Why bother? To what purpose? Am I having a happy time just rustling through the memorabilia of life at the turn of the century because it is typical Edwardian stuff – all Kipling and Mansfield and Liverpool in its glory days before World War I? Great waves of nostalgia for the life of the River as I once knew it engulf me in an enthusiasm for writing it down before it is all forgotten. Am I the victim of my own sentiment? Or is there something here of real importance to us today and for the future? Did those who cared about the life of the city and the people of Liverpool have a vision of what could and ought to be? And is it because we have lost sight of that vision that the dream of a better world that we once cherished lies buried in the past? By blowing in the ashes of that forgotten vision can we perhaps recover the sense of direction, for lack of which we now drift helplessly, and rekindle our belief?

I am impelled to put pen to paper in support of this contention because I have reached that stage when I feel called upon to account for the way in which I have spent my life, that God-given resource that has been my heritage. By chance, the span of my years in Liverpool coincides quite literally with that of the era of social history which the end of the century so dramatically marked. Born in 1906, I have lived most of my adult life in Liverpool. I had not expected to outlive the century which encompassed my being. All that time, my guiding star has been the dream of a society in which the urge to self-fulfilment can be achieved through the service of others.

It is because that principle of the right of the individual to share in the common responsibility for the well-being of all is now in such danger of extinction that I am moved to make this one last plea for its regeneration.