40 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



So long have occupiers of land, whether they 

 be tenants or owners, been left monarchs of all 

 they survey, even from the top of a weather- 

 beaten manure heap or a field of couch-grass, 

 that it is only natural they should, as a class, 

 resent interference from any one. The pill 

 carried no sugar with it when the Cultivation 

 Order came from a Committee comprised of 

 fellow-farmers, instead of from bureaucrats in 

 Whitehall. On the contrary, it made the dose 

 all the more nauseous. I knew that a farmer 

 of a certain type would cut off his nose to 

 spite his face in his obstinate determination to 

 farm as badly as he chose. I knew, for in- 

 stance, a farmer who, in war-time, refused to 

 cut his grass rather than pay soldiers 4s. 6d. a 

 day at a time labour was scarce. But it is from 

 the sober pages of the Journal that I learn of a 

 small farmer in Buckinghamshire who refused 

 to have his oats cut because part of his farm 

 had been ploughed up by horses and men 

 supplied by the Agricultural Executive Com- 

 mittee ! Rather than harvest a magnificent 

 crop of oats, such as he could never hope to 

 grow himself, he allowed his cattle to stray in 

 the field while the crop was still standing, and 

 he was convicted and fined under the Growing 

 Corn (Crops) Order, 191 7. The Ministry 

 finally determined the tenancy of the farm in 

 February 1920. 



It seems incredible that a Northamptonshire 



