The Happy -Village
BY SIR W. BEACH THOMAS.
THE . English village has, beyond measure, increased the vivacity of its social life since the War. It could always claim, so to say, a social architecture possessing the same sort, f charm as the association of its mediaeval church and thatched cottages. The. different classes , of rich,, and poor enjoyed one another. The ,„poor could ace* without obsequiousness or sense of inferiority, and the :rich give withOut condescension. The .native gardener at the big house always spoke of " our children," meaning. his master's ; and this sense. of sharing other people's prosperities, and indeed adversities, has been a common. feeling. The difference of class has been often a stimulus to friendliness, not a barrier. The Park, round the country house, is, or has been, accepted as one of the most precious of village possessions.. If it were offered gratis to the Parish Council to convert into allotments or small holdings the offer would be rejected. Aesthetic value to the community and the sense of possessing within the parish a fine old English thing, would forbid. He was an ,agricultural labourer, who at a discussion how best to preserve rural England, laid down the maxim : " The only way to preserve England is to preserve the country house."
It would be a very easy job to continue in praise of the English village—the average English village, let alone the Broadways, the Ewelmes, or the Burfords. " It's good, and if you like it you may," as Ben Jonson said ; but it might be a great deal better. There never was in •the world a social and a geographical unit better fitted for communal, as opposed to communis- tic, enterprises. In some regards it might achieve the Aristotelian ideal of being self-sufficing. The cottage gardens, with allotments, are sufficient to grow vegetables for everyone's consumption. The surrounding country is full enough of superfluous wood to give kindling and fuel to every fire. There is sufficient leisure and variety of talent to provide every sort of amusement : football, cricket, lawn-tennis, dancing, whist or bridge, concerts, drama, debates, lectures and the rest. All these things are in some measure enjoyed by some of the inhabitants. The Women's Institutes have done marvels. The men's clubs are often active enough ; and games and game-players. increase. The craftsmen, who are to be found in most:villages, begin to have the benefit, in a few counties—Kent and Hertfordshire, for example—of the old guilds ; and the market for their wares, in wood, leather and fur as well as in iron, begins to, enlarge its boundaries, though in a partial and often amateurish degree. .
The revival and reconstruction of the village grow, but grow . very slowly in all ways, and not at all in some. Indeed, there is some retrogression, chiefly shown. in an ,inexplicable zest for aimless destruction. For example, in one village of late many farm gates have been knocked to pieces, fences broken, spare posts and bits of machinery carried off and, a rick fired. Now, these things are the result of a youth whose out-of-work hours are aimless, who possess neither individual purpose nor communal interest. Their life has no sort of thesis. The solution of this trouble, as also of the acceleration of the better tendencies, lies in an increase of communal activities, which would be as full of value for the mental outlook as for the physical and social comfort of the people. , Every village is the better for a good hall that is free,, belonging not to church, chapel, society or, land- owner. Its very presence prompts such amusements as local dram, Every village needs playing fields ; and is there any reason why playing fields should not include. not only bowls, tennis, quoits, or what not, but a recreation space, so to say, a Park, owned, and felt to be owned, by the village ? Three-quarters of the work necessary for turning the space to these purposes could be done by voluntary effort, if local patriotism were rightly prompted. Indeed, I have recently seen a hall built and a tennis lawn laid almost wholly by unpaid effort. The land, as often as not, is of the smallest value, and much would be given if the purposes were understood.._ Let me repeat with all possible emphasis that within almost every parish, thanks in some measure to the many classes represented, there is all the material for communal success : enough seedling plants are grown to stock every village, not to mention superfluous vegetables, and in the woods, spinneys and hedgerows enough spare wood is grown to keep the fires burning in all homes. To convert these superfluities into practical wealth a very small organization is necessary (it is supplied, in some villages of the Belgian Ardennes by the schoolmaster) and a small amount of apparatus, such as a circular saw. We .hear often enough of model villages. Will not some one, in lieu of excessive attention to the individual house, provide some normal village with a park or playing fields where these other activities may also be focussed ? It is the common custom of men of wealth in England to spend inordinate sums of money on model farms, and some good they do. They would do fifty times as much good and spend not a tithe of the money if they would stimulate and organize a communal effort to make the village. self sufficing both in production and in amusement. The first step is a recreation ground in which a host of communal activities might be merged and housed. The English village is an ideal unit with the momentum of a long history behind it. We have only to modernize the old Saxon idea, though a condition precedent is a more prosperous agriculture, and more " petite agriculture " ; that is the raising by very small holders or gardeners of more vegetables, flowers, poultry, bees, goats, pigs. But both before and after that, busier production is achieved there is room for turning. into practical use the wealth that lies at the door of every. village in England. What is chiefly wanted is leadership.
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