Another Sheaf

t. There is a dulled and driven look, and yet a general expression of "Keep smiling-Are we down-hearted? No." It is as if people were all being forced along by a huge invisible hand at the

e where nothing beautiful exists save a pretty cat or pigeon, a blue sky, perhaps, and a few trees and open spaces. The children of the class above, too, of the small shop-people, the artisans-do they escape? Not really. The same herd-life and the same sights and sounds pursue them from birth; they also are soon divested of the grace and free look which you see in country children walking to and from school or roaming the hedges. Whether true slum children, or from streets a little better off, quickly they all pass out of youth into the iron drive of commerce and manufacture, into the clang and clatter, the swish and whirr of wheels, the strange, dragging, saw-like hubbub of industry, or the clicking and pigeon-holes of commerce; perch on a devil's see-saw from monotonous work to cheap sensation and back. Considering the conditions it is wonderful that they stand it as well as they do; and I should be the last to deny that they possess remarkable qualities. But the modern industrial English town is a sort of inferno where people dwell with a marvellous philosophy. What would you have? They have never seen any way out of it. And this, perhaps, would not be so pitiful if for each bond-servant of our town-tyranny there was in store

over the faces, manners, voices, whole beings, of those whose elbows are too tightly squeezed to their sides by the pressure of their fellows, whose natures are cut off from Nature, whose senses are rendered imitative by the too insistent impact of certain sights and sounds. Without doubt the rapid increase of town-life is responsible for our acknowledged vulgarity. The same process is going on in America and in Northern Germany; but we unfortunately had the lead, and seem to be doing our best to keep it. Cheap newspapers, on the sensational tip-and-run system, perpetual shows of some kind or other, work in association, every kind of thing in association, at a speed too great for individual digestion, and in

riven look, and gives him individuality. I know all about the "dullness" and "monotony" of rural life, bad housing and the rest of it. All true enough, but the cure is not exodus, it is improvement in rural-life conditions, more co-operation, better cottages, a fuller, freer social life. What we in England now want more than anything is air-for lungs and mind. We have overdone herd-life. We are dimly conscious of this, feel vaguely that there is something "rattling" and wrong about our progress, for we have had many little spasmodic "movements" back to the land these last few years. But what do they amount to? Whereas in 1901 the proportion of town to country population in England and Wales was 3 10/37-1, in 1911 it was 3 17/20-1; very distinctly greater! At this crab's march we shall be some time getting "back to the l

existence, we refuse to make an effort to get out again, because it is necessary to "hold our own commercially," and feed "the people" cheaply, we are in effect saying: "We certainly are going to hell, but look-how successfully!" I suggest rather that we try to pull ourselves up again out of the pit of destruction, even if to do so involves us in a certain amount of monetary loss and inconvenience. Yielding to no one in desire that "the people" should be well, nay better, fed, I decline utterly to accept the doctrine that there is no way of d

at direction that we cannot hope to be haloed in our time. For good or evil, the great t

national security, more arable land than we have ever had, and on it a full co

holdings, State-created,

garden allotments round ev

housing, feeding, and sanita

ly the standard of knowledge but the

driving power enough to counteract the terrific momentum with which towns are drawing us down into the pit. One section pins its faith to town improvement; another to the development of small holdings; a third to cottage bu

evolve in time a new type immune to town life; a little ratty fellow all nerves and assurance, much better than any country clod!"-which, by the way, is exactly what some of us do say! Unless we mean as a nation to adopt this view and rattle on, light-heartedly, careless of menace from without and within, assuring ourselves that health a

have put us so utterly in bond to towns-especially since this past and these towns have brought us such great wealth and so dominating a position in the world. It cannot be foolish, now that we have the wealth and the posi