282 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
extension of advisory facilities I have advocated would tend to absorb 
this surplus and restore the balance of the whole organisation. 
Of more immediate concern is our comparative failure to secure for 
our educational courses more than a small fraction of the sons of farmers, 
upon whom the future of the industry will largely rest. I have testified 
to the greatly awakened interest in agricultural education which has 
been displayed amongst farmers in recent years, but it is yet far from 
having developed into a conviction that such education is to be regarded 
as a vitally essential part of the farmer’s training. One must perhaps 
be content with gradual advance towards this goal by internal develop- 
ment, although the possibilities of more rapid advance by external 
pressure should not be overlooked. One such that might have a more 
potent influence than any other in filling our colleges with farmers’ sons 
I would submit for the consideration of my distinguished predecessor 
of last year, in supplement of his able exposition of the part to be played 
by the enlightened landowner in the progress of agriculture. It is that 
in letting his farms—at any rate so far as young applicants are con- 
cerned—the enlightened landowner should show his faith in agricultural 
education by giving first preference—other considerations being equal— 
to men who have received adequate instruction in the principles of agri- 
culture in addition to practical experience.’ So long as the private 
ownership of land continues—and I trust that it may be very long—the 
landowner will have it in his power to render the most powerful aid to 
the progress of agricultural education, and by action along the lines I 
have suggested might exert more good in one year than is attainable by 
many weary years of propaganda. Whatever the character of our land 
tenure system of the future, it is certain that sooner or later some 
guarantee of efficiency for the productive occupation of land will be 
demanded from the would-be farmer. We cannot continue indefinitely, 
on the one hand, to proclaim that the jand is our greatest national asset, 
to be maintained with the help of, and in the interests of, the State in 
a highly efficient state of productivity, whilst, on the other hand, the use 
of the land is left open to all, regardless of fitness for its effective use. 
This vision of farming reduced to the status of medicine and law as a 
close profession regulated by an entrance examination, may perhaps be 
stigmatised as a horrible nightmare; but some movement in that direc- 
tion I believe to be inevitable, and, with nationalisation of the land, 
might well come more speedily than one would venture to contemplate. 
None will question, at any rate, that, should such a day arrive, education 
in the principles underlying the calling will loom as largely as practical 
training in determining the standards of admission to the use of the 
land. I will conclude on this highly imaginative note with an expres- 
sion of my firm conviction that the genius of the British race for the 
management of its affairs on lines of voluntary action will not desert 
us in this particular, and that with wise guidance and intelligent adapta- 
tion of educational curricula and methods to the changing needs of 
the times the penetration of our practice by science will proceed 
smoothly and with such rapidity as to render interference from outside 
not only unnecessary, but unwarrantable. 
