234 THE POSSIBILITIES 



ties, produce of local or national art, new 

 discoveries and inventions, knowledge and 

 ideas. Such being the tendency of present 

 development, there is not the slightest ground 

 to be alarmed by it. There is not one nation hi 

 the world which, being armed with the present 

 powers of agriculture, could not grow on its 

 cultivable area all the food and most of the 

 raw materials derived from agriculture which 

 are required for its population, even if the 

 requirements of that population were rapidly 

 increased as they certainly ought to be. Taking 

 the powers of man over the land and over the 

 forces of nature such as they are at the present 

 day we can maintain that two to three in- 

 habitants to each cultivable acre of land would 

 not yet be too much. But neither in this 

 densely populated country nor in Belgium are 

 we yet in such numbers. In this country we 

 have, roughly speaking, one acre of the culti- 

 vable area per inhabitant. 



Supposing, then, that each inhabitant of 

 Great Britain were compelled to live on the 

 produce of his own land, all he would have to 

 do would be, first, to consider the land of this 

 country as a common inheritance, which must 

 be disposed of to the best advantage of each 

 and all this is, evidently, an absolutely neces- 

 sary condition. And next, he would have to 



