126 WHAT ACTION IS PRACTICABLE 



less than actual war can be denounced as confiscation 

 and tyranny ; but we are proposing to prepare against 

 war, and in any case we can be very sure that in the 

 actual working matters would be made easy for an 

 existing occupier, and that his weaknesses will be very 

 tenderly handled by any tribunal sitting in judgment 

 upon him. The conception that a man owes respon- 

 sibility to the community for the way he conducts 

 his business is too novel to override with any haste 

 the accepted opinion that he may do what he likes 

 with his own. 



Meantime, in the light of the figures provided by 

 these experiments and the trend of agriculture under 

 the suggested bounty on production, the statesman can 

 begin to frame his permanent policy for agricultural 

 development and the national defence thereby. He 

 will be able to estimate how much land in the country 

 can be put under the plough, what proportion of the 

 nation's food can be looked for at home, what the cost 

 of pursuing the policy up to a given point is like to be. 

 He will have time to form a reasoned judgment on the 

 big questions of the ownership and tenure of the land, 

 whether the State must resume the ownership as an 

 offset against its bounties or as essential to its control, 

 whether compulsion is necessary to enforce the desired 

 standard of farming and employment, and what form 

 the tribunal shall take that has to decide whether an 

 occupier is farming properly or whether he should be 

 dispossessed. These are or will become urgent ques- 

 tions, but they are not to be attacked hastily and more 

 data are desirable before decisions are taken. 



