ii6 How to Pay for ike War 



its value, will expand on all sides, and call into being 

 immense riches wliich it can and will distribute lavishly 

 among those who prove themselves worthy of such gifts. 

 Agriculture does honestly add to the riches of ihe world, 

 for it calls into being crops, and therefore national wealth, 

 which did not exist before and will never exist without its 

 help. With its assistance, however, especially as con- 

 ducted on the modern scientific and labour-saving scale, 

 half a dozen men and women can raise and gather in 

 quite a large area of foodstuffs, and so, when you make 

 the six into sixty thousand or six million willing workers, 

 the output increases accordingly. 



To-day we need this increase, next year we shall need 

 it still more urgently than we do to-day, and this is why 

 the scientific agriculturist must be placed second to no 

 one but the Army man, for without the agriculturist no 

 army, not even the British Army, could last a week. 



This is why we have always pleaded so forcibly to 

 have British Agricultural Colleges established in the East 

 (Ceylon or Malaya) and in the West (Trinidad or else- 

 where), as we realized that, sooner or later, we should 

 need their help to "munition" the men on the field o 

 battle, as we need explosives and steel, rubber and vegetable 

 oils, &c., to munition the guns. Let us see to it, there- 

 fore, that we are as carefully organized to turn out the 

 first to keep our men alive, as we have become with 

 gun-food to kill those who are against us. Remember 

 that agriculture is the mother of commerce as well as of 

 all trades and professions, not their sister or dependent. 

 She came first and from her sprang in the past, and from 

 her are still springing all those many sources of wealth 

 which have made nations so powerful and terrible to-day. 

 Kill or even starve and neglect agriculture and what will 

 become of us? Nourish and develop her, on the other 

 hand, as she deserves to be nourished and developed, and 

 she will repay those who do so a hundred and a thousand 

 fold in the course of years. Let us, therefore, give her a 

 more prominent position in the household of the Empire 

 and not push her into the background as we are a little 

 inclined to do. 



