1920.J Farewell Rally, Women's Land Army. 1211 



raised, and the question of suitability was a very anxious one. 

 Agricultural conditions in many parts of England were utterly 

 unsuited to the sudden employment of women, and it seemed a 

 bad time to ask farmers for a greater consideration in this 

 respect. The rates of pay could but compete badly with those 

 of most other war organisations, and volunteers could only 

 be appealed to from a sense of patriotism or for love of work of 

 which they had no previous knowledge. An important 

 feature of the problem was the organisation of the voluntar\' 

 workers all over the country for the stimulation of local 

 labour — quite as important a feature of the scheme as the 

 mobile force known as the Land Army. The Organisation in 

 control of voluntary workers is always a difficult matter, and 

 in most of the war services there has been no such element, 

 One of the greatest obstacles which Miss Talbot — the Director 

 of the Land Army — must have encountered was the utter 

 uncertainty of the farmer as to the extent of the coming labour 

 shortage, and the farmer is usually too harassed over actual 

 problems to care to look far ahead. 



The Organisers and those pioneers in the farming world to 

 whom they owe so much must have lived and moved and had 

 their being on hope and determination in those days, but in all 

 branches of industry men were being called up and women 

 were fitting themselves not by training alone but by actual 

 experience to fill their places. Only a sudden turn of the tide 

 of the Wsii could avert the coming agricultural shortage, 

 although fanners might be spared to the last. Determination 

 merged into organisation, and organisation into action, and 

 the rest of the unique history of the Land Army deals with the 

 forced development for emergency purposes of the raw recruit 

 into something as nearly approaching the finished article as 

 possible, followed by the more normal growth of her own powers 

 in such measiu-e as she possessed them. Then the gi'adual 

 absorption and adaptation of the whole scheme into the actual 

 labour needs of the country, accompanied by steady progress 

 which outpaced setbacks, a great deal of marked success, and 

 finally the cordial acknowledgment of the adequacy of the 

 Land Army as a whole. If women have, as farmers contended 

 at the first, pushed their way into agriculture, they were called 

 by patriotism and kept there by the grit and efficiency with 

 which they filled the gap. The satisfactory fact has now been 

 ascertained that 67 per cent, of the women have elected to 

 work on under the Association. If they remain, as they 



