NEED OF OKGANISATION 109 



show themselves to befriend agriculture and country life by patronage 

 and interference, do we meet with similar misguided action. 

 Government influence in the matter is rampant in both France and 

 Germany — in not a few points it is excessive. But it is there 

 advisedly grafted upon the free initiative of the people to be benefited 

 themselves, and applied through expert channels. Governments are 

 active, very much so, in the same cause, in the Netherlands and in 

 Belgium, and so likewise in Denmark and Switzerland. But all are 

 careful to select teachers and agents known for their competence and 

 intimate connection with the work to be done, and to leave the initia- 

 tive to the intended beneficiaries. The Government of India is most 

 solicitous for the welfare of the teeming mass of peasantry in its wide 

 dominions. But it employs only skilled and competent teachers, 

 not men either of " the long robe " or the military tunic. In Canada 

 and the United States, Governments seek out and follow up every 

 opportunity for furthering the two causes mentioned that offer 

 themselves. But they are particularly careful to select for service 

 only men and women of the calling, fully conversant with their 

 subject, and to leave the actual work of organisation to farmers and 

 countryfolk themselves. 



Under the circumstances described it can occasion no surprise 

 that all the old members of the Committee of the Agricultural 

 Organisation Society, with the exception of only two — and they 

 comparatively newcomers, with the Government stamp plainly upon 

 them — have disappeared from the list. The principle under which 

 they enrolled themselves and which they laboured to make dominant, 

 that is, the principle of private initiative and self-help, has been 

 deliberately abandoned, and there is no more room for its champions. 



From such sowing little good produce can be looked for, whatever 

 momentary lustre golden Government fertilisers may call forth — no 

 crops qualified to withstand a severe winter or else a summer of 

 withering drought. 



We can organise, and must organise, but clearly not in this 

 insensate way. If we are to do good, we want the right persons to 

 set to work, under the right direction, in the right way. We cannot 

 allow needless strife and antagonism in interest between rural 

 classes of inhabitants, but, on the contrary, want the closest possible 

 union. It is a shortsighted policy altogether which assumes that 

 " farmers' " interests are served by crossing those of small folk. If 

 there were necessary antagonism, evidently it would be, in Pliny's 

 words, the " human beings " who would have to be allowed to carry 

 the day over " wheat." But there is none. The country wants both . 



