CONCLUSION 351 



the choice of them — under conditions of rent which practically 

 exclude the struggle which otherwise results in the survival of the 

 fittest, being generally determined by custom — in the hands of 

 patrons who in many, many cases care more for having persona 

 grata, by reason of their political opinions or their personal qualities, 

 on the land, than the ablest cultivators. Like our soil, our farming 

 personnel will bear cleaning and improving. Let us discard political 

 and purely personal considerations, and concentrate our thoughts 

 on the selection of the fittest cultivators, and provide machinery 

 fully suited to our purpose, with a determined will at its back and 

 vigorous propelling power to move it ! 



We are crying out for " wheat " now, which is supposed to demand 

 large fields and large farms, and so to be inimical to our accepted 

 policy of small holdings. Time was when the cry of people interested 

 was for " wool," at that period our staple produce, held to represent 

 typically British wealth — as witness the " Woolsack " in the House 

 of Lords — which required even larger areas — those large pastures 

 which cleared out our yeomen. Some centuries before it may 

 have been something different still. Time was when London was 

 contained within its city walls, and there were wheat and grass- 

 bearing fields where now stand serried rows of houses. We cannot 

 stop the march of Time. We can no more keep England as it is 

 now, with its large farms, than we can bring it back to what it was 

 some centuries, even only fifty years ago, when we old men used 

 to walk amid rural surroundings where now there is nothing but 

 bricks and mortar. And the country has not grown less prosperous 

 under the change. Even were we to indulge in the Malthusianism 

 of which we have heard the praises sung by " very reverend " lips, 

 we could not prevent our urban child from bursting its confining 

 swathings. We have the proof in France, which has practised 

 Malthusianism and — moral considerations apart — not found it 

 conducive to national good. The population of France has — not 

 counting happily reconquered territory — remained stationary. 

 Nevertheless its Government has found it necessary to provide 

 additional facilities for the acquisition of small holding by labouring 

 cultivators. All that we can attempt to do to improve the situation 

 under the pressure of mightily-increasing population is to distribute 

 that population more evenly over the national soil. And to accom- 

 plish that it is indispensable that the agricultural area should be 

 more and more encroached upon, and the productive energy of the 

 increasing population should be in part, diverted from industrial 

 employment, in which it is overstocked, into ruricultural. The 



