as been heralded by the decay of
the country-side. When the cities had sucked the life of the plains
and valleys dry, then came the end. It was thus with Israel. Out of
the villages and farms nestling in valleys the people were driven into
cities by the rapacity of men eager to be rich. This was the burden
that weighed on the prophets, 'Woe unto them that join house to house,
that lay field to field till there be no room.' When in the country
places there was no room for the common folk, then national decay
ensued in Israel. It was so also in Rome. The day came when one
magnate owned the 'territories of whole tribes' and left them 'to be
trampled under foot by herds or ravaged by wild beasts,' or garrisoned
them 'with slave {55} prisons or citizens held in bondage,' and Rome
sucked dry the rural life of Italy and of the lands washed by the
Mediterranean. Therewith paralysis seized the greatest of the
world-empires. In every age overgrown cities have proved themselves
the graveyards of civilisation. And the primary cause of the evils
which now threaten us is that we have made the countryside waste.
Counties and parishes have been depleted of life that cities might grow
more and more. It has been calculated that nine out of ten families in
England have migrated to the city in the last three generations. In
and around Glasgow half of the population of Scotland is concentrated.
Three-fourths of the whole population of Scotland has been massed in
the industrial belt of country that lies between the Forth and Clyde
estuaries, and which includes Edinburgh and Glasgow and the towns round
which are centred the iron and coal industries. We have driven our
manhood and womanhood out of the sunshine {56} and the clean air and
the silent spaces into the foetid, sunless closes of monstrous cities.
There the clanging of machinery leaves no place where the soul can be
still. And upon us has fallen the woe declared against those who
devastate the quiet places, adding field to field, until there is no
room for the poor.

I

The greatest tragedy of our day is that the English race which has
conquered the fourth of the world's area has lost its own land. In the
course of a hundred years the spoliation of well-nigh the whole nation
has been consummated. The villages and rural parishes of England which
once teemed with life are left to decay. The life and the wealth which
reared the parish churches of England--those monum