THE EXAMPLE OF GERMANY 37 



40 per cent, is arable. As for Germany, Mr. Middleton 

 points out that while every hundred acres of English 

 farm land has 69 acres under grass and clover, the 

 German farm of 100 acres has only 32. 



IX 



THE EXAMPLE OP GERMANY 



These are astounding contrasts. How are they to 

 be explained ? No doubt easy means of borrowing 

 capital, the development of co-operation, and high 

 agricultural education, are at the back of all such 

 successes abroad, but in Germany there was a special 

 reason for the rapid and wonderful development of 

 agriculture. The transformation has taken place in 

 twenty years. At the end of last century a group of 

 economists began to preach the doctrine that German 

 rural life, with all that it stands for in physical well- 

 being, would be engulfed by the gigantic industriahsa- 

 tion of the country if care were not taken to treat 

 agriculture as a thing apart, peculiarly worth pre- 

 servation for its own sake. 



Herr Wagner forced his ideas on the German people. 

 The idea that Germany must "keep under the pro- 

 tection of her guns the ground upon which her corn 

 grows and her cattle graze " became popular. And 

 one can imagine the enthusiasm with which the leaders 

 of the war-party pounced upon a doctrine which con- 

 sorted so well with their aims, and adopted it and 

 preached it as their own. Those who were in principle 

 Free Traders — that is to say the majority of the 

 economists, and of the German people themselves, up 

 4 



