DISCOVERY 



32S 



perhaps even dangers, to be reckoned with from the 

 Imperial point of view. The four leading self-govern- 

 ing Dominions look to Great Britain as the chief, and 

 almost the only, market for their principal exports, 

 namely agricultural products. 



The complex economic tie is the chief bond that 

 unites these new British lands with the old one. More 

 than that, it gives British manufacturers seeking 

 markets in these countries a pull over competitors, 

 because the Dominions prefer to buy from their chief 

 customer, even if prices are somewhat higher, and 

 because the large streams of shipping employed in 

 carrying agricultural produce home to Britain, provide 

 space and more reasonable freights for British manu- 

 factures outwards. If the British market for agricul- 

 tural products were largely lost, an unfavourable 

 readjustment might follow in the trade in her manu- 

 factures. 



May it not be urged, however that British farming 

 has advantages of a peculiar nature, not possessed in 

 general by farming in other countries, which it can 

 exploit to its own benefit and to that of the nation ? 

 There is a good deal to support this suggestion. Owing 

 to their low mean elevation and to their oceanic situa- 

 tion, the British Isles are pre-eminently suited to 

 grasses, and though the hill pastures, constituting the 

 best all-round sheep lands in the world, are probably 

 now utilised to the best advantage, much more might 

 possibly be done than we find at present in increasing 

 the food yield of the lowlands. A pasture country 

 such as ours is naturally adapted to numerous fodder 

 crops. The area of these could with favourable con- 

 ditions be greatly increased at the expense of part of 

 the heavy acreage of permanent meadow land, under 

 some appropriate system of rotation, and the result 

 would be a net gain in food production. Here, how- 

 ever, investigation and research are required to dis- 

 cover new or improved fodder crops that are especially 

 adapted to different British localities. It is essential 

 that such crops should have a productiveness or an 

 economic utility peculiar to the British Isles. For there 

 are few secrets in agriculture, and improvements made 

 here would soon be adopted in other countries if appli- 

 cable there, and the resulting competition in prices 

 would cancel the advantage aimed at. In the present 

 conditions we are faced with this dilemma : if the 

 country becomes poor enough to find it profitable to 

 divert more labour to agriculture it will not be rich 

 enough to afford the same expenditure upon high-class 

 foods such as meat and butter, for the production of 

 which British resources are peculiarly adapted — unless 

 everyone is willing to work harder so as to have more 

 wealth at command, which does not seem to be the 

 tendency at present. Hence arises the need for 

 specialisation in the direction above referred to, aiming 



at reduced costs of production through the exploitation 

 of special advantages. 



Wlaatever compromise with the economic situation 

 is suggested by considerations of military safety and of 

 the effects of undue specialisation in industry, the 

 main point remains that any of the conditions capable 

 of promoting an increase of home-produced food 

 would, after all, be such as to alter the relative advan- 

 tages of agricultural and non-agricultural industries ; 

 and these conditions fall under tliree heads : those 

 that arise from within agriculture itself, such as im- 

 provements in methods and organisation (and these are 

 the most desirable), those that are external to agricul- 

 ture and artificial, such as tariffs, bounties, and sub- 

 sidies, against which there are weighty objections, 

 and those that would follow from a relative decline in 

 British manufacturing and commercial prosperity 

 which we earnestly hope may never be realised. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 Dominions Royal Commission : Final Report (Cd. 8462). 2s. (>d. 

 Inter-Departmental Committee on Meat Supplies : Report 



(Cmd. 456). 3rf. 

 Royal Commission on Agriculture: Interim Report (Cmd. 



473)- 3<^- 

 Rew, Sir R. H. : Food Supplies in Peare and War, 6s. Orf. 

 Shanahan, E. W. : Animal Food-stuffs, 1920 (Routledge, 



los. 6d.). 

 Wood, T. B. : The National Food Supply, 1917 (Cambridge 



University Press, (>d.). 



New Tendencies in 

 French Fiction 



By Mariette Soman, Doctcur d'Uni- 

 versite 



M. Andre Maurois, author of Colonel Bramble, has. 

 recently given some addresses at the Institut Fran9ais, 

 entitled " A la decouverte des Anglais." Apparently, 

 one of the lessons taught us by the war is that two 

 nations may exist for many centuries cheek by jowl, 

 may engage in wars both with and against one another, 

 may form and dissolve alliances, may teach one 

 another's language and copy one another's hats, and 

 yet in the end remain strangers as far as character is 

 concerned. The French are just beginning to discover 

 the English. It is doubtful whether the English have 

 even begun to discover the French. One of the richest 

 fields for psychological investigation has, up to the 

 present, been almost neglected by us — the field of 

 imaginative literature. The authors who are ranked 



