We come back, therefore, to the question whether we wish to hand on these mountains to our descendants as mountains or as something else. For if we allow our company-promoters to carve and tunnel the crags, to enlarge and discolour the lakes, to poison the streams, and to drive away the wild life from the hills, are we not once more killing the goose that laid the golden eggs? These hills of ours are small as compared with the great mountains of Europe, but they are as beautiful, and they are unique, and once ruined they cannot by any ingenuity be restored. It is true that Switzerland is employed in the same manner in spoiling the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc, but it must be remembered that Switzerland has a practically unlimited reserve of Alps, while we have but few mountains to spoil.[23] At present they are still something more than a playground for gymnasts, or a picnic-ground for tourists; they are mountains, a piece of unsophisticated wild Nature in our midst, and as such, their value, to those who know it, is beyond words. Let them still be a playground and a picnic-ground by all means, but under such conditions as will preserve their native features and their higher character. One would think that a nation which can spend thousands of millions on a foreign war might afford to become the owner of its own mountains at home!
The pretence that there is something selfish and anti-democratic in the desire to save our mountain scenery from destruction is absurd; on the contrary, it is entirely owing to its devotion to the fetish of “property” that the public has so long allowed these places to be exploited for private gain, and has stood by in utter apathy and indifference while a handful of speculators and traders have benefited at the expense of the community. Nor do we give to our mountains even that protection which other antiquities enjoy. What would be said if a Bill were submitted and passed in Parliament to authorize some private company to pull Westminster Abbey or Stonehenge to pieces and make a profit out of the ruins? It is no exaggeration to say that the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments would have the whole nation at its back in its resistance to such vandalism; yet a mountain such as Snowdon is a far more ancient monument than Stonehenge or the Abbey, and the vandalism which is now being successfully accomplished is of a still more insensate kind.
It is a hollow fallacy, too, to suppose that it is “democratic” to fill up and destroy the rare silences and solitary spaces that a land may still possess, on the plea that they cannot be enjoyed by all. They can be enjoyed by all who are fitted to enjoy them, and the benefits that result from such enjoyment are in the long-run shared by all the nation alike. To make a railway to the top of a mountain such as Snowdon, and then to argue that it is a blessing to the weakly folk who could not otherwise get there, is to overlook the fact that it is not to the cripples, but to the community, that the mountain belongs. “Whatsoever,” says the communist Reclus, “may be the future of man, or the aspect of the world which he may create for himself, solitude, in that portion of Nature which is left free, will become more and more necessary to those men who wish to obtain renewed vigour of thought, far from the conflict of opinions and voices. If the beautiful spots of the world should one day become a mere rendezvous for the worn and weary, they who love to live in the open air will have nothing left them but to take refuge in a bark on the midst of the waves.… Happily the mountain will always contain the sweetest places of retreat for him who flies from the beaten paths of fashion.”
Wherein, then, lies the remedy for the dangers which I have described? Within recent years there has been much rejoicing over the rescue of two or three estates in the Lake District, such as Catbells and Gowbarrow, from the clutch of the speculator, and all honour is certainly due to those by whom these victories were won; but it is evident that large sums of money cannot for ever be raised by private subscription to buy off the day of doom, and that while one favoured tract is being thus protected, another less fortunate one is being lost. We cannot save our mountains by these piecemeal purchases from the harpies who threaten them; such methods are too troublesome, too costly, too purely local to be successful in the main. There is only one thorough solution of the problem, and that is to nationalize such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire, and other public holiday-haunts, and so to preserve them for the use and enjoyment of the people for all time. If parks, open spaces, railways, tramways, water, and other public needs can be municipalized, why not mountains? It is impossible to over-estimate the value of mountains as a recreation-ground for soul and body, yet, while we are awaking to the need of maintaining public rights in other directions, we are allowing our mountains—in North Wales and elsewhere—to be sacrificed to commercial selfishness. If Snowdon, for instance, had been purchased by the public twenty years ago, the investment would have been a great deal more profitable than those in which we usually engage; but while we are willing to spend vast sums on grabbing other people’s territory, we have not, of course, a penny to spare for the preservation of our own.
What we need, in short, is the appointment of mountain sanctuaries—highland parks, where the hills themselves, with the wild animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in their wildness as the cherished property of the people—consecrated places, where every one shall be entitled to walk, to climb, to rest, to meditate, to study Nature, to disport himself as he will, but not to injure or destroy. When we truly care for these hills of ours, we shall remove them from the tender mercies of the mine-owners and railway lords, who now seek profit in their disfigurement, and shall place them under a council of mountaineers and naturalists and nature lovers who understand and reverence them, with the instruction that they shall so administer their charge as to add to the present happiness and the permanent wealth of the nation. How long will it take us, hag-ridden as we are by the nightmare of private ownership, to awake to the necessity of such a change?
Pending that blessed time, I would point out to those public-spirited rich men (and we know there are such) who are ever looking for some useful outlet for their wealth, that here, in the shadow of this storm-cloud that overhangs our mountain scenery, they have a golden chance of ennobling themselves; for it is simple truth that the millionaire who should buy a Snowdon, and make free gift of it to the people, would be a benefactor for all time, and would far outstrip in lasting philanthropy any donor of churches or charities, hospitals or libraries, scholarships or seats of learning. For mountains are the holiest ground that the heart of man has consecrated, and their educating influence is even more potent than that of books; they are the true authors, the standard works, printed in the most enduring type, that cheer and brace, as no written words can do, the minds of those who study them.
In what state, then, shall we hand on to those who follow us these sacred temples of Nature, which, as even so old-fashioned a writer as Wordsworth asserted, are “a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy”? The day cannot be far distant when our choice must be made, and it is between a sanctuary and a slag-heap that we must choose.
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London