66 LAND SETTLEMENT & EDUCATION 



ment of charges (extending over a period of from 

 thirty to forty years) not much higher than the sum 

 he would have to go on paying ad infinitum if he 

 were merely a tenant. 



All that is needed to secure this is a Government 

 system of land purchase. Owing to the lack of such 

 a system every year many farmers are turned out 

 of their homes when a landlord sells his estate. This 

 is both an injustice to the farmer and a loss to the 

 nation : and even the most elementary statesman- 

 ship would seem to demand that farmers wishing 

 to buy their farms should be helped by the State 

 to do so — exactly as is done for their competitors 

 abroad and their brother farmers in the Dominions. 



It is a rather curious comment upon this subject 

 that those who put forward these political and 

 economic objections to ownership do not seem at 

 all to mind the fact that under the Small Holdings 

 Act of 1908 the tenants are made to purchase the 

 freehold of their land and to present it to the Nation 

 ■ — for that is what is and has been going on all over 

 the country. The annual payments demanded by 

 the County Councils are so calculated that at the 

 end of eighty years the original purchase price of 

 the land has been repaid and the land becomes the 

 absolute property of the State^wo^ of the heirs 

 of the men who paid for it. 



4: iK * * <: 



The placing on the land of ex-Ser\ Ice men desirous 

 of a country life will bring the problem of land settle- 

 ment prominently before us at the end of the War. 

 But it will not do for us to wait until the ex-Service 

 men have returned. We must create the machinery 

 and have our system ready to put into operation 

 when the need arises. 



