FURTHER STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 595 



Outside the cities, better ways will have to be found to receive in 

 the countryside the broadening streams which will flow out along 

 the highways. Unlike past generations, these folk will almost all 

 be city-bred. They may have to learn deliberately how to deal 

 with open space and growing things, just as the open space will 

 have to learn to deal with them. Skills of usage may have to be 

 imparted to the millions of users and also to the thousands of de- 

 signers, owners, maintainers of ex-urban space. Much of this 

 learning can be developed in the tests and trials which the Job Corps 

 and Neighborhood Youth Corps are about to enter. Surely any- 

 one who planted shrubs or picked up litter for a few weeks in his 

 youth will care more about both for the rest of his days. We may 

 try the same in the Company of Young Canadians. 



This teaching and practice of fragments of skill and awareness in 

 the presence of natural beauty can be built up to a wide concern 

 and loyalty to our precious common domain. Once that begins to 

 happen, the natural treasures of North America will enlarge, and 

 never again diminish. This I think is what Whitman sang of 

 and Thoreau, Louis Halle, Rachel Carson. It is the "land ethic" 

 of Aldo Leopold. The educational challenge is to knit the needed 

 skills into this basic kind of understanding. 



The President's bold idea for the conference, the insights and 

 experience brought to it, and the generosity with which citizens of 

 other countries were asked to join, merit gratitude for the opportunity 

 to learn together, and high optimism for the "new and creative 

 conservation." 



Dr. IRS TON R. BARNES. The three panels on the highways dem- 

 onstrated an almost complete failure on the part of the conservation- 

 ists to establish communications with the highway officials and 

 engineers. 



The highway officials are, it would appear, sincerely committed 

 to making our highways more attractive as highways. They will 

 make every effort to improve on the aesthetics of highway design ; they 

 will devote substantial funds to landscaping and plantings; they favor 

 control of litter and some suppression of signs and billboards. 



All of these efforts to beautify the highways are fine, but they are 

 not fundamentally concerned with natural beauty. 



What the conservationists want is complete assurance that high- 

 ways shall not be destroyers of natural beauty as they have so often 

 been in the past. This assurance is critical in view of the announced 



