HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 October 1939, Page 6

HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS

BIG IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME.

Except in so far as “every little helps,” the British Government’s programme of assistance for the Scottish Highlands and Islands will not do much for their besetting problems, comments the London “Observer.” A sum of £65.000, in addition to existing grants, is to be spent in each of the next five years on the improvement of local roads and piers, on the lowering of steamer freights, on the extension of forestry and lobster fishing, on land improvement, and on the establishment of co-operative marketing. The money will not go far when divided among these objects, and the policy has little of creative force. The essential problem is that of keeping on the land a fine human stock which, under the conditions of today, is steadily diminishing. The utmost revival of agriculture could not re-popu-late the glens upon the old scale, for the produce of a grudging soil cannot compete with that of more fertile regions as distributed by modern transport, any more than the primitive conditions of former centuries can be tolerated by the social conscience of the twentieth. Forestry and fishing both do something to stem the decline, but not enough, while the letting of grouse moors and deci - forests contributes to the costs of local government, but is, on the whole, repressive of other human activities. The great undeveloped asset of the Highlands is that of their natural beauty and magnificent opportunities for recreation. In virtue ol these, they could be made not less prosperous than Switzerland or the Pyrenees, where the results of catering for the holiday-maker are manifest to every observer.