In the heart of the city the sense of power, impressive if malignant, is so overwhelming that one cannot see the monstrosity as a whole and can almost understand the blindness of its inhabitants. Go, rather, to the hills beyond Halesby, to Uffdown and Pen Beacon, where, with a choice of prospects, one may turn from the dreamy plain of Severn and the cloudy splendours of Silurian hills, to its pillars of cloud by day and its pillars of fire by night; and perhaps in that remoter air you may realise the city’s true significance as a phenomenon of unconquered if not inevitable disease. If you are a physician, you will realise that this evil has its counterpart in human tissues, where a single cell, that differs not at all from other cells and is a natural unit in the organism, may suddenly and, as it seems, unreasonably acquire a faculty of monstrous and malignant growth, cleaving and multiplying to the destruction of its fellows—a cell gone mad, to which the ancients gave the name of cancer. The inhabitants of North Bromwich, who are a tolerant people, and proud of the fact, would smile at this reflection. They are not in the habit of surveying the midden in which they are bred from remote hilltops, except on Bank Holidays, at which time they have discovered a truth from which they might learn more: that with the aid of hill air and exercise, whether it be that of cocoanut shies or swing-boats, or the more hazardous pursuit of donkey-riding, it is possible to absorb a greater quantity of alcohol in a given time without unduly suffering than in the atmosphere of their own streets. But they have not time to learn, and since they have never known any other conditions of living, they exhibit the admirable human characteristic of making the best of their surroundings and persuading themselves that their hallucinated existence is typical of human life. They are even eager, pathetically eager, to find and to proclaim its virtues, and that they may do this more easily they have invented specious names for the disease and its results: Industry for the first, and, for the second, Progress. In the vindication of a Municipal Conscience (making the best of a bad job) they periodically extend the area over which their coat of arms, a reminder of days when chivalry existed, is displayed. The coat of arms itself is an unfortunate symbol, for it is supported by the figure of a brawny slave who carries the hammer with which his chains have been forged; but the motto at least is encouraging. It is the word “Forward,” expressing the aspirations of the citizens towards the day when all England may be as the Black Country. The watcher on Uffdown may give it a more far-sighted significance: “forward, to the day when there shall be no more coal, and the evil, of its own inanition, perish.”