Chapter VIII 

 HOW TO SETTLE 



If there is to be repeopling of the land, obviously there will, as 

 part of the process, have to be settlement of more people on the 

 land. 



We discovered this some decades ago and have, after doing for 

 several centuries past our best to get the people off the land — in 

 order that wealthy men might lay field to field and create an unpro- 

 fitable solitude — in our empirical way tried to undo what we had 

 so long done amiss, to the country's hurt, and bring the offspring 

 of the people whom we had chased from their homes back to the 

 old sites. Uncertain on more points than one connected with the 

 problem, we have zigzagged a great deal on our course, tacking 

 right and left, wavering between one thing and another, attempting, 

 for instance, at one time to solve the problem by creating ownership 

 holdings, while at another falling back, with strong protestations 

 that such course was wrong, upon our old system of tenancy, and, 

 generally speaking, groping our way along aimlessly, without chart 

 or plan to go by, or an at all clearly discerned goal. The waverings 

 mentioned are not all the mistakes that we have been led into. 

 There have been times when we were hot upon creating small 

 holdings. At others we have allowed ourselves to be frightened by 

 the mournful warnings of lovers of old ways, to the effect that small 

 holdings can never support their occupiers and must mean a dead 

 loss. So we have jogged on, through hot fits and cold, straying 

 right and left, bracing ourselves at last to a bold resolution, but 

 carrying it out timidly and weakly through not over- willing organs, 

 accomplishing in the end little enough and causing a great deal of 

 disappointment. 



Of course, in seeking for a new policy, we have never taken the 

 trouble to look around us, where, according to Laurence Sterne, 

 things are sometimes " managed better," in order to arm ourselves 

 for the battle with new ideas. That is our established custom. 

 We don't look after our dyes and key industries till the war with its 

 privations actually compels us to do so, nor think of establishing 

 industrial or export banks until we find a big hole made in our 

 foreign commerce by reason of our competitors working with such 

 machinery which we lack. 



