Hevtetc o* Reviews, 1/11106. 



Leading Articles. 



491 



JOHN BULL'S PRIVATE ESTATE. 



.\ND How He Might Develop It. 



While many agitators have been clamouring for 

 the national o" iwrship of all land and mines, singu- 

 larly little attention has been paid to those portions 

 of territory within these islands which are already 

 directlv owned bv the nation. Mr. C. Sheridan 

 Jones, in T/u- World's Work and Play, calls atten- 

 tion to the future of the Crown lands. At present 

 they vield to the nation " a bare half million." Mr. 

 Jones advocates measures which he says would 

 vastlv increase their yield to the national exchequer, 

 while at the same time offering scope for most 

 valuable social experiments. He first dwells upon 

 the extraordinary malversation of Crown lands which 

 he says has taken place in North Wales on a gigan- 

 tic scale. He strongly supports the recommenda- 

 tion of the Welsh Land Commission of 1897, urging 

 the appointment of a commission to call upon all 

 landowners in Wales to show their title-deeds or evi- 

 dence of possession. The mineral possessions of 

 the Crown in Wales run from over 10,000 acres in 

 Carnarvonshire to more than 3r,ooo acres in 

 Merionetshire, while the mineral rights of the Crown 

 are murh more extensive, running to 46,000 acres 

 in Merionetshire alone. Thousands of these min- 

 eralised acres are not being worked at all, and Mr. 

 Jones asks for a report by Government experts upon 

 the possible development of these unused re- 

 sources. 



BEADY FOR ArPOEBSTATION. 



Of agricultural land the nation possesses, in 

 twenty-three counties of England, no fewer than 

 70,000 acres. This large estate is an opportunity 

 read to hand for important measures of social 

 ;idvance : — 



These vaeant Crown lamls can be made of enormous 

 social value to the community. They caji be used to initiate 

 one of the most practical proposals for dealing with th- 

 hauut.ins question of unemployment. Students of that 

 problem turn more and more to the initiation by the State 

 of a new industry as an approach to solution, and the 

 industry they liiid commended by the experts is — Aftoresta- 

 tion. Afforestation is no leap in the dark. So cautious a 

 reformer as the Prime Minister regards it as beyond the 

 sphere of inquiry, and he is right — the time has come for 

 action, for carrying out the striking recommendations of 

 the Departmental Committee of 1903. That Committee 

 pointed out that, in Norway, waste lands valued at 4s. 5d. 

 per a*re yielded 38s. 5rt. per acre planted with forest trees. 



Mr. Jones adds that the Cabinet have such a 

 scheme now under consideration. 



FARM COLONIES AVAILABLE. 

 For the unemploxfd the Crown lands seem to 

 Mr. Jones to offer the ready-made material for 

 Labour Colonies : — 



First, the Distress C unmittees should be able to le;ise this 

 land at a reasonable rent. Then they would have funds 

 available for wages. And. iu the second place, once the 

 men know their business with the spade and the hoe. allot- 

 ments '(Hild be pro\ided for them near the Colony. If they* 

 were al.so near a large industrial centre, those allotments 

 could be made to pay. and for the men working on them, 

 the unemployed problem would have been settled. 



Does such land exist on the Grown estate? I am able to 

 answer th© question. There are Crown l-.m'ls. for instance. 



in Cheshire— lands which could well be made to serve 

 Liverpool, Manchester, and Chester, in all of which the cry 

 ot the unemployed was heard last winter and will be heard 

 again. 



These Farm Colonies might turn the Unemployed 

 into permanent small holders. For the men who 

 will be wanted again in the towns when good trade 

 returns, Mr. Jones suggests that work might be 

 found on the Crown estate in foreshore reclamation. 



HOW SOON THE ICE AGE WILL WIPE US OUT. 



The apocalyptic imagination seems to be as active 

 as ever, even though it clothe itself under forms 

 suggested by modern science. And, as in the older 

 apocalpyses, the modern seers by no means agree. 

 Some years ago Mr. Grant Allen assured the world 

 that but for the steadily diminishing ice-cap at either 

 p(3le, the earth would know no lower temperature 

 than that of an Italian winter. In the Arena for 

 August Mr. John C. Elliott, on the contrary, por- 

 travs the imminence of the next ice-age. He affirms 

 that the glacial period is still going on. Places 

 visited by travellers in the first quarter of the nine- 

 teenth centun- and pronounced by them to be free 

 from ice during the three midsummer months, are 

 now covered with several feet of solid ice, capped 

 with snow throughout the year. The earth's glacial 

 zones are rapidly and permanently enlarging. The 

 writer says : — 



The day of disaster already looms on the horizon. Al- 

 though systematic researches conducted by competent men 

 along the lines indicated, on the northern confines of the 

 Atlantic, would, in all likelihood, determine with a vep- 

 considerable degree of precision just what poition still 

 remains of the allotted span of our present civilisation, it 

 is perhaps permissible to say now that untoward climatic 

 conditions along the more northerly' portions of the At- 

 lantic seaboard are in a fair way to reach a climateric in 

 a few centuries. 



In a few centuries, then, the habitable earth will 

 be vastly restricted, and the writer expects when this 

 prospect becomes clearer " a sudden stiffening of 

 the foreign policies of the world's chancelleries.'' 

 The instinct of self-preservation will drive the nations 

 to struggle for a habitable home. The writer goes 

 on calmly to indicate how the Ice Age will affect the 

 two sections' of the English-speaking people. He 

 coolly says : — 



Obviouslv the United States must carve out a refuge for 

 her people in South America against the time when they 

 will be driven out of the northern continent by the irre- 

 sistible advance of the all-effacing ice-sheet. It is de- 

 voutly to be wished that the lyatin republics will cheerfully 

 acquiesce in any scheme looking to the incorporatdon in ,;i 

 South American hegemony animated solely by North Ameri- 

 can institutions, otherwise— might must decide. 



The British Empire is more fortunate. It " will 

 suffer no impairment in resources " : — 



Seated securely, flanked on one hand by a continent of 

 kinsmen in Soiith America, and on the other by the 

 dominions pt Australia, New Zealand. India, and her 

 wards and provinces of the Near East, the mistress of 

 Africa can serenely await the uuroUing of the map of time, 

 until, in the long course of ages, the northern ice-sheets 

 finallv retire once more into the .\rctic fastnesses. 



