370 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



(h) He would not admit that it is more profitable for any 

 nation, voider any economic condition knotvn to the 

 human race, to allow its soil to become waste and 

 unproductive, producing no food for the people, nor 

 affording them employment, and then employ foreign 

 peoples to grow its food supplies and buy these from 

 them. 

 (r) Ho would not admit that the country which possesses 

 in abundance vast areas of the finest corn-gi'owing 

 land in the world should be forced by EcoxoMic 

 reasons — that is to say, the economic reasons pro- 

 mulgated and well understood by the ]\Ianchester 

 School — to allow this enormous source of wealth and 

 employment to run to waste. 

 {d) lie would not admit that any nation has the right to 

 cripple or practically crush out of existence one 

 industry, under the mistaken notion that others might 

 be benefited in the process, 

 (c) He would never admit that the simple question of 

 wliether man should, or should not, till the land, 

 a question which has been thoroughly understood by 

 peoples of all ages and settled by them thousands of 

 years ago, should now become a question of " economic 

 polemics," because, forsooth, the interests of those 

 engaged in certain other industries are said to be 

 involved in the issue. 

 (/) He would not admit that Great Britain or any other 

 country which grows all its own food supplies and 

 then becomes " self-sustaining " can possibly " Put 

 Back its PiiOcaiEss," because the common experience 

 of every other nation in the world proves that sucli 

 a position is but a mere postulation and is opposed 

 to actual facts, while it is, moreover, opposed to 

 reason and offensive to the canons of Common- 

 sense ! 

 The British people, while having no particular objection to 

 economic science, 'per se, would like to see it tempered with a 

 judicious admixture of sense; and unless those who write 

 learned books, showing how a nation can become rich and 

 prosperous by neglecting its chief industry, and how a man 

 can thrive by allowing his farm to become waste, can so temper 

 their discourses, they are likely to end in failure. 



