453 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



And in the general overhauling certainly the Nation's 

 Commissariat is not likely to be forgotten. The German 

 submarines have struck us in a most tender part. The 

 stomach proverbially " has no ears." But it has a most 

 sensitive lining and a penetrating and resonant voice, which 

 will not be stifled. And, having been threatened with an 

 inconveniently prolonged Lent, it is sure to remind us, 

 long after the morrow of the war, of what may conceivably 

 be in store for us in the case of new hostilities. Thus 

 forewarned the Nation will take care that it is also forearmed. 

 Whoever may have been in fault in our past want of pre- 

 paration, the Nation appears to have thoroughly made up 

 its mind that whatever is amiss shall certainly not be per- 

 mitted to continue so. The machine which in emergency 

 time is to produce our necessary food must under all condi- 

 tions be set in order. Altogether the Nation's present 

 temper is of the happiest augury for the future. The war 

 has burdened us with debt beyond what a few years ago we 

 should have conceived to be possible. However, so far 

 from being daunted by the load, we have on the contrary 

 been roused by the sense of it to new energy. The war 

 has held a mirror before our eyes, in which we have seen 

 ourselves — lethargic, overconfident in our greatness acquired 

 in an easy enough way, when we were the only adventurers 

 in the world and had no rival or competitor to contend 

 with, spreading out our commerce, raising up a mighty 

 industry as if by magic, planting our foot and our 

 banner on vantage points all over the globe, founding and 

 acquiring colonies and assuring to ourselves a supreme 

 reign over the sea. 



Now that that mirror has been set before us we cannot 

 help owning that the trouble which has come upon us has 

 been brought about mainly by our own remissness. We 

 have been warned often enough. Time after time have 

 our foreign consuls pointed out to us in their reports — 

 many of them masterly productions of clear minds and 

 keen eyes — what was going on and how Germany was 

 gaining upon us almost everywhere by her readiness to 

 adapt herself to the ways of her new markets, by her study- 



