CONCLUSION. 459 



ing the tastes or her foreign customers and, not least, by 

 her consulting their hnancial requirements and convenience 

 with the help of an easy credit, which her rather riskily 

 built up, but most effective, overseas and home financial 

 organisations for credit purposes — on the one hand through 

 "Export Banks" and ambitious "Trade Corporations," 

 on the other through small " People's Banks " descending 

 down to the very humblest grades of business, but 

 spreading out over an immense territory — permitted her to 

 deal out. The two classes of financial institution referred to 

 between them made unheard-of sums of money available 

 for business purposes. All these things we proudly spurned. 

 Greatness had come to us in our sleep. Why should we 

 stoop to such new-fangled expedients ? Overtrustful, 

 confiding too much in the superiority which we had gained 

 by our early start, and for which we gave ourselves excessive 

 credit, we let things slide. And not least so in that Agricul- 

 ture to which we look, in times of peace, for profit and 

 for employment and happiness for our labouring folk, 

 and for a nursery for our national manhood, and, in time 

 of war, for our necessary food. 



Disillusionment has come — fortunately not too late. A 

 little more patience on the German side might have made 

 things very much more troublesome for us. Fortunately 

 the modern Ahab, tempted by his flattering counsellors, 

 stretched out his hand for the coveted Ramoth Gilead a 

 little too soon — to complete the parallel, with an obsequious 

 Jehoshaphat by his side — and so brought about his own 

 discomfiture. Like the fox of the Latin proverb [vulpes 

 71071 iteru7n capitur laqueo) we are bestirring ourselves to 

 make sure of not being caught a second time in the same 

 trap. 



Among the precautionary measures decided upon under 

 such provocation we appear determined — whatever wise 

 or else unwise measures we may resort to on other ground — 

 after a long period of fatuous stagnancy, to put a heaHng 

 touch into our Agriculture, which, under our accepted 

 system, went very near faihng us in the hour of trial. 



Recent inquiries have, as has been shown, taught us that 



