National Trust's Quick Growth
At the annual meeting of the National Trust last week attention was drawn to the remarkable growth in its holdings since the out- break of the present war. Since the beginning of 1939 the average annual increase in the acreage owned by the Trust has been greater than the whole acreage owned by it twenty years ago after it had been twenty-eight years in operation. Besides forests, downs, moor- lands and castles it now owns large tracts of cultivated land, includ- ing zoo farms and about Soo cottages ; and the Council, which has large endowment funds to,' invest, talks of extending its farm areas still further by purchase for investment. This growth is in itself a most satisfactory thing, but it brings certain problems in its train. Management, if it is to remain efficient, will have to be decentralised —a course which has already been taken in regard to the Trust's large holdings in the Lake District. Again, as time goes on a duty will fall on the Trust, not to preserve only, but to create. The beauty of the English countryside is largely due to the remarkably good taste in landscape gardening which was evolved among the country gentry of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Their work disappears with time ; trees do not live for ever ; and altered environments call for altered designs. There is need not only for upkeep and renewal, but for adaptation and creation. With the widened scope of its task, the Trust will have to enlarge its vision, and develop new qualities in its staff.
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