September 13, iqiy 
LAND & WATER 
It 
The Italian has offt-red emploi^Tncnt for everybody and a 
fair price for all products of the field. Those of the seasoned 
warriors who are possessed of g, congenital mania to fight, 
have found ready employment in the bands which the Italians 
have formed to harry the Austrians in the infinitely 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 that 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 tin;ies 
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 higher 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 lx>ing carried 
on through the E.xperiment Station which the Italians have 
established near Vallona for the benefit of the Albanian 
farmer begin to be felt. i 
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 year. Perhaps the highest 
compliment that I could pay General Ferrero would be to 
say that lie 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-General 
Pershing, who did incalculably valuable work as Military 
Governor of the island of Mindanao, in thp Philippines, is 
I perhaps the most notable American. Like that of all the 
great ones of his type, the success of General F'errero is based 
on an abiding faith in the high purpose of his mission, firm 
but tempered justice, a keen imagination, and a ready sy'm- 
pathy for the people whose destinies he has been called on 
to direct. 
PJtolographs in illustralion of Mr. Freeman's description 
of Italy and work in Albania are printed on page ig.. 
The Husbandmen 
By Centurion ^ 
THE Musketry Inspection Officer of a Home Command 
was fitting in his room at Headquarters turning 
over a file of that jeuilleton literature with whicli 
the War Office thoughtfully beguiles the little 
leisure we have by providing us with material for light reading. - 
Uf the making of AmiyCouncil Instructions thereisno end, 
and much learning, of them hath made many a " brass hat " 
mad. The room in which the Officer sat was supt>rbly appoin- 
ted. It contained a deal table with an improvised pen- 
holder of corrugated browp 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 telephont;. 
The sclume of mural decoration was the harvest of a duti- 
ful eye. Over the maiitelpiece was a diagram of the Lewis 
machine gun. resembling in its structural complication a naval 
architect's plan of a submarine. It was Hanked by a list 
of landscape targets, a table of the number of men 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 jnap showing the rifle ranges on 
a vast tableland which has been the training groimd of troops 
ever since primitive man hammered out his arrowheads of 
flint and the Koman Legionary i)ractised flie throw of his 
javelin. On that Ordnance-map parallelograms of yellow 
marked the location of tlie classification ranges with their 
" danger ar^as," while similar geometrical designs in drab 
showed the field-firing ranges, each range within the parallel- 
ogram being marketl in blocks. 
It was the room of a man whose only distraction was his 
work — and a tin of tobacco. 
The Ofiicer was turning over an A.C.I, as to the use of 
Drill Purpose and Emergency rifles, when the telephone rang 
at his elbow. He took down the receiver. 
" Who arc you?" 
" Range-warden of No. 27, sir. I rang up to ask if I can change 
from (L range to A. and U." 
" That's for the Musketry Ofiicer. Ask him." 
He put back tl}e receiver and resettled himself to his work 
ivlicn the telephone rang again. 
' Damn it!" said the t)nicer wearily, " I might as well be 
in R.E. Signals as a Staff-Ofiicer 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 yriu ? I congratulate you -I wi'^h 
I did. Short of labour ? Yes, so am I. 'ohlLsee. Well, 
you must apply to the O.C. of the nearest Depot. He'll 
supply you 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. Where 
are you situated? Lydiard Deverill ? Wait a minike." 
He i>ut the rece-iver on the table and rose and studied the 
map. Then he returned to the telephone, 
" W ell give you snx rlays. Right oh ! Good-bye." • 
He rang off. Then he returned to the map and stuck a 
Jmali flag in one of the parallelograms. 
• •••♦♦ 
The sun was at its meridian and tlie.foreheadsof the toilers 
of the field, stooping among the bronze-coloured corn, glis- 
tened with sweat. The cornfield was bordered with a Tie«ge 
wreathed with bryony 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 fanner, having anxiously considered the heavens 
hadsurveryed his ten-acre field and sampled the ears of wh^at, 
plucking a stalk here and there, and rubbing the grain between, 
the palms of his hands like two millstones, 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 be " ojx'ned " 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, lie 
rolled the corn into a sheaf. Plijcking a few straws from the 
sheaf he knotte<l the ears together, and 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. 
" Tim'e 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 com 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, dandelion, and other herbs, more cooling than 
invigorating, and poured it into a cuj). The man wiio had 
spoken uncorked a large jar of yellow earthenware, and handed 
it to an old man at his side, who, holding it unsteadily with 
both hands, elevated it to a horizontal position and drank 
with earnest concentration. The other men watched him 
with a look of studied disinterestedness. He then wiped I'.is 
mouth with the back of his hand, and i)assed the vessel to 
his neighb{jur, 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 uld man, " but I could do with a half- 
pint mug. It don't get no head oh it." 
