TRAINING FOR COUNTRY LIFE 31 



In the two great countries of North America — just as among the 

 rural populations of the greater part of the European continent — 

 under this aspect a happier state of things has prevailed. The 

 rural population there consists in the main of small holders — many 

 of them very small — but all with their own rented, or else owned, 

 little farm, their field, garden, cottage or farmhouse, in which 

 accordingly they could turn their economic independence to the best 

 possible account — educatingly, for the benefit of their children, as 

 well as economically for themselves — and infuse into their children 

 such fondness for country life as comes naturally with the know- 

 ledge of its several springs, familiarity with their occupations and 

 the enjoyment of directing nature's processes for one's own profit. 

 We shall see how these opportunities are taken advantage of. 



We ourselves, acting in a more advanced stage of economic 

 development, appear more concerned, for the purpose of repeopling 

 our own country, to rely upon recruits for country life to be drawn 

 from our town, where the task of dealing with the upgrowing off- 

 spring of parents with scanty or no means indeed gives us plenty 

 to ponder over. Now, if we are to draft recruits from industrial 

 centres into country areas — not in itself a most promising task to 

 take in hand — then certainly the best way of proceeding should be 

 to catch our recruits young ; and this process is not without its 

 encouraging features, wherever it has been taken in hand in a more 

 or less practical way. The pressure which the War, with its priva- 

 tions, has laid upon us, to utilise whatever productive forces we 

 could find to dispose of, that could be spared from the camp, has 

 given us something of a taste for such impressment of urban young 

 folk. Many — schoolboys and schoolgirls — who were sent into the 

 country to try their prentice hand upon agricultural work have 

 not only rendered after all very useful service, but have in addition 

 evidently derived pleasure and satisfaction from their temporary 

 employment, and through it acquired a taste for country life, which 

 life, in its simplicity, never fails to appeal to unspoilt human 

 nature, more particularly to child's nature and nature jaded with 

 continual toil amid unhealthy, nerve-destroying urban conditions. 

 And of those of our children who could not be spared to go out into 

 the country to make hay and gather wheat, not a few have gleaned 

 only less enjoyment from the cultivation of their town plots, which 

 have providently kept us in cabbages and potatoes. This temporary 

 quasi-rural occupation appears no less to have given them, together 

 with a sense of satisfaction, a taste for field and garden work. Now, 

 although in comparison with what obtains in other, in this respect 



