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IRELAND, AGRICULTURE AND THE 

 WAR. 



TO IRISH FARMERS. AN OPEN LETTER. 



I feel .impelled this week to speak to you personally 

 and directly on the circumstances brought about by the 

 war which affect you as farmers, because from reports 

 which have reached me by many channels, public and 

 private, I am certain that immense numbers of you are 

 unaware of, or do not realise, the new situation created, 

 and that time is hurrying on rapidly to a point where a 

 light will beat strongly on you and all your doings and 

 the attention of the nation will be concentrated upon 

 your class and the way in which you discharge your 

 functions in the national life. You all know that half 

 the world is at war. Many of you realise it painfully 

 and intimately through brothers, sons, kin or friends 

 who are actual participants in the fighting. In that 

 sense you need no more reminder that the world 

 is at war, but you do not yet realise that you 

 are more than onlookers, that you are called on to 

 be participators in the struggle, not as combatants, but 

 as part of that other noble army whose business it is in 

 many ways to heal up the wounds of the combatants, to 

 make good the wastage in society, and to ameliorate the 

 evil effects of the war. What those working under the 

 Red Cross do for all combatants alike, without distinc- 

 tion between friend or foe of their country, you are 

 called upon to do for society at large. Your occupation, 

 always necessary in times of peace, in time of war, in 

 periods of great human necessity stands out prominently 

 and assumes its eternal position as the foremost, the 

 most necessary, of all human occupations. The 

 longer war continues the more does farming, nor- 



