20 MAY 1949, Page 16

English Preservers The annual meeting of that most beneficent body,

the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, was remarkable for the stress laid on the undoubted truth'that the threats which called the Council into being are to- day present in aggravated forms. Government planners and Service organisers come in the forefront, with tree-cutters and hedge-levellers, with municipal and industrial drainers, with surface miners of several sorts, with makers of reservoirs, aerodromes and even forests. The annual report of the C.P.R.E. (4 Hobart Place, S.W.1) bristles with such threats and indicates how greatly the work of the Council has increased. Even where reform appears to be on the way it is desperately slow, as is seen in regard to river pollution. The Minister of Health had credit for appointing a committee to survey and advise ; but the, committee shows small sign of reporting and the report will not improbably be pigeon- holed indefinitely. The one definite step taken is to the credit of Lord Brocket who obtained at law on his own initiative a "perpetual injunc- tion" restraining the Luton Corporation from poisoning the Lea. Other land-owners may have to follow his example ; but injunctions cost a deal of money to obtain.