Rural Rides
SIR ARNOLD WILSON has done what every Member of Parliament should do, by walking through his Division and talking to everyone he met. He is blessed with an unusually retentive memory, which obviously helped him in his pilgrimage. For there are few of us who, over refreshments with the rival tug-of-war teams at local village sports, if he were asked by a sergeant to join him in an extra pint and found him a bit of a Fascist, could have quoted Burke, Emerson, Disraeli and Ruskin. No -wonder " the circle grew larger." And Sir Arnold uses his memory to record the conversations he had, with results which are worth reading and re-reading and thinking over, on almost every page. For it is when walking, or after reaching a place on foot, as those of us who have tried it know, that genuine true talk comes most naturally, and that one most surely finds the comradeship there is in people and the comfort there is in things.
On all the social questions interesting views are recorded. On education, here are the views of two farmers : " There was a great gap between fourteen when boys and girls left the Elementary School and sixteen when they might go to Agricultural Institutes . . . but it is not what they learn at school that matters so much as the way they're taught and the spirit." . . . " There should be part-time continuation schooling from fourteen to eighteen partly vocational, not by the ordinary teachers, but by paid voluntary part-time teachers." On agriculture, also two farmers : " The less crops the man grows the less he loses." " The bigger the Scheme the smaller benefit for the man who knows his job, and the greater the advantage to the Man who doesn't." On housing (a manager of a factory) : " Less on roads and more on houses and folk would be happier all round." A barman at a London coffee-stall, if he was an M.P., would concentrate on housing and plenty of one-room and two-room flats and some decent lodging- houses. A foreman of a road gang wanted also a greater variety of house, above all cheaper houses and smaller ; and " unless the soil was good it was better to have no more than a strip of soil at the back or in front, and an allotment elsewhere." And there is an illuminating conversation, which one would like to quote in full, with boys in Lambeth who were staying out of doors all night away from their homes " sooner than face the bugs."
There are interesting views also on better social organiza- tion. A parson says that there is an earnest need for young men of some education, and with that rare gift of sympathy and firmness, to run boys' clubs : " the lack of social organization at the bottom made itself felt all the way up." Another parson longed to see a Consulting Court of Lay Persons to which those In difficulty might be brought instead of going to la*: in such a service the Church might mobilize and inspire men and women of goodwill. A schoolmaster says that every minister and schoolmaster should be used as a probation officer, for the local probation officer, though very good, had too much to do ; and he emphasizes views already quoted by adding " children were under-nourished morally and mentally between fourteen and sixteen ; he had seen many of them go to pieces." A retired police superintendent, after noting that doctors and district nurses played a far larger part now than ever before, and were generally in closer touch with the general population than anyone else, would lace to see a local doctor ex officio on every Bench—they would add to the very real respect in which the Bench is held. The same man makes the shrewd comment : " There's always someone else nowadays whose job it is ; the trouble is to find the right one, for they are often overworked." And this gives point to a suggestion of Sir Arnold's that parish magazines, which have long since -ceased to respond to modern needs, should contain instead of the normal inferior " stuffing " well-printed leaflets explaining some fresh aspect of public and local legislation with the names and addresses of local public officials.
The two problems which seem to recur most often and call for Sir Arnold's most serious thought are those of the iniquity of not allowing nurses to give in suitable cases expert advice on contraceptive methods, and the problem of the casuals—as one of them described them—" a moving army of men who walked from place to place, always down- hill." On the latter problem he notes particularly . the hardship in casual wards of forbidding all smoking, and giving no chance to wash underclothes, and makes detailed and careful suggestions for reorganizing altogether our methods of treating vagrancy.
A foreman says : " Perhaps the National Government will have a policy next year." One feels that nothing could promote this better than that all its members should take a month or so to walk through their constituencies as Sir Arnold Wilson has done ; as a simpler but still very useful alternative they might read his book.
FRANCIS D. ACLAND.
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