Part II.] ' FEDERAL LAND BANK. 33 



will not be handicapped because of the lack of adequate funds. 

 I am not worried in the least about the financial situation. 



But I am gravely concerned about the farm labor situation. 

 Upon no industry has the war made such inroads as upon our 

 farms. Perhaps no part of our population has furnished so 

 many voluntary enlistments as our farming population. Of 

 this we have reason to be proud. But this and the draft has 

 crippled our farms. 



It is not exemption that is wanted. The farmer would be 

 the last to claim exemption as such. Exemption is repug- 

 nant to the spirit of leveling democracy, for which we are 

 fighting. Have the little ones who suffered for the want of 

 coal during the Arctic weather we had recently been exempt? 

 Who can say that in their suffering and privations they are 

 not doing just as much war service as our brave men in the 

 trenches. 



What is wanted is not exemption, but a more comprehensive 

 extension of the selective draft, so that everybody will have 

 to do his bit and his best toward winning this war. It is not 

 the French poilu nor the British Tommy that halted the Hun 

 hordes on the western front. It is the men who are too old 

 or too young or physically too unfit, the women and the 

 children, who did it. 



Draft the young men on the farms, by all means, but 

 assign them to such tasks as will best serve the interests of 

 the country. Draft the young men in the city and put them, 

 too, where their services are most needed. Draft the school 

 children above the ages of fourteen. Close the schools and 

 colleges March 1 instead of July 1. There is very little study- 

 ing during these months. It will not lower our educational 

 standards. It will make better men and women out of 3,000,000 

 boys and girls, young men and young women, by making them 

 perform useful war service in the ofiice, in the factory and on 

 the farm. 



As I have said, I am not at all fearful of the financial 

 situation in so far as our farmers are concerned. But the 

 labor situation is most discouraging. It is only the drafting 

 of every man, woman and child into the national service that 

 can relieve the situation. 



