8 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



accordingly be made to secure food to keep the people alive, even to 

 the adoption of such ridiculous performances as the ploughing up of 

 Richmond Park for oats that would not grow, and the conversion of 

 thousands of acres of good pasture into " wheat land " so poor as 

 such as to produce nothing but wire worm. Despair makes drowning 

 men clutch at straws. There was proof in what was achieved of 

 what agriculture, stimulated into action, might accomplish, but 

 also proof of what was wrong in our farming — as it stood as a whole 

 under the land system which had outgrown its time, and cultivation 

 which exhausted the soil instead of laying up new " heart." There 

 were those millions of acres of poor pasture that had to be sown with 

 wheat which, in spite of the generally true proverb about " breaking 

 a pasture," they were unable to bring forth in sufficient quantity. 

 The proverb referred to applies to pasture which has a right to be 

 pasture, not to unsuitable land, laid down to pasture only from 

 " laziness." And the land that was arable already did not yield as 

 it should have done, just because there had been so much wheat 

 grown on it before that it had become exhausted. 



Among the labouring population the effect of the War was still 

 more marked. " Hodge " at length had his chance. " The poor 

 shall not always be forgotten." 



" Soit tot ou tard, soit prea ou loin, 

 Le riche aura du pauvre besoin." 



Muscle was wanted, men to fight, men that would stand the work 

 in the trenches, and men to man the subsidiary services. " Hodge " 

 proved no shirker. He did his duty by his country like a man. 

 But he came back from the War an altered being with claims upon 

 his country that could not be ignored and a consciousness of those 

 claims. He is asserting them now. There is no denying them, 

 however much they may tax unwilling pockets in some quarters. 



In this way the position of things has, in some respects at any rate, 

 become, one may say, fundamentally changed. However, there is 

 something decidedly unfinished about it. All appears in a state of 

 chaos, a higgledy-piggledy condition that wants to be unravelled. 

 The present situation is like the fermenting mass of mash, seething 

 and bubbling in its fermenting vat, all action, all movement, heaving 

 and rolling, but all also turbidity. Fermentation wants to be 

 completed to produce the clear, pure liquid. 



With the farmers devoted to old ways still in the ascendant 

 among those who represent the larger agricultural interest, agricul- 

 ture, lifted out of its old-world groove, seems decidedly disposed 

 to drop back into it once more, to resume there its faltering, stagger- 



