368 THE FAT OF THE LAND 
Abandoned farms are not known in Belgium 
and France, though the soil has been cultivated 
for a thousand years, and was originally no better 
than our New England farms, and not nearly so 
good as hundreds of those which are practically 
given over to “old fields” in Virginia. 
It is neglect that impoverishes land, not use. 
Intelligent use makes land better year by year. 
The only way to wear out land is to starve and 
to rob it at the same time. Food for man and 
beast may be taken from the soil for thousands 
of years without depleting it. All it asks in re- 
turn is the refuse, carefully saved, properly ap- 
plied, and thoroughly worked in to make it 
available. If, in addition to this, a cover crop 
of some leguminous plant be occasionally turned 
under, the soil may actually increase in fertility, 
though it be heavily cropped each year. 
It would pay the young American farmer to 
study Belgian methods, crude though they are, 
for the insight he could gain into the possibilities 
of continuous production. The greatest number 
of people to the square mile in the inhabited 
globe live in this little, ill-conditioned kingdom, 
and most of them get their living from the soil. 
It has been the battle-field of Europe: a thousand 
armies have harrowed it; human blood has 
drenched it from Liége to Ostend; it has been 
depopulated again and again. But it springs into 
new life after each catastrophe, simply because 
the soil is prolific of farmers, and they cannot be 
