THE CALL FOR RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 11 



ments and study have also shown us that keeping land which is 

 better suited to arable husbandry under pasture is sheer and 

 decidedly reprehensible waste. Nevertheless, to make things easier 

 for the occupier, and enable him to save on his labour bill — thus 

 permitting him to make a show of holding more land than he really 

 has money for — the land must go down to pasture, cry the people 

 for food as they will. What difference is there, so I should like to 

 ask, between such selfish laying down to pasture, acre by acre, 

 purely for the sake of saving trouble and occupying more land than 

 one's means permit — and the much denounced practice of putting 

 wide areas out of common use to serve as deer forests ? Selfishness 

 is at the bottom of both practices ; and in either case uncalled for 

 loss to the community is the effect. The deer-stalking millionaire 

 takes out his pleasure in sport, the " lazy " farmer takes it out in 

 idleness. 



The War is over, but the pinch on our resources for keeping the 

 nation fed and clothed continues, and must continue, because with 

 a, thank God, still increasing population, with larger wants for each 

 member of it, comparative congestion is taking the place of wide 

 elbowroom, and we have to make the best use that we can of such 

 resources as are within our reach, on something like the same 

 principle that during the War we insisted on wheat and potato 

 growing and rationed produce. Land must be properly used, or 

 else rationed. Under such circumstances waste of productive power 

 cannot well be put up with. We shall have to make each rod of 

 land do what it can. 



And, besides food and room for all, we have specifically our rural 

 people to think of, desiring that they should live upon it — and those 

 myriads whom we hope still to attract to our half deserted villages. 

 That is, in truth, the great problem that we now have to deal with. 

 The War, with all that has, as the Americans say, " grown out of " 

 it, has wrought a considerable change in the position of the 

 " country," and the relations between " country " and heretofore 

 all-engrossing towns. Under the pressure of new conditions the 

 country is to-day coming by its own. ' One of the great results 

 of the War, which has not yet been sufficiently realised," so in 

 effect — I do not pledge myself to the very words — wrote a contribu- 

 tor to The Times not long ago, " is, that it has tended to weaken the 

 ascendancy of the towns and strengthen the position of the rural 

 population. It has brought home to our people that if the life of 

 our larger towns went up in a mist of fire, the slow peasant living 

 upon the earth, bowing his head beneath the sky, would still go 



