The passionate enthusiasm of the British public in defence of rural beauty is illustrated this week in several ways. Mr. Greenwood's Rew Town and Coun Bill has just been published. would give local author to control all sites, built-up areas, og Well as open country and woul jonable them also to, remove objec-Uonable buildings. The "Saturday Review" remarks that "it, is beautiful thought that, if the Bill becomes law, a vigorous and enter. prising Oxford City Council could.away with most of Balliol."
'One special object, is to check "ribbon "development." As towns overflow into the country, unsightly Tittle houses spring up along each side of the road, a sprawling form Jof development,' extravagantly expensive in respect of gas and water mains, and particularly hideous. Surrey County Council are now frying to get powers, independently lof the new Bill to stop this form of atrocity.
There is also a renewed outburst Jagainst. the proposed erection of electricity pylons across the Sussex downs from Newhaven to Brighton, fand the papers are full of pictures fof. the glorious countryside which [they would deface. Such pylons, jone. reads, cover many beautiful tracts in Norway, Spain, Italy and Germany, yet no' one objects.
And yesterday Professor Patrick Abercrombie read a paper before the Royal Society of "A the new towns that will be. springing lupino connection with the Kent Jeoalfields, ult ion 000, people, who will be dis tributed in five or six new towns, And the object is to plan and build these with the greatest regard for their own appearance and the preservation off th surrounding coun-
Two Cultures Clash Nathaniel Peffer, whose the Collapse of a' Civiliza-appeared this week, will be remembered in Shanghai as the sistant editor of the "China afterwards he was the New York Tribune's correspondent in Peking, later he went to Turke and in 1927 jack on a research fellowship to study China.
Mr. Peifer hits out at everybody, at the West, for all its dealings ith China, drawing fanciful pictures of diplomats hammering on the table and calling up "lines, of metalled ships ready 0 pound a eto dat 4 that he may railway concession; at missions Jdeseribing them as the shock {troops of cultural conquest"; and Jat most of Young China, whom he politely terms an "upstart rabbi compounded of "meretricious hybrid and "intellectual mongrelism, He is also guilty of the grossly inaccurate statement that Shang! prevents China from enforcing feffectiye factory law. Other mi representations. also. appear.
Yet for all this the book is one Jof the best expositions of the [Chinese revolution one has rea wea lo and banditry are not Mr. Peffer rightly insists that civil
the disease in itself but the symptoms of a deeper disease, the germs of which may have been implanted when the first two Portuguese ships found their way to Canton in 1517. The invasion of the old static society of China by the West with its vigorous ideas of government industry and efficiency, and the obvious superiority of the Latter at least in a material sense, brought Jabout an inevitable clash of cultures which, with the fall of the Man-Jebus, produced the acute distress and disorder that China has si suffered.
It is a most interesting book, Jwhich by looking back into the past gives a key to many of the deficiencies impartiality, one feels, give me a good healthy partisan even if on the other side.
"Old Ray"
This afternoon as passed Daly's Theatre. the lovely face of Bana [May looked out at me from a large photograph frame (ike at least fancy she looked at me) just as she did when she thrilled alt London the gay nineties" But beaut fal as she was, "The Belle of New
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.