220 RURAL DENMARK 



desire to do what should be done is mingled with that 

 of seeking political advantage. 



But, putting all such advantage aside, for reasons 

 too long to be entered into here, the small-holder has 

 a critic in the large farmer, who despises his petty 

 agriculture, not unnaturally fears his compulsory en- 

 croachment upon his acres, and at heart resents his 

 claims to independence, and even to some kind of 

 equality. Also, though there are many exceptions, 

 the landowners, or at any rate the land-agents, as a 

 class have no love for him, since he is troublesome in 

 many ways, and above all he interferes with sport. 

 Small-holders keep no partridges, poach pheasants, 

 and make shrill complaints if foxes steal their hens or 

 those who hunt them gallop across their crops and 

 smash their fences. 



The State small-holding business, said the Kam- 

 merherre Tesdorpf in his outspoken fashion, is "all non- 

 sense." As shooting and hunting are not very common 

 in Denmark, except upon the wastes, doubtless he 

 was looking at the matter from an agricultural point 

 of view. It is not wonderful that the owner of one of 

 the great farms of Europe, with its highly tilled fields 

 measuring, each of them, 180 acres in extent, and its 

 splendid herd of noo cows, should think little of the 

 small man with his handful of cattle and pigs and his 

 strip of unenclosed soil bought by the aid of a Govern- 

 ment loan. 



Yet I venture to suggest to him and to all those 

 who hold these views in secret for few are courageous 

 or honest enough to express them openly like Mr. 

 Tesdorpf that they do not dive deeply enough into 

 this question. They do not remember that the exact 

 amount of property held by a man is a mere matter 



