LIFE IN THE VILLAGE
THE SILENT PEOPLE, by E. W,. Martin; Phoenix House Lid., through A. H. and A. W. Reed, N.Z. price 26/3. ‘THE "silent people" — Chesterton’s phrase-are the people of English villages, and this book is about them and their problems: over the last 200 years. The author has chosen to take various aspects of the subject separately and to follow them through continuously. Thus we have chapters on the squire, the parson, the farmer, the labourer, the gamekeeper, and so on; but a main theme is the effect’ of enclosures and the agricultural revolution on villagers and village life. Mr. Martin recognises the tragedy of the disappearance of the peasant farmer-‘"the metamorphosis of peasant into labourer"and also how the yeoman and the small proprietor have suffered as farming for subsistence became farming for private profit. He insists that a peasantry could bring new life to the village, and influence the English character again with wisdom derived from a knowledge of the earth and its bounty; but as he realises that for agricultural progress the large farm is a necessity he remains on the hotns of the dilemma on which so many others have found themselves impaled. Another recurring theme is the need for country planning, the object of which he sees as the need to give, in Lord Ernle’s words, "a reality, a purpose, a meaning" to village life, and to provide "an apparatus and a philosophy" for the recovery of pristine virtues. Mr. Martin has made a_ long and sympathetic study of his subject, and fills out his story with apt quotations from or references to a host of other writers and committee reports. There is ea wseful bibliography and a score of
good plates.
L. J.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 795, 15 October 1954, Page 14
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292LIFE IN THE VILLAGE New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 795, 15 October 1954, Page 14
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