In Defence of England
WITII an eye to Whitsuntide and subsequent holiday seasons the successors of our Lords of the manor visited some of the commons during Easter in order to decide on defensive regulations. In consequence we may expect to see during the summer the appearance of notice-boards, directing where motor cars may go or park, and where they may not ; and perhaps suggesting that picnic parties should leave their temporary camp as clean as they found it. This unprecedented action by commissioners of commons, outside the immediate circle of big towns, is one indication of many of the new deter- mination in the country to protect and conserve its essential quality.
The fresh and homely charm of England seldom made a wider or more penetrative appeal than this Easter. The wild cherries, that abound to the North of London, and the blackthorn that is everywhere, still give a bridal flourish to woods and hedgerows. As white as these, in yet thicker company of blossom, are the anemones in the woods. The scent of primrose banks breathes the incense of holy places. The opening leaves are in that stage when they "half-reveal and half-conceal," and so double the beauty by hinting it instead of shouting it. The more entrancing these virginal charms, the more brutal is the shock when you came upon a common as littered with rubbish as a heath on fair day, or pass into an old village through a corridor of " concrete mendacities," or meet a shack town of oil pumps and tea sheds at a seductive bend of the road.
Now what distinguishes English social history from that of every other country is that we go through revolu- tions almost without consciousness of them ; and this disregard of change may on occasion make the change more violent and less beneficial, though on the whole we have perhaps benefited from an absence of self-conscious- ness. Beyond all question we have to confess that the Industrial Revolution a hundred years ago did infinite harm, although the wealth it brought should have done infinite good. The sole reason of this disaster was that the new age was not recognized and therefore not regu- lated till the harm was done. The new forces galloped without harness. Though we are comparing the small with the great, a real likeness may be found between that old revolution which turned lovely hills and valleys into hideous and unhealthy slums, and to-day's revolution of the roads which is utterly defacing the England we knew a year or two ago. We have entered upon town- planning schemes at least two generations later than the instinct of self-preservation should have dictated to us. Are we going to be too late with the necessary rural-planning schemes ? The commons are threatened, the villages are threatened, even the flowers in wood and field are threatened. On this last point it may be profit- ably pointed out that the very loveliest, as some hold, of all our wild flowers, the Pasque lily, that should hpdy be in glorious bloom, has utterly vanished from one of it favourite haunts. It has been eradicated by moderL holiday-makers.
The cult of the country is a most beneficent form «f worship. Incidentally it is now being consciously and laboriously cultivated in Germany, where twelve yea]: ago it was popularly quoted as a symptom of British decadence that we were "a week-end nation." Tr cult grows magnificently though sometimes to oln embarrassment. For example : In this Easter holiday the dwellers at the edge of certain daffodil meadom were bombarded from morning till night by visitori begging for leave to pluck. The mention of any partici!• larly flowery spot in a newspaper may bring crowds - experio crede—even from great distances. If on thk page it were said that a nightingale sang daily attil nightly at a particular spot on a particular road the singer would not improbably be driven from his nest in. site by the number of listeners. This interest is mo,' welcome. No one should repeat Ruskin's mistake ■.i fulminating against railways because they were ugh. We can endure, we can even welcome a certain amount ei ugliness, if it is the means of decentralizing the persori and minds of urban crowds. But a motor car is not in itself ugly. A road is not ugly. It is beautiful. was rightly accounted a virtue in Hazlitt that all he want( for his pleasure was a road with a bend in it, " epicure." The trouble is that the roads change quickly and the people on them so multiply that thri7 virtues are lost in the tumult. It was a criminal omission when the new great roads were made without referent to the conservation of their verges. Other, older roadi lose their own proper beauty, and conduct people t, scenes of which their full glory is grievously and needless!y truncated. One way of realizing the immensity of thin change is to read Hazlitt or even Stevenson or Richard Jefferies on country walks near towns. They am much out of date as Caesar or Vauban or Uncle Tnby fortifications.
A number of excellent societies, as we all know, ha" been in existence for a considerable period, which Nu' for their object the preservation of this, that or the oda amenity of the countryside : the common, the footpati. the ancient building and the cottage, the flowers and the birds. The S.C.A.P.A. exists for the prevention of ligli advertisement and has enjoyed notable successes. ManY sanctuaries have been formed and endowed private]) and publicly. A number of ancient buildings are Pro- tected in perpetuity. But a score of these societies ana organizations have themselves come to the conclusio that isolated effort is not enough and that some of the very worst evils do not come precisely within the compas, of any one society. They have already federated then' selves in some measure to the end of pooling their know- ledge and co-ordinating their energies. Next week at the Society of Architects a special private meeting is convened for the consideration of immediate action and further to-operation through the agency of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.* It goes without saving, though not without the need of emphasis, that if ever there was need of the help of the general public it is here. The abuses are far-flung and often in the lninning small. There are, of course, salient, outstanding outrages, as on the South Downs, in the New Forest, on the Lakes or on the South Welsh seaside ; but there are also innumerable threats to little hamlets, to humble * C.P.R.E., 33 Bloomsbury Square, W.C. cottages, to nightingale spinneys, to no-man's-land commons, to nooks or lanes or downs where rare flowers maintain a precarious existence ; and in all these regards preservation can come only by appeal from the local home-lover to the central organization. The two must work hand in hand. Let us be jealous each of our own charms—and not for our selfish sake altogether. For the threat is against the very essence of England, that " swan's nest in an ocean " ; and every holiday season in these days we come upon more startling examples of desecration, especially from ruthless jerry-builders and thoughtless motorists. There is a double need of more regulation by planning and " zoning," and of better manners.
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