The speeches at the Royal Academy banquet call for little
comment. The best was that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who deplored the prosaic and drab-coloured surroundings in which our statesmen and administrators and public servants habitually did their work. Maps were, as a rule, the least unsightly adornments of their official apartments. "Think," continued the Archbishop, " what Home Secretaries we might evolve, what Chancellors of the Exchequer, what Budgets, might be ours if the surroundings were quite other, and the happy man had the same chance—for everybody's good, mind you—as the civic and political potentates of Venice or Perugia had in days gone by. . . Bring these three things together—the drab walls, the long purse, and the skilled pencil and brush and chisel—and what a difference it might make to England's life."
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