SCENERY OR FACTORIES? [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sta,—We hear that the Cumberland County Council are con- sidering a scheme for road-making over Hardknott Pass into Langdale ; similar schemes may be in the air with regard to other passes like Sty Head and Honister. To oppose these schemes on the ground of preserving natural beauty, peace, and seclusion which have fed so many noble minds in the past and which now exist only in a very few places in our island is to court disaster and the charge of selfishness ; many of my friends regard me simply as a dog in a manger. The advocates of road development lay stress upon economic expansion and put forward the claims of industry, and it is there the tattle must be fought.
Would the bankruptcy of West Cumberland industry be relieved by disfiguring its mountains with hard and ungainly roads ? I admit I have no right to put my delight in Eskdale before the needs of Clcator Moor and Whitehaven ; but I have the right to demand that, if I lose, they shall gain. I waive what I believe to be a very strong argument that we are the poorer for the deprivation of beauty and the substitu- tion of fatuous noise, danger, and unsightliness for solitude, majestic peace, and natural loveliness ; but would these roads throb with the freightage of reawakened commerce, become arteries for its quickened circulation, and bring employment, hope and vitality to a stagnant industry ? I believe the answer to be No ; the secret of damaged trade is not in a local disability, but in a general stupidity of human relation- ships in a befogged civilization.
Much as I have enjoyed the hospitality and kindness of Cumberland farms, my civic conscience gives me twinges, and I would rather see the farmer getting on with his job than forced by circumstances into the " new industry." And I think he is shrewd enough not to be taken in by the plea that he will benefit by roads for motorists, for what can bring money in can also take money out. Not only is the motoring tripper terribly mobile and flashes past at 50 miles an hour many a pleasant retreat which the slow pedestrian has time to be tempted into sampling, but he can, and does, take his meals with him, can squat by a roadside and disfigure it with his temporary scullery, can even bed himself in his car and cheat the honest, as well as the dishonest, innkeeper ; nay more, the narrow margin upon which so many people run their cars compels them to a thrift which borders upon meanness. Eskdale may be wrong, but it does not want to become a Patterdale, the rural seclusion of which has gone for ever, though not its beauty.
May I appeal to all who love the Dales to use all the influence they can to prevent their violation for purposes of rapid transport for pleasure and to yield only to arguments of sound economic advantage, not of the alien minority with motor-cars, but of tilosr who belong, who till the soil, who have the right, which the visitor has not, of calling the tune, seeing that they have to pay, in these dreadful times, so relentless a piper ?—I am, Sir, &c., H. G. Annt.. 87 Gallon Avenue, S.E. 21..
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