COUNTRY LIFE
A Crisis in Preservation That expert and invaluable body known as the C.P.R.E., the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, has reached a crucial point in its development, and perhaps the Scottish body more recently started may desire the same promotion. The Council has done yeoman service. It is due largely to its efforts that the public has appreciated—and means to arrest— ribbon development, a form of building that is destroying the vital quality of town, suburb, village and country. It has saved many a point of beauty. It has more or less invented the Regional Plan, which is our presidium columenque rerum, our only defence against certain outrages. More than this, it has made the public a watchdog which can now bark to some purpose. Now the need for National Parks and the Council's desire to secure them have begun to alter the defini- tion of this body, which was formed to unify the efforts of two dozen or so of other societies working to the end of a better England. This work has been in part achieved, but the chief triumph of the Council has been in the direction of propaganda and in the craft of " putting defenders wise."
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