SIR,— Really! the silliness of some 'progressively ' opinioned journalists has to
be read to be believed. Your correspondent Miss Sarah Gainham's article in your issue of May 24 is typical of a superior intellec tUalist view of agriculture that betrays a profound loss of any true values. First, she uses, as title of her article on the Lower Saxony elections, the smear' phrase 'backward peaSants'; then she goes on to ,. describe the farmers of the Hanoverian plain as a sort of kulak class that an enlightened industrial State ought to legislate into liquidation as quickly as possible. It is grossly misleading to use the term 'peasants' in English. This has a pejorative ring in English cars- It is not the equivalent of the German 'Bauer,' which should always be translated 'yeoman' or 'yeoman- farmer.' As for liquidation, or severe reduction, does Miss Gainham really believe that every smallholder is ready to sacrifice independence and a home on the land to become a wage-moron on a conveyor-bet living on devitalised foods and entertaining himself only by television and pop-music? I have 105! returned from a month's tour of a great deal. o' Germany, from the Austrian border up through South West Germany, the Rhineland and Hesse tn, Holstein, studying agricultural structural reform and_ landscape planning, meeting the leading authorities and attending conferences.
The Germans arc tackling the problem of brit consolidation with tremendous energy and systentatt` thoroughness and, what is more, with imagination; sympathy and respect for traditional values. If Miss Gainharn could go on a walking tour through .parse the Luneburg Heath, or the 'Ake Land' along tn Elbe, she would find farmhouses and a 'peasant , culture' which are of priceless value to the tradition, of European heritage and art. Is this all to hethroW,, away with .a scoffing abuse of 'backward peasants The German planners are not sentimentalists or backward-looking romantics. They are realistic, enough to know that the mediaeval village inu.si 3, A to change. But without destroying its social an
architectural values. Take a typical village of 1,100 inhabitants with every house a farmhouse, and all crowded together about the church and school, with the strip fields outside the built-up area. Picturesque, but no longer tenable in a technicalised age! Whereas formerly every inhabitant was a farmer, farmer's wife, son or worker, today about 35 per cent are in agriculture. And the percentage is falling. The other inhabitants are commuters to the factories, shops and offices in the towns round about, or perhaps retired People. But they cling to their village community life and usually a small self-subsistence holding. What has to be done, what is being done? Surveys are made of the most systematic, diagnostic kind, which reveal the real needs and wishes of the com- munity. Collaboration between the State, rural district and parish authorities with the aid of first- class professional architects and planners is, on the whole, good. There is no compulsion, though Germans have a great respect for authority; and once a village burgomaster is won, his word usually goes. The Flurbereinigung (consolidation of holdings) Proceeds with great difficulty but steadily, over- coming the legacy of the ill-judged inheritance system of the past. Where the farmhouses in the village cannot be modernised to accommodate technical equipment, the farms are resited on properly planned and serviced settlements outside the village.
Above all, this colossal programme of structural reform is being integrated with landscape planning, the creation of National Parks, where unspoilt, un- contaminated nature can be conserved and retained, as a reservoir of unbroken health in a damaged suburban environment.
I have returned from Germany much heartened by what I have seen. There are many snags, many mistakes, many stupidities. But there is the will to retain a real countryside before it is devoured by the Moloch of our money-worshipping, machine-wor- shipping age.
Miss Gainham should get to know something of this real Germany and cease misleading your readers With ill-informed blather on backward peasants. Conservative yes, tenacious yes, ready to fight the Baal of urbanism yes. Moreover, ready to fight for their rights, and ready to form. a farmers' lobby, yes. But not to be despised as an inferior race of believers in 'witchcraft,' and labelled 'backward. peasants.' ROLF GARDINER Springhead, Fontme11 Magna, Shaftesbury, Dorset
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