RURAL POSTERS.
It may be taken as a great though unintended compliment to the Scapa Society and to the C.P.R.E. that a counter propaganda to their campaign for aesthetic posters has been thought necessary. One of the pleas for unfettered libert to disfigure tree or building or scene is written in dramatic verse, and describes a trial in which the plaintiff and defendant are—presumably—the C.P.R.E. and the profes- sional billposter, with a special line in beer The C.P.R.E. appears as the S.S.E. or Society for Stopping Everything. It is perhaps no indiscretion to report the experience of a Member of Parliament who took a long walk recently in the south of England, with the definite object of making a census of the more obvious roadside advertisements. When he came to analyse his record he found that a singularly small percentage—I think 4 per cent.—concerned any product whose advertisement would do any service to the nation. In spite of the propagandist doggerel the greater firms are among the most eager subscribers to the campaign for a more beautiful England. It is more than probable that we shall soon see by-laws generally adopted by which the size and shape and even location of advertisement posters. will be regulated. This has already been done in the Irish Free State and, I think, in Germany. Certainly in England a good many firms would welcome such action if it were wisely done. - It seems that some of the huge hoardings— especially those erected along vacant, ground in suburbs— prove a waste of money to the advertisers and are used under the urgency of a perhaps necessary but unremuncrative competition. The posters are put up to keep others away.
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