CONTEMPORARY || INCIPIENT
Revolution | Revolution | Empire ||Neotechnic | Geotechnic | Eugenic

To elaborate this farther would, of course, exceed my present limits; but I may be permitted to say that long use of this schematic outline, especially of course in more developed forms, has satisfied me of its usefulness alike in the study of current events and in the practical work of education and city betterment.  I venture then to recommend it to others as worth trial.

R—­A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL—­A CIVIC EXHIBITION

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?