34 THE ERRORS OF THE PAST 



floor-space on which we raise food for the people 

 and strong bone and muscle for the country and 

 the empire, is our greatest asset. If in those days 

 the country had recognised this fact, State, land- 

 owner, farmer, would all have combined to create 

 conditions which would have enabled the industry 

 to pull through the crisis without suffering the 

 appalling loss that it did. It would not have 

 mattered so much if the loss had been confined to 

 the landowners and farmers, grievous though it 

 was, but it was the loss to the nation, which we 

 now perceive in all its disastrous consequences : the 

 lessening of its power to be self-supporting and 

 the loss of country-bred population which alone 

 can keep up the physical standard of a nation. 



It is instructive to note how foreign farmers 

 met the wave of depression which threatened to 

 swamp all the Old World countries as a result of 

 the agricultural competition of the New World, 



In some European countries the presence or 

 imposition of tariffs provided one way of combating 

 this competition, but in no country did import duties 

 constitute the only, or even the principal, means. 



Agriculture abroad realised that the right way 

 to meet the agricultural depression was to make 

 the land produce more than it ever produced before, 

 and to teach the farmers to obtain that increased 

 production at a profit. In this effort farmers appear 

 to have been assisted by the whole resources of 

 their countries in foresight and forethought, for 

 there is to be found in nearly all European coun- 

 tries the most carefully conceived development 

 of conditions favourable to agriculture : the creation 

 and extension of education directly beneficial to 

 the industry, the encouragement of co-operation, 



