general housing problem the architectural profession has been spurred
into activity by reason of the war, and to its credit be it said, it
is now thoroughly aroused. The American Institute of Architects sent a
commissioner to England to study housing in its latest manifestations,
and some of the ablest and most influential members of that
organization have placed their services at the disposal of the
government. Moreover, there is a manifest disposition, on the part of
architects everywhere, to help in this matter all they can. The danger
dwells in the possibility that their advice will not be heeded, their
services not be fully utilized, but through chicanery, ignorance,
or inanition, we will relapse into the tentative, "expensively
provisional" methods which have governed the housing of workers
hitherto. Even so, architects will doubtless recapture, and more
than recapture, their imperiled prestige, but under what changed
conditions, and with what an altered attitude toward their art and
their craft!

They will find that they must unlearn certain things the schools had
taught them: preoccupation with the relative merits of Gothic and
Classic--tweedledum and tweedledee. Furthermore, they must learn
certain neglected lessons from the engineer, lessons that they will
be able immeasurably to better, for although the engineer is a very
monster of competence and efficiency within his limits, these are
sharply marked, and to any detailed knowledge of that "beautiful
necessity" which determines spatial rhythm and counterpoint he is a
stranger. The ideal relation between architect and engineer is that of
a happily wedded pair--strength married to beauty; in the period just
passed or passing they have been as disgruntled divorcés.

[Illustration: PLATE VI. PLAN OF THE RED CROSS COMMUNITY CLUB HOUSE,