58 FRANCE - AGRICUI^TURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL, 



§ I. What technical re-education shoui^d be. 



There are already examples *of efficient technical re-education : the 

 small hospital of Martillac has already supplied about 30,000 working 

 days to local agriculture, to the great advantage of the district and of the 

 wounded men whose cure has thus been invariably accelerated, facilitated 

 and rendered less costly. The maximum amount of energy, which would 

 otherwise be lost iirevocably to agriculture, is thus recuperated within 

 the shortest possible time. 



We must not ftowever close our eyes to the fact that the men's in- 

 juries alwa3^s entail a diminution of purely physical force, however small 

 may be the loss. The endeavour is to compensate for tliis diminution by 

 an intellectual gain, in that the wounded and mutilated men are enabled 

 to derive in the future more fiom their labour, even in many cases to do 

 better than before the war. To reach such a result practice and theory 

 must be skilfully mingled in the process of re-education. If the value of a 

 mutilated man is to be so increased that there will be as nmch demand for 

 him as for an ordinary workman, it is absolutely indispensable that the where- 

 tore and the how of agricultural operations be carefully explained to him. 

 Experience has made it clear that a mutilated man cannot give himself 

 up continuously to what is called general agriculture. 



" A mutilated man ", says M. Duchein, director of the district school 

 of agriculture of Ondes near Toulouse, " is really in place onl5^ at the head 

 of a farm or a >ard, as a farmer, metayer, lessee, manager or foreman. As 

 such he can, being one of several workers on a farm, choose work suited 

 to his aptitudes. Most of the poor men among the mutilated, and it is 

 only they who need to have work found for them, will certainly have, when 

 they have been re-educated, the technical qualifications of managers or 

 tenant farmers ". The men here contemplated have encountered the thou 

 sard difficulties of practical agriculture and have the habit of observation, 

 and therefore it will be possible to give them in a comparatively short time 

 agricultural teaching enabling them to raise themselves. The work already- 

 accomplished in the schools allows this confidence to be felt. But obviously 

 all cannot find situations as managers. They will be workmen who will 

 be appreciated and sufficiently sought after by farmers, but the possibilit}- 

 that they will be only casually and occasionally employed must be avoided. 

 Thought has already been given to this point. The Ministry of Agriculture 

 wishes that all mutilated agricultural labourers who have been re-educated 

 m the schools of agriculture may easily become owners or lessees of land. 

 Holdings to be let and small rural holdings which can be acquired cheaply 

 are num.erous in France. All which those concerned need, in order to esta- 

 l:^lish themselves on them, is a little money. Agricultural credit is prepared 

 to lend them this money. This is a matter of much importance to the mu- 

 tilated men and to the recruiting for the schools of re-education, and it 

 gives direction to the teaching in these schools. 



