The Australian capital — Canberra — celebrated its 25th birthday on May 9, 1952. ‘Celebrated’ is in the context a formal word, because in fact there were almost no celebrations; it was an event which passed practically un-noticed, not commented upon, by almost everybody. That was logical enough — cities, like human beings, became excited about birthdays in their youth, indifferent about them as they grow up.

Some sense of grace, however, might have obliged the authorities at Canberra to look back on the beginnings of the capital with at least a passing acknowledgment of the people who helped to fashion it in thought, plan, and fact; and one of the men to whom they might have paid a tardy, overdue tribute was Walter Burley Griffin, out of whose mind came the pattern of the Canberra we know today. Griffin remained forgotten on a significant birthday as he was forgotten all through his life. Canberra had neither thanks for his work in his day, nor memory of it when his day had passed.