GREAT BRITAIN: Must Have Wet Sand!

"Is the very existence of St. Pauls Cathedral to be sacrificed on the altar ot commercialism?" asked Canon Sidney Arthur Alexander last week, and the whole Conservative press of Britain proceeded to shudder.

"Amazing as it sounds," continued the Canon, "the foundations of St. Pauls [which towers to a height of 365 ft.] are only four and a half feet deep. Beneath the cathedral there is only six feet of earth and then a bed of wet sand twenty feet deep. Springs pass under the cathedral from the northeast to the southwest and keep the sand wet.

"We must have wet sand!" cried Canon Alexander fervently. "We must have wet sand!"

He explained that the 99-year leases on several buildings near the cathedral are about to expire. If they are replaced by modern steel structures, the deep foundations necessary will drain the springs now flowing under St. Paul's, cause its wet sand foundation to dry out, to shrink.

In Canon Alexander's opinion this would mean the crumbling end of one of London's tallest, most venerated buildings. He urged that Parliament create the region of St. Paul's a "sacred area" within which all digging and blasting would be perpetually forbidden. First proposed in 1912 the "sacred area" scheme was rejected then by a businessmen's majority of the London City Corporation.