RECLAMATION FOR SPORT.
A new excuse for reclaiming the Wash is under discussion. Every year for many years I have visited the banks of the Nene, near its outflow, and watched, beyond the eastern bank, the sea retire from the weedy land and then again set it just awash. On the other side I have walked over the rich acres, which the Romans reclaimed in their most thorough manner, and heard farmers brag of the excellence of the small area that was brought into cultivation during the War. Those fertile lands, probably the most fertile within Britain, lying cheek by jowl with these useless stretches for whose possession the sea and its silt wrestle (with a slow but certain victory for the silt) breed a restless desire to join issue, and win another conquest, like the Romans. It could be done easily and, as such things go, cheaply. The new idea is to do on behalf of sport what no one will do on behalf of husbandry : to reclaim the western end of the Wash as a national sports ground where cycles might achieve their summit of speed on flat and level land and, perhaps, motor boats lower their records on the almost-lake (in Latin phrase) alongside. So would our commons be saved from degenerating into dirt tracks, and the sacred lakes of Westmoreland be saved from noise and hustle. Well, any reclamation is better than none ; and this lonely shore would not be desecrated. No neighbour population would be offended and few birds displaced.
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