ENGLAND'S .GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND
England's Green_ and Pleasant Land. (Jonathan Cape. 6s.) " WHAT do they know of England who only England know ? " says Mr. Wilding._ But the- anonymous author of a new book bearing the fitle7olEng/anefiereeitand Pleasant Land assures us that we mine- of ats=whether: we travel. or stay at -home— know anything about the real - English- countryside of
to-day.
This book is receiving. a' certain amount of. attention, and it may be worth while-. to-examine its 'arguthent. It is an extremely savage ottitek, on practically. every part of the rural community. The -Squire_. and the parson, those twin time-honoured but of everY Eadieal and reformer, come in
- for some very hart knocks. But the farmer, " the Back to
the Lander," the cultured " Comm-liner with Nature,' to use some of the author's own terms, do not escape 'riny more 1 ghtly. The labourer himself= is represented. as -spiritleiS,
shiftless and forsaken; the result of- generations of untj-iocitil breeding, in which the best bl6od has-continually been drained
off to the towns, while only the unenterprising, the , has been left in the country. We do not doubt thafthebOok is what it professes to.be, an honest attempt to set deain sincerely and accurately the- real condition of things Inoue specirnew parish of rural England. Hence, however much we may
disagree with its conclusions, we believe that it would be worth the while of those concerned with the countryside to
read the charges which the author brings against the various "powers that be," and consider whether or not there is anything in them. The author is particularly severe about the rural
church. This is his general conclusion :-
" The blunt fact about the Church in not a few villages is that, to all intents and purposes, it is dead ;. and that in many more villages it is dying. The two reasons for this -state of things need no searching out. The fast reason is that the parsons are, in the main, lacking in intelligence, in character, or in apiritlial experience. The second reason is that very little of what is read, sung, and said in the churches is now believed. To go on pre- tending, because of a lack of courage to face facts, that it is believed, can have one result only. Could doctors, newspapers, or ironmongers successfully appeal to the public with such blindness to actualities as the Church displays in its choice of men, in its defiance of accepted truth, and in the inadequacy of services rendered ? In many of our villages .the church plays a no more impressive part than many a Buddhist temple in a Far Eastern. village. The village temple serves an accustomed -purpose at birth, marriage, and death, and, by custom, it is attended from time to time. For the rest, there is the personal matter of the mercy of Buddha in life and eternity, and with this private matter the personality and actions of the priest have nothing to do: A rural parson of gifts, who, at a diocesan conference, was troubled by the plea of a speaker—the late Dr. Warre, I think—for the entrance of gentlemen into the Church, flung at the tranquil assemblage the hard saying that ' what the Church needs is not gentlemen, but bounders like Peter and Paul ! ? " -
Of the " gentry " of the countryside we are told that .
" These people, as a class, are, in the main, undeveloped in intelligence, and ill-acquainted with the place they actually oceupy - in the scheme of things. As a class, they are mostly of ' the rich ' —either the hard-up rich, or peace or War profiteers- and their wives, or their progeny—or they are among the sons or daughters, the nephews or nieces, the grandsons or granddaughters of men who gained titles by their money4naking or party complacency (combined, it is often forgotten, with a force of character which is so often lacking in their descendants). These people represent, of course, only a section of the well-off countryside:" ' - -
The farmers are represented as exceedingly ignorant and re- actionary, severe to their labourers, inefficient as cultivators of the soil. But there Is one institution of which the author does not despair, and that is the village school. He believes indeed that the salvation of the countryside! will come—if it comes at all—from the village schoolmaster and mistress. And - he sees a new generation of earnest and public-spirited men- and women who are determined to raise the life of the country- side. They work through the local government bodies, badgering and cajoling county councillors into unwonted activity. Liberal-with The author is a the qualities and failings of that particular political point of view. And there arc passages in the book which will, we fancy, annoy anyone else but a Liberal very much. Still, on the whole, he has written a dis
turbing— --and -therefore- - tii!hi:,i7ieord;1- mended to the complacent and self-satisfied.---
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