Rosthwaite Moraines and Other Lakeland Notes

This link the Germans have tried frantically to weaken through the deportation of male labour and through a regimenting of farming activity which amounts to organized looting, but it is so strong, so long established and so universal that it can probably withstand the pressure of military conquest and economic persecution. One would not wish, of course, anything like the restoration of the status quo before 1939 for most of the Slav peasants. As Lewis Mumford l has pointed out, the persistence of self-sufficient peasant economies along the lines described in this paper, means the perpetuation of the crudest forms of poverty. But such regions have escaped what is probably graver damage, and a problem which haunts the zones of artisan predominance in North-Western and Central Europe and the United States, the too complete abandonment of the land by one-time craftsmen and peasants. Secondly, the Slavs have retained a consciousness of regional diversities, which has logically enough weakened to the point of disappearance in the countries experiencing most deeply and for generations the standardizing effects of capital and intensively developed communications. Once obliterated, such a sense of the petitpays, as the French call it, is difficult to restore except on artificial lines, and yet it is the very salt of existence for man if he is to maintain any intelligent relationship with his environment. The very remoteness of the Slav peoples from the strong economic forces of North-Western Europe, may have preserved for them a setting in which new planning is more straightforward than in countries where the population is largely given over to the uniformities and mechanical processes associated with huge artisan groups. Those who reflect upon the possibilities of recovery after the present upheaval are just awakening to a right estimation of these advantages. It is perhaps comforting that they accrue to peoples who have ranked low so far in economic and political achievement and whose hardships have been very great

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