BLOTCHES ON RURAL BEAUTY

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 71, 16 December 1933, Page 22

BLOTCHES ON RURAL BEAUTY

What Mr. Chesterton Would Do

The Council for the Preservation of Rural England does a great work in challenging the jerry-building and hideous advertising which disfigures so many of the beautiful roads of the home counties, in particular, and it is gaining support daily. Not long ago Lady Oxford broke a lance against the petrol-stations, with their nightmare-ish paint and screaming catch-lines, and the result has been a considerable improvement in the treatment of these places. In some areas, prizes for artistic design have actually been won by the owners of roadside pumps.

so well), made a caustic attack on ugly posters at a meeting organised by Lady Dashwood, wife of England’s premier baronet, at West Wycombe Park. Mr. Chesterton said that the. right answer to people who put up hideous advertisements calling upon people to buy their curious foods was to put placards on the opposite side of the street, saying—“Blank’s Cakes are Filthy, or “Blank’s Wine is Ink.”

“It is becoming a serious question,” Mr. Chesterton declared, "whether poster advertising is not only filthy and degrading, but also unbusinesslike. Southern England is the most beautiful landsi > in Western Europe, and It has been spoilt by vulgarity and avarice, which is not accessible to reason.”—Reuter Special to “The Dominion.”

Mr. G, K. Chesterton, himself a countryman, with a cottage near Beacons field (when he is not taking his ease in one of those Fleet Street inns he loves