RURAL CIVILISATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 May 1939, Page 3

RURAL CIVILISATION

BENEFITS OF MODERN TIMES. Rural civilisation may seem a provocative and paradoxical phrase, because we hajjp usually associated civilisation with cities and not with the countryside, writes Mr F. G. Thomas, in the “Listener.” And there’s some justification for this point of view, though it depends on what is meant by the word civilisation. I am using the word to mean two things; the opportunity to share the heritagp of society —in its churches, theatres, libraries, schools, cinemas, political forums and other groups—and freedom from the drudgery of existence, the dull, yet exhausting, mechanics of living—water from the well, earth sanitation. As I have said previously, it is hard to be poor and civilised. Now, in the past, it was more possible to achieve these two things in cities and towns than in the country, for very obvious reasons. It was necessary, therefore, to live in the cities if you wished to share these benefits. But new inventions have altered that; and every year amenities which before were available only in the towns are being extended into outlying areas. Thirty years ago, the potential audience of a West End theatre was limited by. the distance a hansom cab could travel, just as market towns were spaced, so I am , told, within a pig’s walk of each other; today, motor-cars and trains have enlarged the area served by the theatre (and the cattle market). Modern machines have made the best books available at a price anyone can afford, whether they live in Westminster, Land’s End or John o’ Groats. Broadcasting, the cinema, multiple stores, mail orders, and the electricity grid systematically extend their range each year, so that no home is beyond their reach. In fact, proximity has now' very little to do with civilisation; indeed, often the crowding of people into cities did not civilise anybody, quite the reverse; it solved some problems and made others which we have, not solved yet. After all. civilisation is a matter of selecting your neighbours and not just being near them. You decide to join this group for music, and that for politics, and another for education; but that is nothing to do with living in crowded streets or rows of semi-detached houses. So there is technically no reason why anyone living in the remotest hamlet in the British Isles should not share easily in the benefits of modern civilisation.