10
THURSDAY, JULY THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.
15,
1937.
A
BRITAIN and the BEAS
LL over Britain little men with nasty, avari- cious minds are turning the beauty of our coun- tryside into a horrid mess.
There is still much loveliness left. But they do not despair. Give them a few more years and they will have destroyed the lot.
They are insatiable. And they are allowed, with the minimum of let and hindrance, to do what they please. If we do not applaud them we do not deter them,
Because, you see, they rape in the name of commerce good bust- nesa and development: the men and women of Britain who never, shall be slaves, have never accepted a slavery to the greedy Gods of money-making.
Thus before the incantations of those whom it pays to sear deeply the face of beauty we are all help- icas.
We are all ne people in this year of 1937. We know things that our ancestors did not dream of. We have conquered the sea and the air and turned the elements to our purpose.
Very excellent, knowing and elvilised peoples are we all, but under our hands is being destroyed a heritage of loveliness.
* *
Land that has been gracious and beautiful for more years than can easily be counted is being daily by the speculative desecrated builder, who leaves behind him as the nasty record of his deknuch a mass of pimply growths upon the face of England.
Houses that were built without hurry in a perfect marriage of material and environment, and have, with the passing of the years, become a living part of the country in which they were built. are torn down. In place rise the filmay, choddy constructions of men who have gone into land de- velopment because, one presumes. they had neither the brains nor the morals to fit them for any- thing else.
There is still a lot of grand coun- But it grows try left in Britain. 1299. Every year for the past fifteen years 31,000 acres have been taken for buliding. If it keeps on, there will be no more farming left in Surrey in a generation or
---To-day's Thought-
TAKE from our hearts the love of the beautiful, and pou take away all the charm of 11/0.
-ROUSSEAU.
BO. In a few years London may stretch to Cambridge without break on the one side, and to Brighton without pause or relief on the other.
Men and Build we must. women have a right to escape If they want to from the con- gestion of the towns.
But
need we abdicate all our re- sponsibilities?
in U
View over the weald of Surrey-end a growing outskirt of Landon.
REVIEW
By
FRANCIS
WILLIAMS
Must what is still beautiful
compare and beyond Britain have to turi charity as the only hope of escape from spoliation as it does now? And appeal, more- over, to a charity fantastically ill-stocked for dealing with the magnitude of the problem.
It is a question we all require to ask
ourselves. There is published to-day a hook which should help in It is deciding
answer. called Britain and The Beast," It and is published by Dent's. Costa ten hlings and sixpence, which is a pity, though perhaps an unavoidable one, since thirty-nine a Britain exquisite Blustrations of
so lovely that there comes an un- bidden catch to the throat as we turn the pages, and five of the horrid confusion and squalor that unbridled private enterprise can produce, are, a necessary and in- tegral part of it.
Mr. Clough Williams-Eills, who has a reputation as an architect of distinction and as one who has shown in his own building deve- lopment on a stretch of the Welsh coast that good taste and com- mercial success need not always cut each other's throats, is the Editor.
He has gathered around him, in an effort to bestir the social con- science of Britain, a team of con- tributors who write with authority
and with, what is more rare, wit and charm-on every aspect of the countryside problem.
*** *
Moreover, belleving that in this case it is not true that good wine needs no bush, he has secured as sponsors ten gentlemen of repute and some public fame, whose views on many things are various,
For they range from Mr. Lloyd Sir Kingsley George, through
Wood, Mr. George. Lansbury, Lord Baden-Powell, Sir Stafford Cripps. Julian Huxley, and J. B. Priestley, to the Earl of Derby and the Mar- quess of Zetland.
But -that if we do not bestir ourselves
on thla are all agreed
Aberdeen As She
was Jean's birthday party,
coon to save the beauty of Britain it will be destroyed,
Keynes, Mr.
that ndmirable economist who is so much more, opens with a just appraisal of the place of order and beauty in the pre-occupations of a State which would be civilised,
He attacks and how badly It needs attacking, for it is at the root not only of the war between Britain and the Beast of ugliness but very much elso besides-the dreadful heresy which became orthodox State policy in the nine- teenth century and has remained 50 until to-day.
* *
That heresy is "the view that the utilitarian and economic-one might almost say financial-ideal is the sole respectable purpose of the community as a whole,"
That heresy sits so firmly in the seats of Government now that we persuaded Ourselves or have allowed ourselves to be persuaded, that it is positively wicked for the State to spend a halfpenny on Even non-economic purposes. education and public health only creep in under an economie allas on the ground that they "pay."
"When," writes Mr. Keynes, "& stretch of cli, a reach of the Thames, a stope of down, la sche- duled for destruction, it does not occur to the Prime Minister that the obvious remedy is for the State to prohibit the outrage and pay Just compensation. If any; that would be uneconomic.".
Instead," he helps to administer a private charity fund nobly pro- vided by a foreigner to make such donations as may be required from time to time to prevent such things as Shakespeare's Cliff being converted into cement..
Is Spoke
"So low have we fallen to- day in our conception of the duty and purpose and honour and glory of the State."
That is not to decry the the .private organisations,
National Trust, the Pilgrim Trust, the Council for the Preservation of Rural Eng- land. They do what they can to save us all from shame.
To leave to voluntary effort what is the proper business of the State is sometimes re- garded as an attractive part of the British character. But to leave to private charity the safeguarding of a herliage of natural beauty is not a pleas- ant eccentricity, but lunacy- and a particularly regrettable and unpleasant lunacy at that,
Nor is the preservation of the countryside by any means the whole of the matter.
What is at stake is not only that case and beauty and peace of the countryside of whose healing value to the tired, tangled nerves of the townsman Lord Horder writes as a physician in this book--but that nice balance between the country and the town upon which depends not only the happiness but the economic security of nations.
Here is a matter not merely of a threat to a beautiful view, but of the feopardising of a whole mode of life. There is more in the countryside of Britain than rolling hills and wide views, cliffa and trees and streams and coloured counties there is a philosophy of living.
Moreover, "preservation" sug- gests something static. We cannot stand still here any more than elsewhere, An ancient thatched cottage may be beautiful, but it
may also be and very often 18- unsanitary.
We want, as Thomas Sharp writes here, a national plan, under- which a central board will plan. and control not only housing and roads, but agriculture, industrial location, and overy type of land. utilisation. And in order to make- require the WE that possiblo nationalization of the land.
We want and Professor Stapledon shows how it could be done and mado not only socially sensible, but even economically so-an increase in our rural population and greater facilities for rural holidays to the urban worker through the provision of national parks.
These parks must not simply be open spaces, but places where urban workers can come into contact with country people and country pursuits, to the general good and the general appl
ness.
I am glad this book has been pub- fished. I congratulate all who have had a hand in it. But the publication of one bock, however excellent, is a littlo thing. We have all of us to think Beriously about this fight between Britain and the Beast if anything really fundamental in to be achieved.
**
*
The safeguarding of what re- mains and the proper use of the land of Britain for the people of Britain is a matter of urgency.
That is why it has been included in the Immediate Programme of the Labour Party as a question which falla rightly into the short list of things to which Government with a real social conscience will give priority.
That, too, is why it is the business of all of us in whatever way we can to uso what weapons are already at hand to fight a vandalism which would ruin the face and spirit of our countryside.
Here is a cause not merely for the countryman, but for the townsman also. Let both be vigilant.
Stories of Children's Parties
THE Scotsman can generally ex
"I've tint a shee," replied the man, press himself pretty forcibly in and it took me some ilme to under- his native tongue, no matter what stand that he had lost a shoe off his part of the country he belongs to. horse.
This probably is accounted for by
the
man began to
When the smith was putting on many locally-used expressions adopted in heated conversations, and the shoe again the whether
be the smoothly-modulated complain about the shoe coming off. speech of the true Highinnder or the
"Weel, it's yer aln wyte," retorted snappy, whining dialect of the Glas-
present, an' ye didna How football fan, the retort dis- the smith. "Ye ga'ed the sheen for
a Christmas tell me ye winlit them till gyan uh, next year!"
courteous
cutting.
can be both virile and
•
different Amongst the numerous dinicets none can vie with that of the
At a hiring fair at Lengside, "neor Aberdeenshire native (especially the country-bred one) for local "broad- Peterhead, I overheard the following between two plough- ness"
and directness of expression, conversation The writer resided in various parts men:-"An
of the county for many years, and Jock?" as his business braught contact with all classes,
соли
good
him
'car. are 'e the for asked one. "Oh, I'm at Cairnbrogle." replied the other. "An' into he had a fit kin' o' place is Cairnbrogie?" pur- opportunity of hearing their sued the first speaker. "Oh, weel, it's nae bad. The meat's some roch expressions without
but, man, there affa clytes o'd!" "Give us 492!" one little boy for blowing out the candles on the everyday Ishe was beaming, receiving the shouted, but none online for que ver cold had just
Being in the hardware line, I call- By this he meant that if the meat blown out his first candle, when he guests. The father of one of her a number In the hymn book.
suddenly stopped, and confronteded on a country blacksmith shortly was rough, it was also plentiful.
after I landed, in the county, and s "We'd better not have candles on. we were in conversation, a man came
cake, uuntle. We'd up to the smithy door with a horse. your birthday
"Fit are ye winiin'?" asked the. be all night blowing them out."
mith.. A. 1%
little friends Inquired, "What time. "What hymn is it, Johnnie?" he his aunt,
needn't bother was asked.
have I to call to fetch John Jean?" "Oh, you
answered
calling," said Jean brightly, "My "I don't know," he daddy said he would take all the blandly. "It's the number on our children home himself. You see, It's cheaper than giving all their daddles door at home."
a whisky and soda.".
It was at a Sunday school party' that two boys so far forgot also
At a children's Christmas party it themselves as to have a regular sel-
was decided to give a Nativity play: to: and for weeks before the great occasion the preparations occupied every minute,
"How are you getting on with re- hearsals now?" one mother asked her little girl.
"I thought," reproached a teacher
as he separated them, "that you two were friends,"
"Oh, nol" they both assured him
"We're brothers." in one breath.
The services of a conjurer had been secured for a certain Christmas one# were
"We are in a fix," came the doleful party, and the littlo reply. "The Angel next to me has breathlessly watching his wonderful scarlet fever, and the Lumb has got tricks. A shuling had just vanished into thin air, and then he turned to the incales." -
the audience and asked if anyone At another Christmas party, which could obilge with a pound note. was given for slum children, there There was no response, and the man remarked, "Well, if no of mystery Was -magnificent illuminated. tree.
of
I and when Santa Claus walked on tlía one can oblige, then, children shouted themselves, horse can't show you the trick." "But, with excllement pa mister," a little boy hopefully sug- "That isn't Banta Claus," one Ove-gested, "you can get one from behind years-old confided in a loud whisper your ear.".
to her six-years-old sister "He's only a Scout. I saw him changing."
"Shut up!" exhorted Miss Six- ed into years-old, "and don't you go and assistant. muck it all up for the kids."
•
course.
In a similar vein is the tale of the little boy of five who had been press
service on the conjurer's Its handkerchief had been magically waved in the air by that the conjurer, with the result
placed beneath
everything vanished.
it
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At the same fair a couple of young
were ploughmen
discussing food a beer tent. The matters within older was describing a conversation he had had with his employer some time before.
"AtA "Robert," he said to me, wrong that ye winna take your. por- ridge?"
"Well," I says to him, "ye surely lak' me for a most unhealthy man. Porridge once a day is ah richt, but when
ye get it three times, I feel my stomach gettin' poulticed as if I had
festered inside."
P
An old wife was standing in front nt me at a tallway booking office holding
her grandchild's hand. Well?" asked the clerk. "Gio's twah tuckels," she said. "Where to?" asked the clerk. The old woman looked surprised. Then she snapped:-"Turra, man, Turra: far sorry, itheri" (Turrift and nowhere else.)
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1 She takes you down, while absorbed in a part song here. Went over and was thwarted. 10 Reminds one of what French
water can do for an artist.
a horse. 11 Letter for
12 One result of joining up.
13 In this place put about after the start, but not in this place.
14 What the kleptomaniac did
round the neck of a priest. 16 Got leg (anag.),
18 Pertaining to milk, with a sug
gestion that credit is not given. 20 What the broncho did, and
on grass. WAS,
maybe
22 A pleasant accompaniment to
good wishes. 24 Dines (ausg.).
A crofter's young son had been staying in London for a couple of years assisting his uncle in his shop, and on coming back for a holiday, he 29 if you concur, I ought to hide
A younger was full of "English" brother was describing his lingo down in the village one evening:
27 Put out, but not at all sulky.
it in a style that will make unnecessary opening parcel (hidden). "Oo'r Bob speaks ilke a craw, noo, 30 A piece of furniture. be said.
yah, yah!!"
All he can say Is Yah, 31 Goes for a journey in anger?
On the contrary,
At a small country hotel, where I 32 Reasons why coffee should not
be treated like, a cocktail. used to put up for a night occasion-
ally,
7 Choose again from the reel, etc. 8 What a man is when the vulgar
call hlin sniffy.
Takes a coples these.
астеел
outfi
and
14 Despatches the object inside. 15 Hidden in Clue 20.
17 Garden fish.
10 When you got one you put up
for the club?
21 How to, make a snake stop an
the footpath.
23 Permanent, but not so to the
vulgar!
be
25 The cause of this affiction may
its end. 20 Inng! It's no
in the
city that is equally suitable for overlord or subject.
valley
28 The Continent
29 The kind of rug that no one
enjoys on the head.
Yesterday's Solation
HAND10 BA:F
OA
K
sclenco tho for
of
B
DOWN
a baker's vanman used to call 33 The rustic pea is all that's with bread, and, incidentally, get hia
At another Christmas party the
Air-conditioned equipment carried on Trans-Continental Trains. children were told that Lady X. Arrived home from the party, he
Froquent Canadian Pacife Atlantie sailings from Montreal and Quebec, dram. He was getting his "usual" would distribute the gifts, and just was being put to bed, and his mother before the speaker made her appear- placed his handkerchief beneath his ance this gem of conversation overheard between two tiny tots: pillow as usual, "Oh, no, mother," down the smooth St. Lawrende Seaway, to Eurose.
he protested. "You mustn't do that,
"Is your mother a Lady'?"
"Weil," sald the other, struggling
or the
1t.
bed will disappear, with me in
Was
"I know who that girl is," a new- overheard between loyalty and truthfulness, comer at a party "she is not quite a lady, but very whimpering to her sister. nearly one."
At Sunday school party the
minister asked one of the children
to suggest a finishing hymn:
"Who is she?"
I
"Sho lives next door to a dog that know."
It is always a great moment, at a
birthday party when the time arriyes
Telephone 20752.
Canadian Pacific
one evening when he remarked to the landlady:Mrs, Spittal, this is my birthday."
Weel,
Willie, is that so? I'll weel, hac toe gle ye something for yer And the handed him a birthday." packet of cigarettes.
Disappointedly, Willie picked up the gift, and as he walked to the door. he exclaimed: "Good, "It' hardly worth while tellin' lees, nool"
Jay-onb.
needed
curing.
2 Overmuch bell-soundin Greater
London.
3 Hidden in, Clue 29.
4 Useful novelly you'll have to
got in the end.
Also.
B
Awell
in a couple of words, a
o Friends do as a rule, though it
sounds most unfriendly. (twó words, 3, 2),
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