city police, with 700 

 square miles and more than seven million 

 inhabitants. 



SIDELIGHTS OX ITS SIZE 



Her streets, straightened and laid end 

 to end, would reach from New York to 

 San Francisco. Of her 650,000 build- 

 ings, 500 are hotels and inns. One hun- 

 dred thousand Americans pass through 

 them in peaceful summers and 15,000 

 resided there before the war. It is a 

 common saying that "there are more 

 Scotsmen in London than in Aberdeen, 

 more Irish than in Dublin, more Jews 

 than in Palestine, and more Roman Cath- 

 olics than in Rome." That surprises us 

 less than it does Europeans ; it might also 

 be true of New York. London's foreign 

 population concerns us very little, nor 

 does the East End now surprise. 



The East End, beyond the "city" and 

 the Tower, is a manufacturing district, 

 tenanted largely by Jewish tailors. There 

 are other industries, but the race pre- 

 dominates. The West End is the home 

 of fashion and of power. Its residents 

 are not true Londoners, although they 

 would resent the assertion ; they are so- 

 journers for a more or less brief time. 

 Between these ends lies real London — 

 all the year, every day, native London — 

 with all its wealth of long and tremen- 

 dous history, of literary and legal repute, 

 of commercial prestige, of architectural 

 fame. The district across the river con- 

 cerns the American visitor only in a few 

 definite interests ; all of London for him 

 lies in a mile - wide band along the 

 Thames, from the Tower to Westminster : 

 but so rich is it that when he would sum- 

 marize his impressions, he finds neither 

 beginning nor end. 



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