The National Trust's Jubilee
The National Trust celebrated its fiftieth birthday at the Mansion House last Monday, when Lord Zetland announced the transfer to its care of one more historic mansion, Coughton Court, in Warwick- shire. The Trust was born at a time when the more discerning public was already intensely aware of the encroachments on scenes of natural beauty and the danger to historic mdnuments. One by one stretches of countryside have been transferred to it, and historic houses, great and small, have been entrusted to its keeping. It came into being just in time to ensure the maintenance of many mansions which would have disappeared or been put to degraded uses but for its intervention. The impoverishment of country families, and above all the incidence of death duties, are making it ever more difficult or impossible for the descendants of original owners to keep up the more splendid English mansions, and it is just in these cases that the National Trust has again and again been enabled to step in, the owner sometimes retaining a life tenancy in the property. It is bare justice to the National Trust as an organisation to recognise that by its wisdom and efficiency it has ensured its own success, for the cqpfidence its administration has engendered is the best of in- centives to landowners to transfer their holdings to it. Its varied field of work has been constantly expanding, and there will be more expansion in the near future when it is called on to play its part in conjunction with the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. Whatever Government help it needs it should receive.
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