Advertising and the Landscape.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19481, 30 November 1928, Page 8

Advertising and the Landscape.

The proper place for advertisements is not the hedges, the woodlands, or the streets, but the newspapers. This, the 'opinion of one of the most distinguished of English literary men, Professor J. M. Trevelyan, who is also a passionate lover of Nature, is not cited here as an advertisement for newspapers, but as testimony against the vulgarisation of the landscape. We have been saying the same thing in these columns for a long while, and naturally we are interested to find that this point was made most emphatically at the " Save the Countryside" Conference in England a few weeks ago. This movement, which has the backing of opposing political leaders like Mr Baldwin and Mr Ramsay Mac Donald —it is impossible not to notice how much more actively concerned public men are with (esthetics in England than they are in New Zealand—is well worth further notice in view of the proceedings at this gathering. The beauty of England is in very serious danger. A century ago industrialism had its way unchecked in parts of the loveliest countryside in the world. Today industrialism is attacking what remains with new as well as old weapons. Advertising in various forms is making the landscape hideous, and admonitions to use So-and-so's pills are not more annoying than a flaring petrol station. "One hundred years hence," said Professor Trevelyan, " there "would be very little beauty left in "England unless they provided other"wise by taking thought in time. The "law of the machine age was inexor- " able, and if they allowed it to "operate uncontrolled it would show " them no pity." Another speaker told the Conference what could be done to combat disfigurement. They could talk about the evil, wake people up to a realisation of it, insist upon local bodies using their powers, and approach the advertisers themselves and "show them that if they did ncty: set "their house in order and reduce the "evil they soon would not be able to " advertise at all." In all this there is & lesson for us in New Zealand. This

is a new country, and there is still time to avoid the mistakes made in England. What chiefly puts our beauty in danger js the indifference of a pioneer society, pncji a society as, for instance, hacks dovn trees and is content -with the resultant bareness.* And as regards landspape aesthetics, a blatant advertisement can be just as horrible in New Zealand as in England. What is needed here is an organisation on the lines of those that in England are striving to save the countryside from the atrocities of the hoardings advertiser, the bad type of factory designer, and the builder of cheap pink bungalows. Obviously the first thing to do is to banish ugly advertising.