CHANGED ENGLAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 29 September 1919, Page 7

CHANGED ENGLAND.

HOW THE RICH SUFFE-RED_ The financial blight has fallen with special severity upon that very interesting order of British life ‘known as “the landed gen-try,” remarlfs the San Francisco Argonaut. In normal times, to the eye of a. visitor, England has seemed full of people living in beautiful houses in the country, supported by incomes from rentals. The English country gentlema.n—-—the’local squirehas made a picture chrarming to alien imagination and exceedingly serviceable in refined fiction. High taxation now tends :to put the landed gentry out of business, and to nullify the phrase of social life typified in the “squire” and the manor house. The land-owner is being taxed, not only up to the limits of endurance, but beyond it. His posi. tion in untenable under the new order of things, and he is pareelling out his property in sales to working farmers. In numbers he is exchanging a free and generous country life for -the narrower conditions of life in town upon a reduced basis. His sons, if indeed they do not lie in foreign graves, or are not hobbling on crutches, are seeking their fortunes, and his hitherto carefullysheltered daughters are studying ways ‘and means of ‘maintaining themselves. Those who remain in the country arecurtailing alike their ornamental grounds, their retinue of servants, their stables, :their kennels, with much else that in times agone tended to. the luxury and charm of English life. Certainly there are many who go on -as before. But there are also many to whom -going on as before is and forever im-

possible. It is easily conceivable that in .-the end the fortunes of Britain may be improved by ex-o»reism of 3. social order that has been more‘or less parasiitic. None the less, the immecliate loss is striking to the eye of the visitor. England has been saved by the loyalty, the devotion, the courage, '-the sacrifice of her people, but at a cost of changes in her social structure which, however, they may ultimately Work out, present immediate aspects sentimentally painful.