Food or Coal ?
As grim an alternative as the German "guns or bunter" must be faced in England. No fewer than seventeen counties in England are threatened with large-scale surface mining of coal. Which is the more important: coal or food ? Ideally there is no doubt about the answer. Everywhere the verdict is against open-cast coal-mining, to which it appears that the Government is devoted. The feeling against it is, I think, especially strong in the rural populations of Shropshire and Worcestershire. What with cement, gravel, sand and coal (of sorts), the old surface of England is disappearing on a scale that few people realise. It is usually argued, at any rate in respect of coal, that when the fuel has been extracted the land can be restored to fertility. Can it ? 1 know gravel'pits that now carry fairly good crops, thanks, surprisingly, to the dumping of London rubbish. One evil has been cured by another ; but restoration, everywhere slow and difficult, will be virtually impossible in many. districts.
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