CONCLUSION 349 



money drafts upon the Exchequer — vendors of land have admittedly 

 found their account in the sale of their land in the shape of small 

 holdings, with the intervention of the said bank, rather than in the 

 disposal of them as undivided properties ; and seeing how eager 

 many of our own landowners have shown themselves to take advan- 

 tage of the great " land boom " brought on during the War, to dispose 

 of their estates, it may occasion just a little surprise that in this 

 country no landlords have come upon the scene, spontaneously 

 offering their properties in such appreciated shape. That must, so 

 it is true, have been at the cost of a little trouble. Nevertheless the 

 reward in prospect would have been worth such sacrifice. It is true, 

 once more, that we have no such institution as the Rentenbank to 

 assist vendors with its bonds — as, on the other hand, we have no 

 General Commissions to check their operations in the interest of 

 purchasers. And the Prussian Rentenbank, so it will have to be 

 admitted, would not in its German form fit well into our British 

 economic organisation. However, its principle might very well be 

 adopted, and put into a more acceptable shape. And so meta- 

 morphosed, there can be little doubt that it would prove a useful 

 help to our avowed policy. Its land bonds are different from those 

 that we have issued in respect of Irish land. There is no limit to 

 them. And the rate of interest might readily be accommodated to 

 the changing exigencies of the market. The German Old Age 

 Pensions Corporations, which have, with their enormous accumu- 

 lated stocks of money, proved an invaluable help to the housing 

 movement, have in the same way had under changing conjunctures 

 to raise their rates of interest. It ought also to be borne in mind 

 that — as many instances show, among them, as very telling ones, 

 that of the late Major Poore's settlement at Winterslow, and the 

 settlement of Herr Sombart at Lenzen — there is a good deal of 

 " margin " separating the value of the undivided and the divided 

 properties, in favour of the latter — so much so that in Pomerania I 

 have found a man who had made the cutting up of estates for the 

 purpose of laying them out in small holdings, as a matter, not of 

 public service, but of profit to himself, able, thanks to such margin, 

 to act — as President Metz of the General Commission, whose position 

 and sentiments placed his sympathies altogether on the side of the 

 purchasing small holders, .ilinitted — the part of a generous and 

 truly "paternal" patron and assister to his purchasers. Then 

 there is the precedent of such institutions as the Gorman Landbank 

 of Berlin, which before the War I found operating with £2,000,000 

 of capital, created specially for the purpose of cutting up substantia] 



