methods of doing" your business which your rivals in 

 other lands had so successfully adopted. I do not blame 

 you for the decline of tillage in the past, for the stagnant 

 statistics in regard to production. But I do say that 

 if from this year forward there is not a great improve- 

 ment, you will have absolutely no moral claim on the 

 Irish nation for a use of national credit to aid you to 

 purchase the yet unpurchased land. You have to-day 

 access to technical knowledge. Co-operative societies 

 for purchase, manufacture and marketing are easily 

 organised. You have markets crying out for all you 

 can send and offering prices for your produce such as 

 you never dreamed of a year before. More than this, 

 you have a great national necessity for the products of 

 your industry. It is not merely the normal impetus 

 towards wealth production which is expected of you but 

 very definite action by you to do your utmost as human 

 beings to feed the hungry and to create plenty, so far as 

 you can, in a world where certainly, and for all you can 

 do, there will not be enough to go round. 



You do greatly desire that the policy of land 

 purchase shall be completed. It will be difficult with a 

 national debt doubled or perhaps trebled after -the war 

 is ended to finance future purchases on such easy terms 

 as past purchases. Public credit will not be so good. 

 The_ more a man borrows the more has he to pay for the 

 accommodation he receives. The more national indebt- 

 edness grows, the more expensive does it become to 

 borrow money for national purposes. If you read the 

 papers you will see that truth illustrated in the terms 

 of the war loan. Well, after the war is over, with a 

 national debt doubled or trebled, with industries 

 crippled, and a myriad social problems created by the 

 backwash of the tidal wave of militarism to be solved, 

 what do you think of your chances of getting the State 

 to increase its indebtedness on your account, if it ap- 

 pears that the national necessity found you unmoved, 

 that although the Press rang with the cries of people 



