Note (return) — Chapter I

If again, at an earlier age, children still in school are to be taught what Mr. Wells calls 'the sense of the State,'[63] we may, by remembering Athens, get some indication of the conditions on which success depends. Children will not learn to love London while getting figures by heart as to the millions of her inhabitants and the miles of her sewers. If their love is to be roused by words, the words must be as beautiful and as simple as the chorus in praise of Athens in the Oedipus Coloneus. But such words are not written except by great poets who actually feel what they write, and perhaps before we have a poet who loves London as Sophocles loved Athens it may be necessary to make London itself somewhat more lovely.