A HINT*FOR MUNICIPAL POLICY 203

without a sheet of statistics before him1 than he
could digest his dinner without a drink of ice-
water. But taking this literature all together,
with the exultations and despairs, the statistics
of things done and the statistics of things needing
to be done, taking it also in conjunction with
what my own eyes have revealed to me in a
hundred places, we have here a striking confirma-
tion of what was said before, that popular recrea-
tion in America is a matter of public interest, of
public policy and of public planning; by no
means a thing to be left to chance as though
it could safely look after itself, but a thing to
challenge the thoughts of the best minds and to
be provided for as an important concern of the
whole community, in fact a vital element of public
welfare in general. And perhaps I may be
forgiven for adding that it seems to me a strange
thing that among the many books that have
been written to interpret American life to Euro-
pean readers not one, so far as I know, has dwelt
on this aspect of it, nor seen its significance as a
reaction from other tendencies that are evident
to everybody. Even M. Siegfried has not a
word to say about it.

From the mass of literature just alluded to I
will select, as typical of many, the Annual Report
of the Recreation Commission of the City and
County of San Francisco.

Attending first to the picturesque, we observe
on the frontispiece a full-page photograph of