SMALL-HOLDING OWNERSHIP 221 



of degree, that it is the man who is important to him- 

 self and to the State, and that, after all, given general 

 education such as exists in Denmark, and the same 

 animating principles, there is no great gulf fixed 

 between men bred upon the land and subjected to its 

 influences. The peasant who cultivates his ten acres, 

 or his child who starts with a sound mind in a sound 

 body, may become anything. Thus the present 

 Minister for Agriculture in Denmark was a peasant. 



Moreover, here the State and its needs are con- 

 cerned. What all countries now require are not more 

 town-dwellers, but more land-bred folk. They require 

 them for defence ; they require them for purposes of 

 national health ; they require them for steadfastness 

 in the midst of the shifting developments of a neurotic 

 age. Without an adequate supply of land-dwellers to 

 replenish and support their city populations, peoples 

 must deteriorate and in due course fall. 



I will go further, and repeat what I have said 

 before in other books for it is one of the great objects 

 of my life to advance this truth for the consideration of 

 my fellow-countrymen that the retention of the people 

 on the land should be the great, and even the main, 

 endeavour of the Western nations. Nothing can make 

 up for the loss of them no wealth, no splendour, 

 no " foreign investments," no temporary success or 

 glories of any kind. At any sacrifice, at any cost, 

 all wise statesmen should labour to attain this end. 

 The flocking of the land-born to the cities is the 

 writing on the wall of our civilisations. This I 

 have seen clearly for many years, and if I needed 

 further evidence of its truth, I found it in plenty 

 during my recent researches into the social work 

 of the Salvation Army, which brought me into con- 



