The concentration of human beings in towns is contrary to nature, and this abnormal existence is bound to issue in suffering, deterioration, and gradual destruction to the mass of the population. Countless thousands of our fellow-men, and still a larger number of children, are starved of air and space and sunshine. This view of city life, which is gradually coming home to the heart and understanding and the conscience of our people, is so terrible that it cannot be put away. What is all our wealth and learning and the fine flower of our civilisation and our Constitution and our political theories – what are all these but dust and ashes, if the men and women, on whose labour the whole social fabric is maintained, are doomed to live and die in darkness and misery in the recesses of our great cities? We may undertake expeditions on behalf of oppressed tribes and races, we may conduct foreign missions, we may sympathise with the cause of unfortunate nationalities; but it is our own people, surely, who have the first claim upon us. The air must be purified, the sunshine must be allowed to stream in, the water and the food must be kept pure and unadulterated, the streets light and clean. The measure of your success in bringing these things to pass will be the measure of the arresting of the terrible powers of race degeneration which is going on in the countless sunless streets.
Extrait d’un discours du premier ministre britannique, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, prononcé le 25 janvier 1907
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