482 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICUUrURE. 



cherished and typical old Indian " Village Community." 

 Surely to plant sprigs of such beneficent plant on our soil, on 

 which it could send out sets and offshoots freely, must be 

 a benefit to the Nation and is worth taking a little trouble 

 for. However, barring teaching, which may be delivered 

 from outside, such movement must necessarily spring 

 out of its own self. It will not last otherwise. Scarcely 

 even could it grow. Whitehall Place can do nothing in 

 the matter, beyond sending out teachers. Its admonitions 

 and precepts, and that showy modern production which 

 appears to have captured its fancy, of " Boards " consisting 

 of worshipful " Governors "■ — whose title recalls that of 

 Prussian " Excellencies "■ — would be thrown away upon 

 local people. It is the local people themselves who will 

 have to create it. " Vouloir," so wrote Leon d'Andri- 

 mont, the " father " of Belgian Co-operation, " voild Ic 

 grand mot de la Co-operation, sa raison d'etre, la garantie 

 de son succes." You cannot impose Co-operation upon 

 people any more than you can neighbourliness. The one, 

 the same as the other, has to spring up out of their own 

 resolution to practise it. 



Once more, the point of the reclamation or else afforesta- 

 tion of waste land — of which, under our improvident national 

 husbandry there is more than enough waiting to be dealt 

 with — links on quite naturally to the question of the settle- 

 ment of Labour on the land and the creation of small hold- 

 ings, as does, in truth, also the last point here raised, the aim 

 of which is to make our land, now generally owned, or 

 life-owned, in large areas, more easily divisible and saleable, | 

 as a means of unifying the now separated two interests 

 involved in it, and so securing, in the majority of cases, the 

 presence of a single interest only of owner and occupier in 

 one, as a means of ensuring to the tiller the full reward for 

 his pains and outlay. 



We are anxious to see our waste land reclaimed and turned 

 to profitable account, whether as arable fields or pastures, 

 or else as forest, in order to provide for the country as a 

 whole an increased output of land produce, and procure for 

 ourselves, more particularly in times of war, a large com- 



