COUNTRY LIFE
IN none of the obituaries of Lord Lee of Fareham did I see any reference to the "inwardness," so to say, of his gift of Chequers to the reigning Prime Minister. He told me, in effect, as we walked about the garden at Chequers, that the time was coming when we should have a Socialist Government made up of members with a wholly urban outlook ; and he thought that if their leaders could from time to time come dawn into the deep, deep country and taste its serenity, both they and the country might benefit. Whatever other reasons may have influenced the gift, this feeling was its inspiration. Arthur Lee had a certain power of insight that distinguished him as surely as his astonishing perception of the trend in artistic taste. He acquired his old masters by the sale of less masterful pictures. The urban mind, as Sir Horace Plunkett was fond of saying, is the chief enemy of our civilisation, and if Lord Lee has done anything to qualify it lie deserves natiozal gratitude, and I think he has. Soon after his prophecy was fulfilled a photograph was published of Ramsay MacDonald, in full rural panoply, gazing at red cows browsing in the green fields amid which Chequers is so sympathetically ensconced. It illustrated most persuasively the Lee vision.
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