September 13, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
11 
The Italian has offered employment lor everybody and a 
fair price for all products of the field. Those of the seasoned 
warriors who are possessed of a congenital mania to fight, 
have found ready employment in the bands which the Italians 
Jiave formed to harry the Austrians in the infinitelv picturesque 
guerilla warfare carried on along the \'oyusa. The others — • 
men, women and children — have their choice between work 
on the roads or labour in their fields. Not that work is 
compulsory at all, but only that the rewards for it are now so 
adequate and so certain tha-t a sturdy people like the Albanian 
simply will not remain idle. It is estimated that the earnings 
of the peoples of Southern Albania last year were four times 
as great as ever before in their history. This increase is 
about equally divided between the .money received for road 
work and that from the crops from the land. Not only were 
prices for crops far higlier than ever before, but, in spite 
of the demand for labour on the roads, there was something 
like a twenty per cent, increase in the land under cultivation. 
This increase is expected to be doubled or trebled next year, 
when the effects of the agricultural propaganda being carried 
on through the Experiment Station which the Italians have 
established near Vallona for the benefit of the Albanian 
farmer begin to be felt. 
One of the most important factors in the success that has 
attended the Italian occupation of Albania, has been the 
work of Lieut. -General Ferrero, who has now been in com- 
mand at Vallona for over a yea,r. Perhaps the highest 
compliment that I could pay General I'Vrrero would be to 
say that he impressed me as being of that fine type of soldier- 
administrator of which the British Empire has furnished so 
many splendid examples, and of whom ' Major-tieneral 
Pershing, who did incalculably valuable work as Military 
Governor of the island of Mindanao, in the Philippines, is 
perhaps" the most notable American. Like thaf of all the 
great ones of his tyjje, the success of General Ferrero is based 
on an abiding faith in the high purpose of his mission, firm 
but tempered justice, a keen imagination, and a ready sym- 
pathy for the people whose destinies he has been called on 
to direct. 
PhotograpJui in iUiistraiion of Mr. Freemav's description 
of Huh' and work in Albania are printed on page 19. 
The Husbandmen 
By Centurion 
THE Musketry Inspection Officer of a Home Command 
was sitting in his room at Headquarters turning 
over a lile of that feiiilleton literature with wliicli 
the War Office thoughtfully beguiles the little 
leisure we have by providing us with material for light reading. 
Of the making of Army Council Instructions there is no end, 
and much learning of them hath made many a " brass hat " 
mad. The room in which the Officer sat was superbly appoin- 
ted. It contained a deal table with an improvised pen- 
holder of corrugated brown paper, a pad of fawn coloured 
paper such as grocers use to wrap up Demerara sugar and 
the Stationery Department issues for writing inter-depart- 
mental " chits," a copy of the Army List, two uncomfortable 
chairs, and a telephone. 
The sclieme of mural decoration was the harvest of a duti- 
ful eye. Over the mantelpiece was a diagram of the Lewis, 
machine gim. resembling in its structural complication a naval 
architect's plan of a submarine. It was flanked by a list 
of landscape targets, a table of the number of meii under 
training for drafts, a roll of Range superintendents, and the 
plan of a Solano target. These artistic efforts were all in 
black and white,. but a touch of colour was afforded by a 
map of rifle and field firing ranges picked out in violet ink, 
and a large-scale Ordnance map showing the rifle ranges on 
a vast tableland which has been the training ground of troops 
|,ever since primitive man hammered out his arrowheads of 
flint and the Roman Legionary practised the throw of his 
javelin. On that Ordnance-map parallelograms of yellow 
marked the location of the classification ranges with' their 
" danger areas," while similar geometrical designs in drab 
showed the field-firing ranges, each range within the parallel- 
ogiam being marked in Wocks. 
It was the room of a man whose only distraction was his 
work — and a tin of tobacco. 
The Officer was turning over an A.C.I, as to the use of 
Drill Purpf)se and Emergency rifles, when the telephone rang 
at his elbow. He t(X)k down the receiver. 
" Who are you?" 
" Range-warden of No. 27, sir. I rang up to ask if I can change 
from G. range to A. and B." 
" That's for the Musketry Officer. Ask him." 
He put back the receiver and resettled lumself to his work 
svhen the telephone rang again. 
" Damn it!" said the Officer wearily, " I might as well be 
in R.E. Signals as a Staff-Officer third grade. Well, what is 
it? Who are you? John Leighfield of Littlecote Farm ! 
I'm afraid it doesn't convey anything to me, Mr. Leighfield. 
Farm six hundred acres, do you ? I congratulate you— I wish 
I did. Short of labour ? Yes, so am 1. Oh ! 1 see. W ell, 
you must apply to the O.C. of the nearest Depot. He'll 
supply yon with men ; there's a new Army Council 
instruction to that effect. What ? suspend field-firing for 
fourteen days ! It can't be done. There's a war on. W here 
are you situated? Lydiard Deverill ? Wait a minute. " 
Ho put the receiver on the table and ro.se and studied the 
map. Then he returned to the telephone, 
■■ We'ir give you six days. Right oh! Oood-bye." 
He rang off. Then he returned to the map and stuck a 
imall flag in one of the parallelograms. 
• • * • * « 
The sun was at its meridian and the foreheads of the toilers 
of the field, Stooping among the bronze-coloured com, glis- 
tened with sweat. The cornfield was bordered with a Tieage 
wreathed with brj-ony like a vine, and the field itself was 
brilliant with a pageantry of purples, blues, reds, and golden 
tints, where knapweed, cornflowers, poppies, and yellow ox-eye 
gleamed among the yellow stalks. The grain drooped with a 
" swan's neck " — a sure sign that the wheat was ripe. Some 
days before, the farmer, having anxiously considered the heavens 
hadsurveryed his ten-acre field and sampled the ears of wheat, 
plucking a stalk here and there, and rubbing the grain between 
the palms oi his hands like two tnillstones, to test its quality, 
for he feared it might be milky in the ear or stained by the 
recent rains. He had found the grain hard and firm ; a 
day or two more and it would shed itself. The experiment 
was decisive, and without further hesitation he had given 
orders for the field to l>e " opened " by hand with the bagging- 
hook, to cut a track for the " binder." 
The workers were stooping to their task, each holding the 
wheat back and away from him with his left hand while he 
" cut in " with his right. The man nearest the hedge, a 
sinewy labourer of middle-age, named Daniel Newth, having 
progressed a few yards and left the cut corn standing, now 
worked back again, and using his right foot as a lever, he 
rolled the com into a sheaf. Plucking a few straws from the 
sheaf he knotted the ears together, an(i using them as a string 
he tied the sheaf round the " waist. " Then he rose to his 
feet and mopped his brow with a red handkerchief decorated 
with large white spots. > 
" Time to eat our vittles, neighbours," he said, stretching 
his back. " And I could do with a drap in my innards — I'm 
mortal dry." 
A number of heads rose from among the corn like hares 
popping out of their " form " ; the women adjusted their 
sun-bonnets and shook their skirts ; the men stretched 
their arms. Among the latter were three soldiers in regula- 
tion shirts, breeches and puttees, who, as they stood upright, 
performed, by way of easing their muscles, a variety of mili- 
tary exercises in which an Army Instructor would have 
recognised a satisfactory reproduction of the " Rest," " Bend," 
and " Stretch " positions. A moment later the head of a 
fourth soldier appeared in close juxtaposition to that of a 
girl in a lilac sun-bonnet. The owner of the sun-bonnet was 
flushed with a glow which may have been due to the heat of 
the sun, but may also have had a more emotional origin. 
A coil of auburn hair had slipped from under the flap of her 
bonnet and hung distractingly on the nape of her white neck, 
and as she rose she surreptitiously put it up. 
The little party moved to the shade of an elm beside the 
hedge and sat down to their meal. One of the women pro- 
duced a bottle of " small beer " — a cottage brew of nettle, 
clytes, dandt'lion, and other herbs, more cooling than 
invigorating, and poured it into a cup. The man who had 
spoken uncorked a large jar of yellow earthenware, and handed 
it to an old man at his side, who, holding it misteadily with 
both hands, elevated it to a horizontal jiosition and drank 
with earnest concentration. The other men watched hini 
with a look of stu<lied disinterestedness. He then wiped his 
mouth with the back of his hand, and [jassctl the vessel tc 
his neighbour, the jar circulating among the members of 
the group like a loving cup. 
" It be a neighbourly way of drinking— like Holy Com- 
munion," said the old man, " but I could do with a half- 
pint mug. It don't get no head on it," 
