LIFE IN THE OLD COUNTRY 81 



bilities of advancement and fortune. These are great 

 inducements ; and we may rest assured that after the 

 war the Governments of the Dominions will bring them 

 vividly before the mind of every sailor and soldier and 

 munition worker about to be discharged. The appeal 

 to the imagination will be great. And on Imperial 

 grounds we are glad that it should be. 



13. But life in the Old Country has many advan- 

 tages of its own ; and it could be made at least as 

 attractive in our own country-side as in Belgium or 

 Denmark or France. Only if we are to succeed in 

 making Employment at home compete successfully in 

 the minds of the sailors and soldiers with the attrac- 

 tions of Settlements in the Dominions, much must be 

 done to make the conditions of the life more attractive 

 than they are. It is, in our opinion, possible to do 

 this, and we think it ought to be done. 



14. Lest what we have said about competing with 

 the Dominions should give rise to misconception, we 

 desire to add that we do not advocate a policy for the 

 benefit of the United Kingdom at the expense of the 

 Dominions. The increase of the agricultural popula- 

 tion of these Islands is just as essential in the interest 

 of the Empire as of the United Kingdom. If there is 

 here at home a healthy, prosperous, and rapidly 

 increasing rural population, every year there will be a 

 surplus of young men and young women to emigrate to 

 the Dominions. And if these have been educated in 

 the right way, they are just the type of immigrant that 

 the Dominions must want. It is by such migration 

 that the waste spaces of the Empire can be filled 

 successfully with a fertile population of British stock. 



