1903.] on Bural England. 327 



As regards the storage question, I am convinced that no Government 

 would face its expense in time of peace, while in time of war it would 

 be too late for them to do so. Pharaoh and Joseph did this on the 

 strength of a dream, but if they are ever visited by such visions, 

 British ministries pay no attention to them. Rather do they wait 

 until the facts have declared themselves in a fashion unmistakable 

 by the humblest man in the street, and then, after the horse has been 

 stolen, with much public pomp and solemnity proceed to lock the 

 stable door. Therefore, unless there are other easy and practicable 

 solutions with which I am unacquainted, it would seem that in this 

 matter of the lack of food reserves, we must remain where we are and 

 take our chance. 



My reason for touching on the subject at all is to point out, 

 however, that the easiest and most practicable solution of them all is 

 never even alluded to, or if anybody has thought of it, is promptly dis- 

 missed as unworthy of serious consideration. It is — that we should 

 grow the food, or most of it, ourselves. 



I think it was that shrewd observer, Prince Kropotkin, who de- 

 monstrated that if the soil of this country were only cultivated as it is 

 on an average cultivated in Belgium, we could produce as much as 

 our people need to eat, and have some surplus over. Well, I believe 

 — and perhaps you will allow the opinion some weight as that of a 

 person who has long and earnestly investigated these questions con- 

 nected with the land, and, what is more important here, the land itself 

 — that Prince Kropotkin is right, at any rate to a large degree, and 

 that if our acres were cultivated as they might be cultivated by the 

 aid of suf&cient energy, capital, intelligence and labour, the produce 

 from them of all foodstuffs could be well-nigh doubled. 



Allow me to give you a single example, which after all is worth 

 more than many words of argument. I am myself a farmer, and I 

 dare say my neighbours would tell you that I farm as well as my 

 bailiff will allow me to do, which means that to my own fancy I 

 might farm a great deal better. Now at Ditchingham I let off to a 

 small tenant at my gate, a builder by trade, a four-acre arable field 

 of no better quality than the average of my land, and with it perhaps 

 two acres of old pasture. When I took the farm in hand a dozen or 

 more years ago, this field, like the rest, was left in very poor condi- 

 tion by the outgoing tenant. Indeed, I remember that my friend the 

 builder showed me a gigantic pile of dock roots many yards in length 

 by three or four feet in thickness and as much in height, which he 

 had extracted from it at a cost, he said, of about 14Z., and was salting 

 down to use as manure. 



A couple of years ago this man came to consult me. It appeared 

 that he had sold his wheat to a person in the neighbouring town who 

 had promptly gone bankrupt and left him mourning for his money. 

 I could only recommend him to console himself with appropriate re- 

 flections upon the uncertainty of all human affairs, especially where 

 the recovery of debts is concerned, and then asked him how much 

 Vol. XVII. (No. 97.) z 



