A man who erects a shop in a new street runs no risk of having made an error of judgment in selecting his site: he knows that this will be the main shopping street and no other. Thus town-planning is good business, but like many other movements for reform its inception was due to far-sighted dreamers. However, it has not yet caught hold of the popular imagination, and, in the recent case of the East Kent coalfield, where, if ever, there was a crying need for its adoption, the imaginative enterprise of some leading Men of Kent seems to have started the movement which made it possible. This last example shows admirably how town-planning may be utilised to save the countryside. In one sense East Kent could not be saved: coal had been found there, and was too valuable to be neglected, for, after all, we cannot afford to throw away any of our natural resources at the present time. Yet it was unthinkable that this lovely district, the cradle of our race and the playground of half London, should be allowed to become a second Black Country. So everything that can be done will be done to preserve Canterbury and Sandwich and other priceless relics of antiquity, to save trees, to prevent the blackening of the fields by smoke and the disfigurement of the landscape by tall chimneys, above all to avoid any repetition of those squalid black villages that have driven miners to desperation in other colliery districts. This is one of the ways in which town-planning can serve the nation. The development of a modern town is inevitably centrifugal; it spreads and sprawls outwards along the main roads into the country unless that tendency be checked. Every mile that it grows outwards means a few minutes’ extra time for travelling to and from work, congestion increases at the centre, and the country--as a place for recreation--is driven further and further away. A feeling that this system is essentially wrong has resulted in some well-meant efforts to create “Satellite Towns,” of which Letchworth and Welwyn are examples. They are satellites to London in the sense that London is within hail for emergencies: thus Harley Street is a useful resort in some cases, while the sanctuary of the British Museum Reading Room satisfies bookworms, and Oxford Street contents the other sex. But the main object of the promoters was to remove industries and workers bodily into the country, so that labour might be carried on in pleasant surroundings, never more than a few minutes’ walk from green fields. The intention is to limit the ultimate population of these towns to 30,000-50,000. When that figure is reached, another centre will be started. So far, neither town has grown very rapidly, and industry has been slow to move out, in spite of the heavy cost of carrying on business in London. But the “Satellite Town,” a praiseworthy attempt to secure the amenities of the old country town for modern workers, is a factor to be reckoned with in the future. The new L.C.C. town at Becontree in