62 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



German Protection that is not so. Interfere with the 

 natural movement of the market, and you cannot tell to 

 what extent the whole machinery will become dislocated 

 and disjointed. The difference of price as between corn- 

 producing districts, in which the consumers' demands are 

 small, and industrial centres, where those demands for the 

 labouring population are naturally large, was truly staggering. 

 Corn, which, in spite of high Protection, sold cheap enough 

 in Pomerania or East Prussia, commanded a veritable 

 famine price in industrial towns in Rhineland and West- 

 phaHa. There was no " steadying " effect whatever about 

 Protection. The co-operative granaries subsequently con- 

 stituted, so far as they were conducted in a businesslike 

 way, had a far more steadying effect. The Irish are wise 

 in deciding to acclimatise them. 



What has made our " old school " agriculturists revert 

 so readily to their pet idea of Protection is of course the 

 present obsession of the public with regard to the importance 

 of growing wheat. Now wheat, of course, there must be. 

 And in war-time there cannot be too much of it. However, 

 please God, we shall not always be at war. The very 

 object of our present fighting is to lay the sure foundation 

 of a lasting peace, in which there will be no danger from 

 submarines, and sea traffic will once more be open and safe. 

 In Mr. Lloyd George's words, " we are fighting to eliminate 

 war from the tragedies of human life." Morte la bete, mort 

 le venin. There will be no need then to exorcise the devil, 

 when he is banned and laid to rest. It may be argued that, 

 in spite of all our precautions, he might conceivably return. 

 Well, and for such contingency we want to be prepared. 

 And that we shall not be by growing a maximum quantity 

 of wheat at all times. Quite the reverse. Wheat is an 

 exhausting crop. And it is crop which requires a clean 

 soil, but, growing on it, fouls it. We want at any rate a 

 " cleaning " crop sandwiched between it. Mr. Prothero 

 dwells upon " the useful rule of never taking two corn 

 crops in succession." " Wheat, wheat, wheat," moreover, 

 means bringing us back to the happily abandoned, wasteful 

 and exhausting, earlier style of farming of the " three-field 



