PRIME MINISTER APPEALS FOR PROTECTION OF COUNTRYSIDE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 194, 17 August 1931, Page 8

PRIME MINISTER APPEALS FOR PROTECTION OF COUNTRYSIDE.

A London Letter,

Flight-Lieutenant Hope Crashes With Schneider Trophy Seaplane. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON. July 10. We are living in days of great developmentsaid the Prime Minister in opening an exhibition organised by the Council

for the Preservation of Rural England, “ and the problem is how we can build and spread ourselves out and yet retain the natural beauties of the country. Our country does not consist merely of open spaces. It has personality. Its aspect is just like the aspect of a beautiful face. If we build things that are ugly and destroy that aspect, what sort of inheritance are we going to hand on to our children?

“JF YOU WANT to see modern disfigurements of the countryside go into the air. Look down from a thousand feet or so and see the roofs of your houses. Look at the abomination of that new contraption of cheap roofing, which, when seen from the air, looks as though some dyer had emptied an enormous vat of extraordinarily bad colour across green fields and over beautiful woods. “If you want to be horrified by the broad straight brutal road, which, if it lasted for five hundred years, would never acquire a mellow and lovable personality, go into the air. If you want to have a new enjoyment of the beauties of your land and a new horror of the desecration being committed upon your land, go and have an air jour- “ The type of person whom I can do without is the type who goes about and thoughtlessly uproots our wild plants—those gorgeous jewels of the countryside which are scattered in every wayside and in every wood. I beg of local authorities to protect our wild flowers, for the appearance of our landscape is a common inheritance which belongs to every man and woman who can call himself English.” A Schneider ’Plane Crash. The frail nature of a racing seaplane was illustrated this week when the British S 6 sank off the south side of the Shell-Mex pier in Southampton Water while practising for the Schneider Trophy Race. The pilot, Flight-Lieutenant Hope, was saved, being picked up by a speed-boat from the harbour board signal station at Fawley. The pniot was struck on the side of the head by a piece of flying metal. from the engine while the machine was flying at high speed. His ear was cut, so he decided to come down. The S 6 was the machine flowm by Flying-Officer R. L. R. Atcherlcy in the last Schneider Trophy Race, when he finished second but was disqualified for not properly rounding the mark. Mr L. Chapman, the pilot on the Royal Holland Lloyd liner Gelria, describing the accident to the S 6, stated that as they were approaching Southampton Water they saw the machine take off and fly at high speed around the Solent and Cowes. “ When we next caught sight of her,” he added, “ she was flying down Southampton Water, and as she approached the Gelria she began to descend. Everything seemed to be quire normal, but to our surprise S 6 struck the water and then bounced like a rubber ball into the air again. She must have jumpei thirty feet or forty feet from the water, and while she was in the air we distinctly heard the engine being revved up. The ’plane swerved slightly, and then turned steeply down and struck the water a second time. A great cloud of spray shot into the air, and when we next saw the machine it was on its back with only the floats protruding above the water. “ Seconds seemed like minutes, and then to our immense relief we saw the head of Flight-Lieutenant Hope break the surface of the water. He quickly clambered on to one of the floats, and waved both arms to show that he was all right.”

Royal Visit to Scotland. When the King and Queen worshipped under the vaulted roof of St Giles’s Cathedral. Edinburgh, on Sunday, July 5, 1/00 of their Scottish subjects worshipped with them. Cheering crowds lined the route from Holyrcod to .the Cathedral as the King and Queen, with members of their suite, drove along in open landaus drawn by white horses. The King, wearing a gardenia in the button-hole of his frock coat, sat on the Sovereign’s seat under a high carved oaken canopy. No one save the King and his direct representative, the Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland, ever sits in this seat, which was last occupied by Mr James Brown, M.P., who was once a miner, rt c the General Assembly of the Scottish Church this year. On the King’s left sat the Queen, a radiant figure in pale silver-grey satin, with a toque of swathed silver tissue. High over their heads hung the historic old colours of Scottish regiments, and on their left and right the sun shone through the stained glass windows portraying John Knox preaching one of his famous sermons, and former Lords High Commissioner in their robes. After lunching at Holyrood Palace the King and Queen drove again along the Royal Mile, past the famous old lands o: Edinburgh High Street to the Castle Rock, where they stayed for about an hour in the Scottish National War Memorial shrine. With them was the Duke of Atholl, chairman of the War Memorial Committee, and Mr William Adamson, Secretary of State for Scotland. In the cool, quiet sanctuary of the shrine the King and Queen stood silent, admiring the stained-glass windows with their vivid glimpses of life in war time, the colours of Scottish regiments that fought in the Great \\ ar, and the plain, simple inscriptions on the stone walls telling of deeds of heroism o ; Scotsmen at Loos, on the Somme, and all over the world where the war was waged. It was the second time the Kmg and‘Queen had been in the shrine, and the K'ng particularly admired the new statue representing Peace rising from the flames of \Var which was recently placed over the central doorway of the shrine.