AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEES 103 



defended with his life, and a control of the 

 industry in which he invests his life. 



Those who sow the grain are demanding 

 more of life than bread, and sleep, and the 

 grave of a pauper. Scorched by the fiery 

 furnace of War they have glimpsed a Vision, 

 and now they are laboriously putting together 

 and applying to life the letters they learned at 

 the village school. On the tiny shelf which 

 holds the cottager's library, other books begin 

 to appear besides those the children bring home 

 from Sunday school, and in one of them is 

 written, " They have leisure and fine houses ; 

 we have pain and labour, the wind and rain 

 in the fields, and yet it is of our toil that these 

 men hold their estates." 



They who cut down the willow and shape it 

 demand the leisure to swing the bat and smite 

 the flying ball. They who strip the skin from 

 off the backs of dead beasts demand the leisure 

 to kick the inflated leathern ball. And she 

 who has had to live her life confined within 

 walls, as she watches the clean serenity of the 

 sky, demands something more than hideously 

 stained paper to cover her damp walls, and 

 something more attuned to the singing of the 

 nightingale than the howl of the wind through 

 the crack which blows out the light of the 

 candle. 



You cannot pour the new wine of 1920 into 

 the old bottle of 1914. That bottle has been 



