COUNTRY LIFE
ENOUGH has not been heard of late, though its activities haw: not waned, of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, which now has to fight against the planners as well as the Philistines. It is to be hoped, and expected, that the resumption of the " National Conferences" will make good the arrears of publicity, for rural England was never more severely threatened, as, for example, in Worcestershire today. The con- ference will be held at " Royal Tunbridge Wells " from October 19th to• 22nd. Any member of the public is invited who will send 7s. 6d. to the Secretary, C.P.R.E., 4 Hobart Place, S.W.1. Of the expeditions that are to be made 1 should like to join the trip to Whiligh for the sake of its trees and their history. Thereabouts were felled the oaks which made the roof of Westminster Hall, and when ever so many hundred years later it became necessary to repair the roof, oaks were fetched from the same place. They were probably seedlings or such at the date when the first trees were being cut into beams. Canterbury, Knole, Penshurst—what palpable lessons in the continuity of our history they advertise! It is one of the cardinal objects of the C.P.R.E. to see to it that this continuity is not too rudely interrupted—by the services, the miners, of many sorts, the afforesters and tree-fellers, the advertisers, the bungaloidal fraternity. the dumpers (rural as well as urban) the river-polluters and the whole race of litter-louts, fire-lighters and plant-robbers. What a host of Philistines, to spoil the Garden of England.
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