If someone were to ask me whether I value the village more or the city, I would say:
- First you tell me, do you value your right eye more or your left eye?
The answer to this question is, of course, that you value one eye as much as the other. He has equal use of both, and only with both can he see perfectly.
So it is with the village and the town. They complement each other, they are interdependent, and it would be a very unfortunate country if it consisted only of villages or only of towns.
Imagine what would happen to a town that woke up one morning to find itself without a village. Let's say the people of the village built a big wall around their village, leaving no doors or windows. Nothing more to do with the city, live as you can!
Well, that would be a very sad wake-up call. First there would be nothing for breakfast, then nothing for lunch, and finally nothing for dinner. Our daily bread is in the hands of the ploughman. The milk, the butter, the meat, the stews are all supplied by the village to the town. Without a village there is no market, and without a market the kitchen remains empty.
But not only would the town starve without a village, it would also become tattered, and the tattered clothes could not be replaced with new ones. The leather from which our shoes are made comes from the village. The flax and hemp from which the canvas for our linen is woven is produced by the village. But surely the sheep do not graze on the paving stones from which the wool for the post is sheared.
Fortunately, the village has never thought of renouncing its friendship with the town and building a stone wall to separate the wheat fields, the pastures and the little houses with their beetle-backs and gardens from the palatial town.
And it must never come to mind, because the village would lose not only the town, but also itself. The village is as dependent on the town as the town is on the village. Not a hair less, not a hair more, but a hair more.
Where would the village buy the plough, the spade, the hoe, the scythe for tilling the land, if the factories of the town suddenly stopped making tools and the shops of the town stopped selling?
What could he do with all his lamb, potatoes, corn, milk, eggs, meat, if he didn't sell it to the city? And what use would he have of the hides he produces, and the flax, hemp, and wool, if the city did not make boots, linen, and poster out of them?
But even beyond these, there are a thousand links between the town and the village. The lamp of culture burns in the town, and from there the light shines into the village. It is in the cities that new inventions are born that make life easier and more beautiful for the villager.
The cities are where books and newspapers are made, where the railways and telephones start, where the city engineers make the good roads that bring people from villages and farms into the city.
The truth is that the village and the town are brothers and sisters, and it is their unity that makes the common mother, the country, prosperous and happy.
