OPPOSITE VIEWS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 49, 20 October 1931, Page 5

OPPOSITE VIEWS

PRESERVATION OF BRITAIN'S RURAL COUNTRYSIDE. LONDON. The conflict between the utilitarian and the beauty-lover's viewpoint was brought out recently in two speeches on the preservation of Great Britain;s rural beauty made by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Sir Peter spoke at the formal opening of the new Oxford zoological gargens, where a typical Oxfordshire farmhouse has been converted into a zoo without altering its original appearance. He expressed his approval of this, but held tbat much nonsense was spoken against the development of the countryside by people who dubbed tbmeselves friends of rural England. Speaking of the outcry raised against the pylons used in bringing I electricity to the villages, Sir Peter maintained that a lihe of pylons gave a fiew sense of space and beauty. "The Great Enemy." At the openihg of an exhibition at Chelmsford illustrating the disfigurement of town and countryside, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald decried utilitarianism, which he termed "the great enemy." 44 We must," he said, "make the most of our resources. We must build our factories, extend our towns, and bring more arid more people into the country. But if you build a house of material tnat does not find itself at home in its surroundings, you are doing a violence to your country." "If you want to see the glorious old twisting and twining roads, if you want to see copseS, woods and great expanses of land, look down upon them," he continued. "If you want to have a new enjoyment of the beauties of ^our land and a horror of the destruction being committed upon it, take a journey by air." Plea to Authorities. Mr. MacDonald made a plea to the local authorities tri exercise their authority; he urged firms to have their advertisements designed and placed so that they did not become eyesores, He was particularly solicitous for the protection of wild flowers. "The appearance of the landscape is a common inheritance which belongs to every man and woman who call themselves English," he said.