BRITAIN'S BEST COUNTRYMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 19

BRITAIN'S BEST COUNTRYMAN

Robertson Scott, Companion of Honour

> S$ civilisation increases in complexity and luxury, the town tends to grow more ignorant of and indifferent to the country. Yet "the Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady"-the farmer’s wife and the eyebrow-plucked doll of the nightclub, who has never put her blood-red fingers. into honest dirt-are "sisters under their. skins,’ and the said skins, weather coarsened or shaded and ~ creamed by art, are ultimately the proay "i duct of grass. Patrons of the cocktail bar, that expense of spirit in a waste of chromium, may forget that all flesh, whether covered or not, is grass, but they cannot change the ways of nature. The truth is there for them to see, if they will but reflect, and without much trouble they can find elaborations of it which will fill their minds with. profit and delight if their minds are attuned. They might, for .example-and there _ is no better example-tread the English quarterly, The Countryman, which came into the news the other day because its founder and editor (until the other day when he retired) appeared in the Birthday Honours, J. W. Robertson Scott is now, like our Prime Minister, a Companion of Honour. It was said of another Scott, "C.P." of the Manchester Guardian, that he made righteousness readable. Robertson has made agriculture readable. The Countryman, a pocket-size journal packed with matter, can be read by the townsman with interest from Cover to cover, advertisements included. Indeed there are townsmen scattered over the English-speak--ing world who rank it among the very best of. magazines. There are two reasons for this. The Countryman is not only technical, but human, and it is extremely well written. Mr. Scott’s main purpose’ has —

been to improve British farming-he ‘might say, to save it-and to relate it adequately to the whole national culture. He knows well that such things as better tillage and the application of mote potent sprays will not of themselves do what is wanted. The roots of people on the land must be strengthened. Their mentality must be studied, their culture preserved and extended. What is best in the past must be kept, and joined with the scientific spirit of the age. Robertson ‘Scott perceives that the problem of the land is intellectual and spiritual as well as material. Bring the best methods to the farm. Give the farmer and the villager water and sanitation, but also better pubs and libraries and religious guidance. ‘The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." Town and country must understand and appreciate each other. So we find in The Countryman the most engaging bundles of technicalities and human con-tacts-ways of farming and ways of life, adventures on the land, new things and survivals, folk-lore and womien’s institutes, dialect sayings and’ searching criticism of local government, and some of the most attractive illustrations imaginable. This «crusade gives far more than a local lesson. There is no country -none in the British Commortwealth at any rate-where urban-rural balance is so correct and steady that it, cannot profit from The Countryman. There is no culture that The Countryman cannot stre en by its fresh presentation of eternal values, Agricultural journalism in New Zealand has brightened in recent years by becoming more human, and it is not fanciful to suggest that this is in part the work of T.. W. Robertson Scott, Companion of.

Honour.

A.

M.

(See photograph on front cover)