104 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



in the last annual report of the Society. Now this statement, 

 " charge "or " allegation " is entirely in conflict with facts, and 

 ought never to have been made — at any rate outside a court. 

 Barring, of course, the very first occasion, when we, as intending 

 founders of the society, met together of our own initiative, we members 

 of the committee never took office except after having been demo- 

 cratically elected by ballot, after proposal communicated to all 

 members. It was Mr. Runciman who, as a professing Liberal, 

 destroyed this wholesome practice in 1913, when, as a Zeus striking 

 down a presumptuous Phaethon with his thunderbolt, he unex- 

 pectedly took possession of our Society — as the Prussians did of 

 Belgian and French towns — and usurpingly constituted himself 

 dictator. It was he who displaced the elected committee and sub- 

 stituted for it a body glorying in the more dignified title of " Board," 

 every member of which, now rejoicing in the title of " Governor " 

 and drawing allowances for attendance, he nominated on his own 

 authority. From that moment the Society became to all intents 

 and purposes a section of the Ministry of Agriculture. With most 

 of the funds thenceforth coming from the Government, with a 

 member of the Civil Service " Director General," and two representa- 

 tives of the Ministry of Agriculture ex-qfficio members of the 

 " Board," to check and direct its proceedings, the Society can 

 scarcely be termed anything else. I may speak freely about this 

 matter because, at the age of eighty, I personally am clearly quite 

 out of the running for office. But speaking as an old co-operator, 

 who has seen agricultural co-operation organised practically all 

 over the world, I may say that here, by the blow ruthlessly dealt 

 by a statesman posing as a champion of democracy, more grievous 

 damage was never done to the cause of co-operative organisation. 



The coup, if somewhat clumsily engineered, was effective. Its 

 object is apparent from the results ; for with the help of that 

 powerful persuader, gold — which a winged-footed Mercury brought 

 to the assistance of the Whitehall Place Zeus from the Olympic 

 Treasury of the Development Fund — the Society, independent as 

 it erst was, has, as already pointed out, been made practically a 

 subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture, to fetch and carry for it 

 at its pleasure and dictation. It is the " devil " of that officialism, 

 which the late Lord Salisbury on one occasion so happily caricatured, 

 when he spoke of the " nuisance man," and which, with its Gargan- 

 tuan appetite, is threatening to swallow us all, neck and crop, which 

 prompted the manoeuvre. 



We were poorly endowed. The squires and farmers of England 



