CHANGING DAYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 December 1938, Page 9

CHANGING DAYS

DOOM OF RURAL ENGLAND. A PROFESSOR’S LAMENT. “Unless rural England is provided with the amenities and facilities necessary, rural England and rural psychology are doomed —then goodbye Great Britain, said Professor Robert G. Stapledon, of Aberystwyth, in addressing the conference of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England at Chester. “Today, whole counties almost are losing their rural characteristics, and rural psychology is being rapidly undermined by industry, or at least industrial methods, and industrialised ideas and ideals are stalking grimly through rural England. It is not only the tendency to carry factories and whole industrial,towns into the country, but worse still in their aggregate and geographical influence are the activities of the great Government departments. There are few countries in which the fighting services are not up to some land-spoiling and labour-engaging activities, and, as if already enough men had not been taken from the land, the Post Office would seem to have decided that now is a good time to lay underground cables almost everywhere. At least 60 per cent of the road-making and cable laying is performed by quondam agricultural workers find, when those jobs are finished, not 20 per cent of the men will return to the land under present' agricultural and rural conditions. Worse than that, the peoples of country districts, and even of whole counties, are becoming completely industrialised and urbanised in outlook. Sons of farmers seek to become agricultural scientists, live-stock officers, or inspectors under the Marketing Board, and agricultural officials of every sort and degree—men sincere and purposeful enough, who, driven by their matrimonial instincts, perhaps, desire to live in villas in the towns instead of in the .country.”