Against Afforestation It is my belief that the various public
protests against the afforestation of certain districts is based on something more than love of the area which is to be so changed. To my mind the idea of a forest is becoming more and more foreign to the English nature. The English mind is repelled by any excessive largeness in the scheme of country things ; it rejoices in small fields, small streams and above all, I think, in small woodlands. The prospect of an England covered even partially with large areas of pine forests would be intolerable to it. The English revel in a landscape that can change, in ten miles, from downland to valley, pasture to woodland, cornland to park. Any scheme for the afforestation of a great tract of the least loved of English countryside would be opposed, I think, almost as strongly as a scheme for covering it with bungalows. To walk in a plantation of larch is no better than walking in a plantation of scaffold poles. We are
rightly jealous of the beauty of bare downs, sparse lakesides, empty stretches of moor. The Forestry Commission is working, in a sense, against the English nature. All the more reason, therefore, why it should not have quite all its own way with English lake and down.
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