Sir,—“Few men have so earnestly felt, and none have so earnestly declared, that the beauty of nature is the blessedest and most necessary of lessons for men, and that all other efforts in education are futile till you taught your people to love fields, birds, and flowers.”  So wrote that old man eloquent whose birth his friends and disciples will be celebrating to-morrow.  Could they do anything better for his memory than, in this hundredth year since their teacher was born, set on foot an association of lovers of their native land, who will combine to do what they can to protect from “rash assault” the beauty their master taught and wrought for? As one who sees with regret much of this beauty passing away—partly from carelessness, partly from sheer ignorance—and as one who believes that in these years of reconstruction, so-called, much more of that same fairness of landscape and interest of buildings will vanish—I passionately appeal to them to consider the possibility of some great such society, in order that we may hand on that great inheritance, for which so many of our bravest and best have fallen, to far-off generations.

(Times, 8 February 1919, p. 3)