How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our
observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and
our practical policy--i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be
selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these
applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if
this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service,
how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both?
At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical
proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would
fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations
and to the public likely to be interested.
Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together the
movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere plainly
nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some
such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at
least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards
Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by
the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in [Page: 110]
Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred Exhibitions
and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere.
All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with its
important section of social economy and its many relevant special
congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular
interest, and civic stimulus, the _Congres de L'Art Public_; the more
since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental
cities sent instructive exhibits.
Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that in
well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the
great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly
brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with
their associated congresses.
With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon
Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us;
with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a
real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic
education and action?
Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important
exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits
have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the
picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of
their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present
conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering
them.
Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might
readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the
excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions
in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an
exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they
may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely
abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the
discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to
raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening
lights.
[Page: 111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less
feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of
sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual
appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic
Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of
the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic
Exhibition.[14]
[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the
practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition,
appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to
civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated
by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that
admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in
the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above.
Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that
_Encyclopædia Civica_, into which, in the previous instalment of this
paper (vol. I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics.
We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in
universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the
mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of
these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future,
and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already
struggling towards birth.