236 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



our plain duty to work it in every way to our advantage 

 and profit. 



The people know clearly enough that their real inte- 

 rests have been shamefully sacrificed by those whom 

 they have set up to regulate and govern national affairs, 

 just as we have seen that the interests of those who lived 

 in the town — which we use as an illustration — were sac- 

 rificed by the weak yet destructive policy adopted by its 

 governing body. 



Let us then lift this simple question of whether or not 

 we should cultivate our fields, out of the region of recon- 

 dite polemics and place it in the simple category of 

 ascertained facts. 



Every schoolboy knows that a highly tilled field is 

 more valuable than a piece of waste common of similar 

 size, and that the one gives employment to, and pro- 

 duces something for, a certain number of people, while 

 the other produces nothing. 



Why, therefore, do we invest so elementary a matter 

 with all the fuss and bother that centres round the solu- 

 tion of an abstruse scientific problem, which requires 

 great skill and deep learning to unravel, instead of treat- 

 ing it with elementary simplicity? 



Why? — The answer is, because, in the first place, we 

 have been " sold " by Governments which have been too 

 weak to act up to the courage of their convictions, and 

 secondly, because we have been humbugged and tricked 

 by every political party in the country, whose interests 

 do not lie in the direction of land reform. 



Out of this atmosphere of weakness and political 

 prestidigitation has been evolved a feeling of doubt and 



