230 AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION 



due payment of rent must needs be demanded, as long 

 as the land is occupied, whatever the position of the 

 occupier. 



Nor is the peasant proprietor necessarily in a more 

 favourable position. Should there still be a mortgage or 

 other financial obligation on his land (and this would be 

 the case in the vast majority of instances) he might find the 

 payment of interest even more exacting than the payment 

 of rent, while even if he did escape foreclosure, he would 

 still have to find, as best he could, the money he required, 

 not alone for cultivation and for buildings, etc., but also 

 for repairing the ravages on his own land of such floods as 

 those of the autumn of 1912. 



So far as regards the granting of State assistance to 

 British agriculturists in a time of great emergency, that is 

 a question which public opinion and the Government may 

 be left to decide. The function of a society is, rather, 



(1) to advise, on the basis of expert knowledge, as to 

 the best means by which the aid could be applied ; and 



(2) help, through its own organisation, in a resort to such 

 means. 



" A loan from the State, repayable in easy instalments, 

 would," it was said in a leading article published in The 

 Standard of September 3rd, 1912, " often enable the farmer 

 not, indeed, to recover what is already lost, but to save 

 himself from some portion of the further losses which 

 threaten to overwhelm him." Granted the irresistible 

 force of this argument, there still remains the practical 

 question, How would the loan from the State reach the 

 farmer ? What machinery would pass it on from the one 

 to the other, and afterwards collect the instalments by 

 which it would be repaid ? 



It is on these important matters of detail that the Agricul- 

 tural Organisation Society should be in a position both to 

 advise and to act. 



The advice it would give to the Government would 

 probably be, " Don't create a new State department to have 

 direct financial dealings with farmers or small holders. 



