MR BALDWIN AND A BIRD LOVER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 21 July 1925, Page 7

MR BALDWIN AND A BIRD LOVER

Tim Prime Minister of Great Britain (Mr Stanley Baldwin) paid a moving tribute to W. H. Hudson, the author and field naturalist, who died in August, 1922, and whose monument, a sanctuary for birds, lie unveiled in Hyde Park, London, last, month. Mr Baldwin said (reports the Morning Post) that just as they found as they grew older an increasing pull to that earth from which they sprang, and to liono was it stronger than to those who had the joy to be raised in the red earth of England, so Hudson found the pull of the soil of Devon, whence his forefathers came, and lie landed there 50 years ago unknown, unheralded, and unidentified, and there he remainetd until his death. It had been a, frequent, event enough in the lives of Englishmen and Scotsmen that they had gone into the wilds of the earth to explore the rivers of Africa and South Africa, or the mountains of Asia, and had come back to tell of tho strange things they had seen, hut Hudson came from the ends of the earth to discover to people, many of whom, though they had eyes, saw not, though they had ear’s heard not, something of the beauty of their own country. He had made familiar to thousands tiro hidden beauties of the southern counties, tho names of places of liveliness and reverence, and that music which was peculiar to tho country.

There were few tilings that, roused in Hudson passion. One certainly was the felling of the big elms in Kensington Gardens and tho destruction of tho rookery. Another was the sight of peoplo whose palates could only be tickled by eating larks’ and plovers’ eggs, and a third was seeing ladies who ransacked the hidden corners of the world to decorate their hats. They were that day doing a national penance for the sins they had committed in the past, and he hoped were resolved to abstain from them in the future so far as they could. Ho hoped that what they were doing would reach Hudson and that “his bones might bo filled with gladness and, uprising, dance in the .sepulchre.” One thing bored him, and that was politics—(laughter)—but if he was anything. he rather, inclined to tho side that he (Mr Baldwin) represented. (Laughter). He could only tolerate two politicians—Lord Grey and Lord Banbury par nobile fratrum. (Laughter). Ho liked Lord Grey for his love of Nature, and Lord Banbury for his hatred of cruelty to living creatures. The world never needed sanctuaries more than it. did to-day, and the three classes who needed them most were birds, wild flowers, and'Prime Ministers. (Laughter). Thanks to Lord Lee. lio had his sanctuary at Chequers, and he had great pleasure in opening this sanctuary for Londoners who might find themselves a little overcrowded. All they who lived in thq country felt in their, hones the urbanisation of the country and believed that the time must come to disurbanise England and to preserve our birds and flowers and gratify our craving for beauty.