RETAIL COOPERATION 261 



" ' It is within two or three hundred yards from here/ I 

 replied. ' Come this way and I'll show it to you.' 



" He seemed a little surprised, but accompanied me cheer- 

 fully enough as I turned from the road and plunged through 

 the gorse and the trees towards Parliament Fields, until we 

 came upon a large expanse of allotments, carved out of the 

 great playground, and alive with figures, men, women, and 

 children, some earthing up potatoes, some weeding onion 

 beds, some thinning out carrots, some merely walking along 

 the patches, and looking at the fruits of their labor springing 

 from the soil. 'There/ I said, 'is the most important 

 result of the war.' 



" He laughed, but not contemptuously. He knew what I 

 meant, and I think he more than hah agreed. 



" And I think you will agree, too, if you will think what 

 that stretch of allotments means. It is the symptom of the 

 most important revival, the greatest spiritual awakening this 

 country has seen for generations. Wherever you go, that 

 symptom meets you. Here in Hampstead allotments are 

 as plentiful as blackberries in autumn. A friend of mine 

 who lives in Beckenham tells me there are fifteen hundred in 

 his parish. In the neighborhood of London there must be 

 many thousands. In the country as a whole there must be 

 hundreds of thousands. If dear old Joseph Fels could 

 revisit the glimpses of the moon and see what is happening, 

 see the vacant lots and waste spaces bursting into onion 

 beds and potato patches, what joy would be his! He 

 was the forerunner of the revival, the passionate pilgrim 

 of the Vacant Lot: but his hot gospel fell on deaf ears, 

 and he died just before the trumpet of war awakened the 

 sleeper. 



"Do not suppose that the greatness of this thing that is 



