322 AN OBJECT-LESSON FROM SERVIA 



Yet, after all, what Servia is doing by means of this 

 systematic and comprehensive effort to expand and 

 improve her agricultural industry is merely typical, 

 more or less, of what is being done in Continental 

 countries in general, and especially in those of them 

 which have an eye to British markets as an outlet for 

 their surplus supplies. 



I would not for one moment suggest that it is either 

 necessary or desirable, in an older, richer, and more 

 advanced country like England, for State and local 

 authorities to become to anything like the same extent 

 the foster-parents of agriculture, and to attempt to do 

 for the British farmer all that is done in countries of 

 Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, where the general 

 conditions are widely different. All the same, there 

 are obvious lessons to be learned even from the by no 

 means exceptional story here told respecting so com- 

 paratively insignificant a country as Servia, and such 

 lessons may well be commended to the consideration of 

 the British agriculturist and of those who are interested 

 in his welfare.* 



* The significance of the facts stated in this Chapter is increased 

 by the following remarks which I find in the course of an article on 

 ' The Situation in Servia,' by the Belgrade correspondent of The 

 Times, published in that journal on February 9, 1906: 'The 

 revulsion of sentiment in Servia has been quickened by considera- 

 tions of a more material character, for it is hoped to shake off the 

 economic thraldom of Austria by securing a\ market for the native 

 agricultural produce in England, where alone it can enter free of 

 duty.' 



