4 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



but were disregarded — at the very time, as it happened, 

 when, unobserved by ourselves, speaking collectively, the 

 country which was destined to become our deadliest enemy, 

 fighting us in the food war as well as with military weapons, 

 was rapidly mending its pace, systematically and remark- 

 ably improving its husbandry, in order to overtop us. 

 Some years ago a loud warning note was sounded, un- 

 fortunately in a decidedly sensational way, such as never 

 produces the desired effect, recalling rather a novelist's 

 vision than an agricultural expert's sober judgment. 

 Agriculture was reported to be " going to the dogs." The 

 picture drawn was, of course, true up to a point ; but it 

 was overdrawn and contained not a few exaggerations. 

 And the overdrawing defeated its effect. We had had a 

 similar Cassandra's call only a few years before, with regard 

 to our Trade and Commerce — a call easily refuted by refer- 

 ence to facts. What were we to think of the progressing 

 ruin of Agriculture, when so undoubtedly eminent an 

 authority as Mr. A. D. Hall wrote, in 1913, in his " Pilgrim- 

 age of British Farming " about the " pre-eminence " which 

 " our farming still enjoys " and of our getting " more out 

 of the land and getting better crops and stock than by any 

 other existing system " ? The dismal tale of failure was, 

 however, taken up abroad as gospel, sympathetically or 

 else gloatingly, as the case might be. A distinguished 

 Italian statesman, who had in the Nuova Antologia re-echoed 

 Mr. Chamberlain's doleful cry about ruined British trade 

 and commerce, and described our country as living, like 

 a hibernating bear, upon its own accumulated fat, took 

 up a similar parable again in the same Review, about our 

 ruined Agriculture, which he represented as bankrupt. 

 And when in the German Parliament, a well-meaning, 

 hapless deputy, Herr Gothein, referred commendingly to 

 some feature of British farming, which he held up as a 

 model, the Chamber resounded with the derisive cry, 

 " British Agriculture is bankrupt " [Die ist ja pleite) from 

 the Conservative benches. Unfortunately that delusion 

 helped not a little to strengthen the German Government 

 in its warhke determination, in the belief that there was 



