13 JUNE 1914, Page 3

Again, the attempt to preach the possibility of cheap con-

struction in the matter of rural cottages was of very little avail till the first Cheap Cottage Exhibition was established at Letchworth. Only when people saw £150 cottages before their eyes, and not till then, did they believe in them. Yet again, the recent effort to show that a 2100 cottage is a possibility needed the actual wood and lath and Portland cement on Merrow Common to make it fruitful. On some future occa- sion we hope to show how the National Service League might place before the country a working model of what it actually proposes. If this could be done, we are certain that an enormous advance would be made in the awakening process. Hundreds of people who now say either that National Service is quite impossible and could not be carried out, or else that it is detestable, would then say "Oh, of course, if this is what you mean by universal training and service it is all right, and we have no objection. What we thought you meant was some. thing utterly different. Why didn't you show us before that you were sane and not mad, as we always supposed!"