Country v. Town One of the drawbacks of our civilisation
has been the opposition between country and town ; but we have had a good deal of evidence that the two were beginning to understand one another. Unhappily some of the present urban plans have produced a reaction. Both at Stevenage and in Essex (once the granary of London) the planners have selected for their new houses some of the best agricultural land they could discover, and it is to be feared that these official planners, with their urban minds, plan by the map without any thought whatever for the productivity of the soil. Farmers in Essex are protesting loudly at being sacrificed to the needs of London exiles and water supply ; and they point out, most suggestively, that while Ford drained marshes for his new buildings, our own planners are proposing to substitute reservoirs for excellent farms ; and it has to be remembered that parts of Essex are almost the only places where seed-farms can flourish, thanks to the small rainfall.
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