COUNTRY LIFE
National Parks Before me lies a copy of the nine-months'-old Case For National Parks in Great Britain, issued, for twopence, by the Standing Committee for National Parks, 4 Hobart Place, S.W. x. Just as I am reading it there arrives the current issue of The Countryman, with many illustrious contributors giving their almost unanimous views on the desirability of a National Park in the Highlands. These two articles, it seems to me, form a pointed commentary on the English and their attitude to the English countryside ; for the English, as much and perhaps more than any other nation in the world, love to boast of the beauty of their countryside. In doing so they have conferred on it the two most affectionate adjectives in the language : dear and old. Yet they have never yet taken the trouble to preserve any considerable area of it as a national reserve ; they will suffer almost without protest astronomical expenditure on the defence of their country without troubling to see that the country left is worth defending ; and sometimes it seems as if the possibility of even one National Park is as far away as ever. One of the arguments against it has been that England is too small to sacrifice large areas as- national reserves. Yet the Standing Committee points out that the wilder countryside, moor, forest, mountain, heath, downland and coastline, forms approximately one-third of the total area of Great Britain. Moreover, that the potential National Park area amounts probably to almost a quarter.
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