104 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



badly cracked in the five years of warfare, and 

 some other vessel will have to be devised 

 to take the strong new vintage crushed out 

 of the tragic winepresses of Europe. The 

 hierarchy of landlord and farmer over the 

 labourer has been broken, and if the relation- 

 ship has not been openly disavowed it is not 

 because love has held together the sleeping 

 partner, the managing director, and the servant ; 

 it is because the new deed of settlement has 

 not yet been drawn up. Whilst there are 

 three landless men to one man with land, there 

 is sure to be a fermentation which will leave a 

 bitter taste in the mouth. 



The landlord, tempted by high prices, and 

 driven by the fear of a war-legacy of high 

 taxes, has been slipping out of the partner- 

 ship quickly. On many estates he refuses to 

 function even as repairing builder, and has 

 become a mere rent-receiver. The farmer 

 has jumped into his saddle. He is now the 

 booted and spurred, whilst the ploughman still 

 "homeward plods his weary way." Taking 

 his chances of a new heaven, thinking his 

 lean person will squeeze through the needle's 

 eye with greater ease than his employer whose 

 wider girth is adorned with an embarrassment 

 of riches, he is looking for the new earth. 



The Government, with its bandage partly 

 drawn aside from its eyes, has, it is true, an 

 inkling of this, and triumphantly points to a 



