ioo My Little Farm 



in calves. Then I saw to the milking and the 

 feeding personally, after which the calves began 

 to flourish immediately, so that I could not help 

 wondering what must have happened to the food 

 before I began to feed them. The new man 

 joined the Army, and I am glad to hear that he is 

 in the firing line. I should be sorry to say he 

 was a thief, and he lost even more by the thieving 

 than I did. 



I got another new man, making the third in 

 four months, but by this time I had ceased to 

 trust anybody, and from the day of that 

 decision my calf scheme prospered. Notwith- 

 standing the loss of time and milk, I raised eleven 

 in 1913, and some of these were sold for twelve 

 guineas each at the age of twelve to thirteen 

 months, having cost me, from birth, only 175. 

 each, apart from the products of the farm. But 

 I was not satisfied. It was the result for only 

 part of a season, and I made up my mind, at 

 whatever cost in my interests outside agriculture, 

 to continue the work personally through the whole 

 of 1914, at the end of which I am writing this. 

 No man in my employment can tell me now that 

 what I have done is impossible. If I cannot get 

 servants to do what I have done myself, it is 

 because they are unfit for their work, which con- 

 firms the Department's declaration of their fall- 

 ing efficiency, in spite of all the State expenditure 

 to advance them. The secret is chiefly in the pri- 

 mary education and the foreign forces tradingjn it, 

 but nobody in the Department dares mention that. 



