96 THE FUTURE 



There they evolved laws and principles of their own 

 which the War is now laying bare to an ever- 

 increasing circle as being utterly at variance with 

 the economic truth. 



The development of the social organism is depen- 

 dent for its direction and ratio in the ultimate 

 resort upon its outlook. This outlook is created in 

 a democratic country by the men who have the 

 ears of the nation. The danger of the situation lies 

 in the fact that once certain forces are set into 

 motion, they are beyond recall ; and it will take 

 generations, or the cyclonic force of a War, to create 

 a new and truer outlook and new forces for correcting 

 past mistakes and reverting to the true course of 

 our national development. 



It is only with bated breath, as the Premier of 

 Australia told us only a few days ago,^ that we dare 

 think of the perils we have barely escaped — perils 

 we incurred because the teaching of this school of 

 false economists had brought about a radical change 

 in the entire outlook of the people. They were made 

 to forget that agriculture is our primary and funda- 

 mental industry, both as a producer of food for the 

 citizen and of the flesh and blood which cities, 

 cannibal-like, must feed upon or die. They were 

 taught that the only thing that mattered was to 

 manufacture goods for the world market, that 

 England was predestined to become the workshop 

 of the world and to live, parasitically, upon food 

 principally drawn from other countries. 



These Economists never realised that agriculture 

 is the mother of all industries, and never saw that 

 even then under their very eyes the new science 

 of modern husbandry was laying the foundations 



^ This lecture was delivered in March. 



