A Rural Threat
A symptom that makes me fear for the future of rural England is the campaign against the hedgerow, preached by some of our economists, and now being definitely practised in obedience to their perverted doctrine. There is one County Committee in South East England that is ordering the removal of many hedges, so I hear, against the wishes of the farmers, though they are forced to carry out the Committee's instructions. The demand for grain at recent exceptional crises seems to have quite blinded authorities, especially central and semi-urban authorities, to the needs of livestock ; and indeed to any long-term wisdom. The hedges give nesting sites to insectivorous birds, give shelter to stock, prevent that most deadly enemy to civilisation itself, land erosion, and provide a certain amount of compost. Their destruction means that authority intends to substitute prairie farming for mixed farming, the factory farm for the family farm. The harm is social and psychological as well as physical. One protest of many against hedge-destruction reaches me from Gloucestershire, another from Hertfordshire ; and other counties are under much worse threats than these.
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