444 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 



but ' how they do it ' that leads emotional critics to object to their action. 

 The more ground there may at first sight appear to be for complaint, the 

 more manifest is the fact, either that in the area affected there is no local 

 society competent to advise its local authority, or that, if the area possesses 

 a local society, that society has failed to fulfil its primary duty of establishing 

 a sympathetic understanding with its various public authorities. 



A local society which has established such a sympathetic understanding 

 will be in a position, when the amenities of its own area are menaced, to 

 seek the aid of its own local authority as well as of some appropriate national 

 organisation. The local appeal should at least defer precipitate local action ; 

 the national appeal will ensure sjTnpathetic attention, and may bring helpful 

 advice. Whether the threat be to the general amenities of the area or to some 

 special view-point or beauty spot, a local society can hardly fail to benefit by 

 the experienced advice of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England 

 or that of the Executive Committee of the National Trust. If the damage be 

 due to the modification of an existing thoroughfare or the making of a new 

 one, it is probable that it will be beyond the power of a local authority or 

 a local society to do more than palliate the mischief. In such a case a local 

 society can count upon advice as to means and methods from such organisa- 

 tions as the Road Beautifying Association, the Green Cross Society, or the 

 Men of the Trees. 



Experience shows that there is only one safe course possible if the 

 amenities of a local area are to be preserved : the threatened view-point, 

 beauty spot, or piece of landscape must be purchased outright and rendered 

 inalienable. The price demanded will usually exceed what a local society 

 can afford to pay, but this drawback need not deter a courageous local 

 society from securing an option to purchase, and thus preventing the 

 immediate desecration of the threatened amenity. The right to buy having 

 thus been secured, an appeal for funds to complete the transaction can now 

 be made, and in launching that appeal the moral support of the National 

 Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, and of the Council 

 for the Preservation of Rural England, will be of vital consequence to the 

 local society concerned. 



Such a property having been acquired, and the amenities of its local area 

 thereby preserved, the local society responsible must consider the question 

 of ownership. Unless a local society be empowered by charter to that effect, 

 it may not be in a position to declare the property inalienable ; even if so 

 fortunately situated, there can be few local societies whose members will 

 venture, during a period like the present, to impose on their successors a 

 burden which modified social and political conditions may conceivably 

 render unbearable. The obvious alternative is to request an organisation 

 like the National Trust, whose existence seems assured so long as England 

 remains true to herself, and whose powers include the right to declare any 

 of its properties inalienable, to accept the property. It is hardly necessary 

 to remind delegates present that acceptance by the Trust of this respon- 

 sibility will be dependent on two conditions : the local society offering the 

 property must be able to satisfy the Trust that the property offered is in fact 

 ' a place of natural beauty,' and must provide evidence that funds adequate 

 to meet the recurrent expenditure the proper maintenance of the property 

 must entail are in fact available. The existence of the first condition is men- 

 tioned in order to remind the delegates of all local societies of the advisa- 

 bility, before asking the Council for the Preservation of Rural England to 

 lend moral support to an appeal for funds, and the practical wisdom — if 

 possible before obtaining an option to purchase — of securing from the 

 National Trust a verdict that the amenity it is wished to safeguard is in fact 



