The Ever Threatened Public Domain

THE EVER THREATENED PUBLIC DOMAIN

photographs from the national parks

philip hyde

prefers to put his pictures to the purposes of Conservation. It is a constant fight to keep the lesser known national parks in the public domain, and photography by those who love the country and know how to photograph its beauty must always be on hand to help. He joins a long line of photographers who have shaken their photographs under the noses of people who can help preserve the natural grandeurs—not always in vain. He wrote in a letter shortly after his return from a year in Morocco :

But it is something ivhich Westerners steeped in the letter rather than the spirit of Christianity do not understand. If we can not have an automobile, we will be miserable until, by almost any means, we obtain it. How ridiculous this appears when a picture flashes into mind of the Moroccan peasant jogging down the road, his feet flailing the sides of his donkey in rhythm to the strides of his mount. Is our disease of eternal dissatisfaction with whatever we have a better way than his acceptance of a station in life with good humor?

I have not been able to deny all the conventions of Western ways which I ivas born into and grew up in, but I am casting off some of them in the freedom of the mountain air. And I can not help questioning others which have, thus far, only shortened the length of time between major wars.