98 THE FUTURE 



of new vast industries, and teaching farmers to tap 

 enormous new markets by extracting carbon, oxygen, 

 and hydrogen from the atmosphere, and to go into 

 partnership with industry and commerce to convert 

 these into substances — starch, glucose, dextrine, 

 spirit, sugar and a score of other commodities 

 sought after by the world market. Even now, at any 

 rate right up to the beginning of the War, this 

 school of pseudo-economists was teaching the nation 

 that it was good business for us to exchange our 

 coal — taken from an ever-diminishing store — for an 

 equal value, i.e. of German sugar — made from raw 

 material which by means of chlorophyll and sunhght 

 is obtained from the atmosphere in illimitable quantities. 



In all countries excepting our own, from little 

 Belgium to Russia with her vast territories, a 

 clearer perception of the eternal economic forces 

 led to the development of the industry of food 

 production along the lines of qualitative efficiency 

 and the industrialisation of agriculture. 



In Belgium and in Germany the amazing progress 

 made in food production took place side by side 

 with an equally amazing industrial development. 

 Indeed, in the logical development of agriculture — 

 which means the production of optimum crops 

 both of food and raw materials for industries — we 

 find that a stage is soon reached where agriculture 

 and manufactures are linked together at a hundred 

 points. I need only remind you, by way of a parti- 

 cularly annoying example, that over a hundred of 

 our home industries depended for the making of 

 their profits to a greater or lesser degree upon the 

 potato grown in Germany. 



