Its Factory phase generated one crop of towns :sx and the Railway phase another , simultaneously accelerating the growth of the first crop .sx Machine Production and Mechanical Transport , the parents of many new towns and cities , have of course also multiplied the population and transformed the character of most old towns and cities .sx SUCH is the customary view of urban expansion in the modern world .sx But further analysis discloses other factors , and , moreover , one of particular significance .sx It has reference to the metropolitan city of each Great State .sx Every capital of Western Europe , from Vienna to London , from Leningrad to Madrid , presents a history of recent growth , like and yet unlike , that of the industrial and transport cities .sx There is a differential factor in the adaptation of each capital city to a long-continued succession of wars .sx The suggestion is this :sx that the centralization required for the waging of war has been a factor , perhaps the main factor , in metropolitan expansion and prestige , and increasingly during the past four centuries .sx And not only the magnitude , but also the mentality of metropolitan populations , is correlated with war become habitual .sx Berlin offers the most conspicuous illustration of both tendencies .sx An insignificant town of less than 20,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the 17th century , Berlin grew to a city of over three million people by 1914 .sx And the contention is that this hypertrophy was in the main due to the successive centralizations necessitated by war ; and that the magnitude and dominance of Berlin were maintained and extended by one successful war after another .sx How its warlike mentality infected the old burgher cities of Germany is now well known ; though the disease had long been incubating .sx THE mode of metropolitan growth , exhibited by Berlin so diagrammatically , is shown more obscurely by the other " great capitals " of European States .sx Their history is of course modified in each case by complicating circumstances .sx London , for instance , the titular metropolis of the British Empire , is itself dominated by Westminster , the real capital .sx Mediaeval Westminster was little more than a royal and abbatial suburb of London .sx Then , largely through the centralization brought about by war , fear of war , hope of war , preparation for war , and sequel of war , Westminster ascended the ladder of political power and social prestige .sx It gained at the expense of old regional capitals like Winchester and Gloucester , where Kings once held court respectively at Easter and Christmas , as in Westminster at Whitsuntide .sx Later , the long tale of eighteenth-century wars changed Westminster from a national to an imperial capital , with world-wide dominions in tribute .sx Building beside the nucleus of sanctity in the historic city , Whitehall becomes the political centre of this new-won empire , and .sx the " West-end " ( Mayfair and Belgravia ) its social centre :sx together they acquire for Westminster a position of ever-mounting dominance .sx The port of London becomes its Piraeus :sx East-London its factory and warehouse quarter ; the " city " of London its banking adjunct and staple-market ; the other metropolitan boroughs subordinate them-selves to its service ; " provincial " citizens do it homage by pilgrimage , by seasonal migration , and by absorbing its " news " And finally its prestige is crowned by the loyalties of far-flung dominions .sx An ebb and flow of colonial emotion is generated by that mystical " legend of London " whose reality is the cult of Westminster-London .sx IN so far as this analysis holds as it would be easy to extend it to Paris and to Vienna , to Moscow and Leningrad , and even to Washington each imperial metropolis is to be accounted a war-city , whose maintenance and survival depend on an orientation of the national culture to a veiled state of war .sx Impulses to this end , some of them perhaps half-conscious , others quite unwitting , can be discerned in the characteristic life and doings of industrial as well as metropolitan cities .sx A certain solidarity of great towns and cities is thus brought into confrontation with the pacific interests of civilization , such as those of Home and Garden , Farm , Fold and Workshop .sx So deep a cleavage no doubt betokens the presence of some highly transformative ferment at the heart of modern society .sx A growing mass of evidence bears testimony to this view , and also begins to make clear the nature of the transmutation .sx Consider then , in light of this testimony , the general aspects of the prevalent disharmony between Home and City, , between Town and Country .sx SEQUEL and issue to some three centuries of lesser wars , the Great War manifestly indicates a culminating crisis in the long-drawn fever of Transition , from which our Western world has suffered , and still suffers .sx The disease may be interpreted as symptom of a confused struggle to escape the pains of a dying civilization , and to enter upon a richer inheritance , glimpsed but not grasped .sx The finer and larger vision of life which dawned with the Classical Revival , set men's hearts ablaze with a passion of realisation .sx Then arose a conception of personality ; as , at its full , blending the newly recovered Greek ideals of bodily perfection and mental opulence , with the mediaeval heritage of Christian virtues and graces .sx The Gentleman-Scholar of the Renaissance did , at his best ( as for instance in types like Sir Philip Sidney ) , embody this Classico-Christian ideal of personality .sx At the peak of its curve , the Renaissance type touched that level of attainment .sx And the aspiration to be Gentleman and Scholar in one , for a brief and glorious generation , engaged the patrician mind throughout Western Europe .sx Indeed , despite much decadence , its surviving vestiges may still be found .sx THE Reformation and the Revolution , both aiming at other ends , nevertheless carried this ideal of personality-and of course too , its womanly counterpart , the cultivated Lady , into widening circles , till it wellnigh embraced the community .sx It penetrated to the middle classes in the seventeenth century , and to the working classes in the nineteenth .sx But communal desire for liberation of personality , into full play of life , implied immense changes in social organisation .sx The needed readjustments of Church and State , of learning , education , labour , industry , commerce , finance , all needed to be worked out , by arduous process of trial and error .sx To adapt traditional systems of temporal and spiritual power to the new needs was , and is , the social issue .sx The problem has been confused , and the task hindered , by exacerbation of old hostilities and the acrimony of new .sx Sectarianism in Church joined with partisanship in State to set Class against Class , and Nation against Nation .sx Rivalries of Capital and Labour , emulations of Specialized Interests , discords of the Sciences and the Humanities , have thrown into shadow every tradition of unity , and correspondingly delayed endeavours of renewal .sx ALL these feuds , negligences , confusions , concentrate in the modern city , and make it , at best a focus of unrest , at worst a hot-bed of corruption .sx In the great capitals more especially , does the intensity of struggle for individual survival , and for group or class dominance , compound with rivalries , intercivic and international ; and thus to generate , in metropolitan populations , two characteristic habits of mind .sx One is a chronic habituation to a mood of fear , mitigated , yet in the long run intensified , by periodic rebound into extravagance of hope ; and the other , an impulse to exploit every situation of peril , real or imaginary .sx Both tendencies react to sharpen the edge of competitive traffic at home , and warlike rivalries abroad .sx Doctrines which interpret life in terms of strife abound and flourish .sx They grow and multiply in our urban milieu like weeds in an unkempt garden .sx Under a disguise of detachment and generality they infect our thinking , and even our emotions , with a competitive bias .sx Under their sway , metropolitan interests masquerade as national aspirations ; and the myth of an Absolute and Omnipotent State gains credence .sx WITH this sanction of power and exaltation of strife , a corresponding enfeeblement overtakes the traditions and movements that build on life's sweet and gentle harmonies .sx Inevitably there sets in that atomizing of urban populations , which runs to its limit in each great capital .sx There all the natural impulses of unredeemed egoism find their nidus .sx There the surviving fragments of outworn temporal and spiritual powers congregate as in a sanctuary of illusion ; and quickening with renewed vigour , they kindle the embers of dead feuds and dying superstitions .sx WHAT our cities are , our minds tend to be :sx and , broadly speaking , the more educated we are , the more our minds tend to catch , absorb and reflect that working synthesis of our age and civilization , which the metropolitan city is .sx Each great capital furnishes its nation , for better or worse , with an outfit of adjusted temporal and spiritual powers .sx It provides the instruments of Sovereignty and the criteria of Influence .sx The writ of its Executive runs within effective range of the metropolitan press , and the moral efficacy of that press is reinforced by a host of varied ancillaries .sx A ceaseless outflow of books , periodicals , journals , expounds the metropolitan mind ; a stream of unending novelties , recreational and artistic , displays the charm of metropolitan features ; spates of oratory and propagandism flood the platforms of the country with metropolitan notions of what is worth while .sx If then , as assumed , the life of every modern metropolis is fragmented to the limit of cohesion under a binding impulse of fear , and desire to exploit it , far-reaching must be the effects on national character .sx All the natural impulses and social aspirations which promote integrity of life , and therefore foster the growth of personality and its ennoblement , will be discouraged .sx All the natural difficulties and historic survivals , which obstruct the genesis of personality and its ennoblement , will be encouraged .sx And religions which cultivate holiness of personality as the fine flower of communion with life's ideals will work under grave disabilities .sx REFLECT upon the social consequences .sx Those who inherit the traditions and own the means of culture will hold fast to their possessions with grimmest determination .sx Those who lack both means and tradition will struggle for them with fiercest resolve ; or lapse into an acceptance , paralyzing or degrading , of such compensations and substitutes as can be had .sx In the resulting melee of chronic strife between individuals , groups , classes , nations , all more or less at cross purposes , the waste of life and energies has been prodigious .sx Yet , mistaking this urban process of individual struggle and group competition for a phenomenon of nature , the nineteenth century theorists of the emulative life enunciated their doctrine of development by Natural Selection at the margin of strife .sx But to-day , it is safe to say , no informed and critical school holds that along this way run the central path of natural development , and the main track of human progress .sx On the contrary , a growing consensus of scientists and philosophers , relatively liberated from the mechanical and urban ideas of Victorian times , stresses the co-operative factor .sx The higher the type of life , the more actively and purposively , it would seem , does the species share in directing its own evolution .sx The essence of natural progress appears to reside in an integral activity of the species .sx If it would survive and develop , the species must play its part in solidarity .sx It must act as a united firm embarked on high commerce .sx The purpose of the partnership is masterfully yet rhythmically to .sx interplay with environment in such wise as to draw out , and develop to their utmost , the qualities of life latent in , and characteristic of , that species .sx ACCEPT this reading of organic evolution , and you see more clearly how and why nature impels Man ceaselessly to seek his heart's desire .sx Our cities are the master instruments contrived by the human race for achieving its purpose ; they play the crucial part in shaping the course of civilization .sx It follows that our cities aid , or hinder , human fulfilment , according as they stage a concert of personalities , or a combat of factions .sx And the supreme type of personality , attainable at any given time by the people of a particular civilization , must be taken as given in its history , and explicable therefrom .sx For our western civilization it is presumably set forth in that vision of life , which integrates into one undivided personality , the Christian graces and the Classic powers and dignities .sx