348 RUKAL RECONSTRUCTION 



only half the crops that the nation has a right to expect to see reaped 

 from it. There is a very large expanse of pasture much better fitted 

 for arable cultivation. We need not, under the stress of a supposed 

 Diomedean necessity for the production of wheat — a necessity, so it 

 is to be feared, often pleaded for only as a weapon against small 

 holdings — lay the pleasure grounds, parks and the like, which form 

 one of the glories of the British landscape, under tribute. With the 

 aid of all the resources that agricultural science of modern days has 

 supplied us with — not drainage and irrigation only, but inoculation, 

 the use of the proper fertilisers and correctives for soil acidity and 

 like poisons — there is comparatively little waste land that might not, 

 with skill and outlay, be turned into a fruitful field — as the " sandy 

 sand " and the erst barren moors of Germany, the Belgian Campine 

 and the Dutch bogs have been turned. There is plenty of scope in 

 that direction. 



But since we have avowedly — and in general no doubt sincerely — 

 made the creation of small holdings a leading point in our policy, 

 one may hope that we shall at length devise some more efficient 

 machinery for actively pursuing it than we have been employing in 

 the past. Thus far we have little enough success to boast of. And 

 the reason is not far to seek. It is not only the want of money in 

 potential applicants' pockets that has retarded results, but also the 

 want of machinery fully suitable to the purpose, with a declared will 

 at its back and vigorous propelling power to move it. Apart from 

 the marked success of the Maulden experiment — to which might be 

 added the instances of Rew, Winterslow and some others — the 

 striking contrast apparent between the progress of the allotment 

 movement — which has created more than 50,000 allotments since 

 the War, and close up to 300,000 in all — and our small holdings 

 movement is too striking not to suggest that where a desire to 

 acquire the use of land is so pronounced there must be faults in the 

 execution where it has failed to produce results. The members of 

 our county councils, who are under the Act called upon to act as 

 chief executive operators in the matter, are not generally enthusiastic 

 for the creation of small holdings. The bogie fear of the small 

 holdings cutting " the eyes " out of the best farms must by this time 

 pretty well have lost its frightfulness. So far as facts are known, 

 no " eye " has actually been cut out. Farmers and their landlord 

 friends have cried out before they were hurt. Considering that 

 under such a process as that assisted by the Prussian Rentenbank, 

 with its authority to issue an unlimited quantity of land bonds — 

 — which have fairly maintained their price, while calling for no 



