CHAPTER XX 



THE LAND REMAINS 



There is a sentiment about the ownership of 

 land that nothing else confers. Shares cannot 

 give it, business has it not, the ownership of a 

 coal-mine or miles of railway never arouses this 

 enthusiasm. Even cash — hard cash — is not the 

 same, it is only a token of exchange; but land 

 is always satisfactory. Things grow on it — you 

 can visit it every day, and there is always some- 

 thing different. The desire for land is a craving 

 universal to mankind. When the Daily Mail offered 

 a model small holding to a bona-fide town dweller, 

 there were, I believe, thousands of applicants. 

 Probably 75 per cent of town workers would 

 jump at a chance to go back to the land, and the 

 present small holding boom is a straw in the 

 wind. 



Perhaps it is in France that the feeling is the 

 strongest. After the Revolution, great estates 

 were split up and never allowed to grow again, 

 also the system of primogeniture ceased to hold 

 there, and so the peasant proprietor has increased 



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