WHAT MIGHT BE AND WHAT IS 273 



purpose, or to grumble at men of great wealth who 

 for their perfectly legitimate ends purchase or build 

 up large estates and thereby artificially perpetuate 

 a system that under our present conditions is, per- 

 haps, harmful to the best interests of the Nation. 

 My object has been to demonstrate our agricultural 

 state as compared to that of Denmark which I have 

 endeavoured to set out in the foregoing pages, and 

 incidentally to discover whether by any chance the 

 two can be assimilated. 



I regret to say my conclusion is that this seems to 

 be difficult if not impossible. The attitude of the two 

 peoples towards the land is fundamentally different. 

 The Danes look upon their land as a principal means 

 of livelihood and as a nursery which above all things 

 should be consecrated to the upbringing and home-life 

 of a healthy and numerous rural population in short, 

 as a business proposition in which the Nation is most 

 vitally concerned. 



In the main, although we may not acknowledge 

 it, we look upon our land, or much of it, as a pleasure 

 proposition in which the individual only is concerned, 

 or so it appears to me. Incidentally we cultivate it, 

 but not always as well as it might be cultivated. 

 Incidentally, or accidentally, a certain number of 

 people are reared upon it, but not half as many as 

 might be reared. Further, when these are grown 

 up it affords to them no career. A few for whom 

 there is room stop as agricultural labourers or as their 

 wives, for the most part without prospect of bettering 

 themselves in life. One in a hundred becomes a small- 

 holder, one in a thousand becomes a tenant-farmer ; 

 the rest, who can find neither work nor outlook, must 

 perforce migrate to the cities or across the seas. 



s 



