1 6 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



suffers far more than through habitual laziness 

 and ignorance on the part of the farmer. Thus 

 many an indolent, unenterprising landowner or 

 farmer, protected by the barbed wire of private 

 enterprise, has squatted upon acres and acres 

 of our diminishing cultivated areas, and has 

 remained undisturbed, a menace to Britain with- 

 in her encircling seas. 



• •••••• 



Then came the War ; and in less than two 

 years we were threatened with imminent starv- 

 ation as incoming food-ship after food-ship 

 was sent to the bottom of the sea by German 

 submarines. It took us nearly three years to 

 discover, in our slow, blundering way, that 

 private enterprise on English acres was not 

 delivering the goods. England was producing 

 only £4 to the acre to Belgium's ^20. Whilst 

 Germany was producing enough food from 

 every 100 acres to feed seventy-five persons, 

 the United Kingdom only fed forty persons 

 from 100 acres. Private enterprise was dis- 

 covered to be — I was going to say a man of 

 straw, but that simile is too good, for if we had 

 possessed the straw we should have had the 

 grain — private enterprise was discovered to be 

 a man of sawdust. It was not until the end of 

 1916 that we passed the Defence of the Realm 

 (Acquisition of Land) Act, and it was not 

 until 191 7 that County Agricultural Executive 

 Committees were set up, under the Cultivation 



