rendered all the more dangerous his superficial knowledge of foreign affairs and his recently acquired experience of diplomacy. Yet Curzon's loyalty to his chief and his colleagues was (again I write from personal knowledge) unimpeachable. From 1920 onwards there developed in the Conservative ranks a strong and eventually predominant party, increasingly hostile to the Coalition Government and its devious ways. Curzon, to whom that party naturally looked for leadership, gave them no encouragement. Until the hour of his resignation, Curzon remained faithful to Mr. Lloyd George.

After the overthrow of the Coalition, Curzon retained the Foreign Office under Mr. Bonar Law; but the European situation was most refractory, and though for a brief year he was master in his own house, he could extract little satisfaction from the position.

When in the spring of 1925, Mr. Bonar Law resigned, Curzon had no doubt that the fulfilment of his life's ambition was at last at hand. The considerate anxiety of the King to soften the blow of disappointment only served at the moment to accentuate it. When Lord Stamfordham asked for an appointment, Lord Curzon naturally expected to receive, and intended to accept, an invitation to form a government. In fact, Lord Stamfordham's painful task was to inform him that His Majesty, having taken the advice of his most experienced counsellor, was unable to confide the Premiership to a peer.

It was a shattering blow. In public he bore himself proudly; presided at a great party meeting, and in a speech of incomparable courage and felicity proposed Mr. Baldwin as leader. But those nearest to him knew that his heart was broken.

The cup of bitterness was not yet, however, full. During his first brief ministry Mr. Baldwin retained Lord Curzon at the Foreign Office. When, after the Conservative victory of 1924, Mr. Baldwin formed his second administration, Lord Curzon was superseded by Mr. (now Sir) Austen Chamberlain. He consented, nevertheless, to join the government as Lord President of the Council, with continued leadership of the House of Lords, and he became chairman of the Committee of Imperial Defence; but his enthusiasm for politics was at last-and who can wonder?— quenched. Kedleston, the old house of his race, on which he was lavishing time, thought and money, called to him insistently;

and to Kedleston his dead body, after a superbly solemn service in the Abbey, was borne in the spring of 1925.

Death tore aside the veil from the eyes of a public which had never been permitted to see the true man. Immediately, instinctively and universally it was recognised that the country had lost (it had been King Edward's description of him)" a great public servant."

Truly his character was high; his gifts rich and diversified ; his achievements many and important. Yet the sense of tragedy, of irony, persists. An intrepid traveller, a fine scholar, a superb orator, a great administrator, an eager reformer, a high-souled statesman, above all a single-minded patriot, Curzon nevertheless died a disillusioned man. Some of the bitterness which seared his soul would surely have been assuaged could he in life have known the grief and sense of national impoverishment which the passing of this great Englishman evoked. At the time of his death I used words which I venture in substance to repeat. Greek in his love of the beautiful, in the grace and profusion of his eloquence; Roman in pietas and gravitas, in stoical endurance of pain and in patience under reverses, in capacity for proconsular administration, in undying devotion to the service of the Commonwealth; but in love for his native soil, in sympathy with the loftiest aims and solicitude for the best interests of his countrymen, George Curzon was English to the core.

J. A. R. MARRIOTT

RURAL DISFIGUREMENT

1. England and the Octopus. By CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS. Geoffrey Bles. 1928.

2. Letters from England. By KAREL CAPEK. Geoffrey Bles. 1928.

THE first point to bear in mind concerning the disfigurement

of our beautiful countryside is the plain but disturbing fact that all our rural amenities are not merely in jeopardy, but are at this moment in process of destruction. This process has been advancing at a terrific rate during the last eight or nine years; it started in earnest some twenty years ago or more with the universal development of motoring for public service and pleasure. The shifting of a vast body of traffic and passengers from the railways to the main roads has inevitably caused a total transformation of the highways themselves and their adjacent scenery, which from the æsthetic standpoint has been deplorable, even admitting that much of the damage done was unavoidable. It is useless to quarrel with facts; the only policy under the circumstances is to try and save what has so far escaped the everrising tide of ruinous development.

It has taken the thoughtful public some years to realise the full logical outcome of this new movement; and of a truth the present agitation on behalf of our countryside has arisen at a very late hour. Still, late is better than too late; and though an immense amount has already been utterly, and often wantonly, destroyed, there happily remains much that so far is only threatened and can yet be rescued. But the spirit of rank materialism has been let loose throughout the land, and unless drastic action be taken, and pretty swiftly too, England stands in grave peril of losing that glorious heritage of natural charm and matured agricultural life that has been sung by our poets, from Chaucer to Tennyson. Such of us as are elderly, or even middle-aged, may gloomily console ourselves with the cynical old maxim, après moi le déluge; but this seems neither an excusable nor an honourable pose to assume. We have rejoiced in and have benefited by this homely beauty in the past; surely then we ought to lift a hand to preserve it, or at least as much of it as we

can, for our descendants. Even granting that the average youth of to-day does not care a fig for the picturesque or the historical, a succeeding generation may, and probably will, blame us who are older and farther-seeing than our careless juniors, for abetting by our silence this deliberate sacrilege, and for permitting our beautiful countryside to be metamorphosed into one endless suburb of arterial roads and raw townships.

It is therefore some comfort to feel that recently there have sprung into being certain societies, whose aim is to stave off this impending calamity and to teach our people the true value of their endangered heritage. Amongst these the Scapa Society and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, with its companion Council for Wales, are already in the field, but their influence is necessarily limited and their legal authority is nil. A more trenchant weapon of defence is to be found in the many striking sketches by Mr. W. K. Haselden in the Daily Mirror, which bring the facts before the eyes of " the man in the street." Mr. Haselden's method of keen pictorial satire on the pullingdown of old cottages, on the uprooting of wild flowers, on the curse of advertisements, on the hideous litter left by pleasureseekers, and generally on the prevailing spirit of vandalism, must produce some effect on the minds even of the most indifferent. The nation owes a deep debt of gratitude to the artist who is teaching it these frank and wholesome lessons. Our gratitude is also due to Mr. Williams-Ellis, whose book, "England and the Octopus," deals both historically and practically with the whole question. This important volume-for, though modest in bulk and price, it is of exceptional value at the present crisis-covers pretty nearly the whole subject, and by means of its many comparative illustrations goes far to prove the author's contention that this thoughtless craze of spoliation is both wicked and unnecessary. One can only hope that " England and the Octopus will be read and digested very widely, for if anything can bring home to the people of England-and of Scotland and Wales-the true state of the case, this grave warning should succeed in so doing. To quote his words :

England, since the war, has been changing with an acceleration that is catastrophic, thoroughly frightening the thoughtful among us, and making them sadly wonder whether anything recognisable of our lovely England will be left for our children's children.

as the

Some people sneer at "England and the Octopus jeremiad of an æsthete; it is no such thing. The author does not mince his words in expressing his sincere indignation, but he also shows the historical causation of the threatened catastrophe. The present invasion of the countryside is a necessary sequel to the past invasion of the towns during the Victorian era. it was a case of exodus from rural life to the cities; now it is a frantic inrush back to the erstwhile deserted country in order to escape the noise and smoke and ugliness of modern urban existence. This is indisputably true, though of course it does not cover the whole ground of explanation.

Then

Looking at the question as a whole, and in as dispassionate a mood as can be attained, one is tempted to ask in the old Ciceronian phrase," Cui bono?"-for whose benefit is all this devastation, and why is it permitted to continue unchecked? The answer is two-fold: (1) Foremost comes the all-pervading financial element which involves a good many issues, both direct and indirect. There is the greed and gain of the speculator, who thinks and sees and prays only in terms of £.s.d.; and then there is the specious plea, carefully published and endlessly exploited by the speculator, that the poorer classes will benefit by his vandalistic projects. (2) The attitude of the motoring public, which tacitly condones all this work of destruction, and even to some extent encourages it. One knows so well the type of motorist-one might almost say the average motorist-who will declare : Oh, yes, of course I am fond of scenery, but then I must get from A. to B. at twenty-five, or preferably forty-five, miles an hour!"—although in nearly every case he has no more urgent motive than his passion for speed. “I can't be kept waiting for five minutes at a narrow medieval bridge; down with it and replace it by a broad ferro-concrete substitute."-" No doubt those Tudor alms-houses in C―― were very picturesque, but now they have been demolished and the road widened and straightened, I can reach D- ten minutes earlier than I used to." That is the attitude of most motorists to-day; will it ever change for something less selfish, less impatient, less material? Probably not; and therefore it has become the paramount duty of our legislature to save for a future generation, that may prove less utilitarian than our own, such amenities as still survive.