Village Government Mr. J. W. Robertson Scott has recently been
attacking, in his own particularly restrained and common-sense fashion, that type of country-lover who, migrating to the country, never lifts a finger to take part in its government. Village people are notoriously indifferent to the way their parishes are governed and the point of his remark is that every country- loving outsider should make it his duty to get himself elected to one- or -other of his local councils. I am completely with him. Like him I believe that the beauty of the English Countryside restt just as much on the efficiency of its cottage sanitation as it does On the ability of its people to grow roses round the door. A short Period of service on so dull-sounding an affair as a Rating Committee can be a revelation. I have never been deluded by the picturesque in cottage architecture, but a recent quinquiennial valuation let some ugly cats out of What I had always considered a fairly picturesque bag. The gross rateable value of about a score of cottages under con- sideration was, it turned out, under ten pounds. Six of these cottages had only one door ; half of them had doors so small that a man of five-feet-six Would, on, entering, be likely to knock his head off; in none of them could the sanitation be described as anything but archaic ; m two of them the inside walls were still of cow-dung plaster, white-washed.; arid in 'about half the cases the rent was more than ten- shillings, I have no excess of love for council houses, but .the size of the response to the announcement that ,we were about to 'erect a group of four did not stagger me: -
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