28 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



workers may be themselves, if their labour is 

 ill-directed by an incompetent farmer or bailiff 

 it is more or less wasted ; and farm labourers 

 feel this more bitterly, perhaps, than any other 

 form of injustice. The landlord's responsibility 

 cannot be shifted on to the shoulders of a bailiff 

 or foreman. The nation rightly holds the 

 landlord to account, for whilst he remains in 

 possession he prevents the good husbandman 

 from cultivating the land, and the nation 

 suffers. 



"The farm was taken over by the Agri- 

 cultural Executive Committee in March 191 7, 

 and a bailiff installed who worked under the 

 direct supervision of the Committee's Executive 

 Officer. An inspection was made in June 191 8. 

 Of the ploughed area, 400 acres were then 

 under grain crops, and 100 acres under fallow. 

 . . . Owing to the extremely neglected con- 

 dition of this farm when taken over by the 

 Committee it was not expected that a model 

 farm would materialise in a short time. There 

 is no doubt, however, that the condition of the 

 farm is being rapidly improved, and the work is 

 a useful object-lesson to the district." 



The condition of this farm reminds me of a 

 tract of country I once walked over in 19 10 in 

 North Hampshire, and I wonder if any great 

 improvement is visible. As I walked across a 

 field where the withered unharvested grasses 

 and the tall, seed-bearing wild parsley and 



