RURAL PSYCHOLOGY. 173 



rule the land is to him what the sea is to the sailor. However 

 hardly it may treat him and however he may suffer from it, 

 he cannot leave it, or if he does he is unhappy. He is apt 

 to scorn those who take farms without previous experience, 

 or indeed unless they have been born and bred on the land. 

 It is a fixed idea with him that such interlopers are bound 

 to fail. The facts lend no support to this idea. Hundreds 

 of men who have been trained in other callings take farms 

 and succeed in them. One of the largest and most flourish- 

 ing farmers in the country was educated as a medical man, 

 and there are innumerable instances of men, relinquishing 

 other occupations, taking farms from reasons of health and 

 becoming successful. Some fail, no doubt, but so also do 

 some hereditary farmers. At one of the Club meetings Lord 

 Bledisloe mentioned that one of the most successful farmers 

 on his estate had been an engine-driver, who left the railway 

 service in middle life to become a farm labourer and sub- 

 sequently a farmer. He succeeded so well in farming that 

 he had been able to settle three of his sons in farms. 



The truth is that successful men in any calling, farming 

 included, cannot be either bred or trained. Success is the 

 product of personal qualities which may to some extent 

 be developed or stimulated by external influences, but in 

 the main are inherent and not acquired. 



As regards the landowning class Mr. Wrey's description is 

 generally applicable. The representatives of this class who 

 came to the Club were insistent that a wider view of their 

 responsibilities and duties is needed to meet the new 

 conditions. The ownership of agricultural land involves 

 serious obligations. The advocates of Nationalisation are 

 so far right in the contention which underlies their proposal, 

 that the land is in the last resort the property of the whole 

 nation. It follows, therefore, that those who exercise the 

 rights and privileges of private ownership are in a fiduciary 

 position ; they are trustees for the nation. They are in 

 fact responsible for seeing that it is put to its best economic 

 use. To the question sometimes rhetorically asked, " Cannot 

 I do as I like with my own ? " the true answer is in the 

 negative. No member of a civilised community can exercise 



