Pheasant or Peasant?
There is another aspect of the subject which must not be passed over. To-day the small-holding question is coming very much to the fore. The splendid results obtained by a combination of small farms and agricultural co-operation, already conspicuous in Denmark, and coming into sight in Ireland, are strongly urging us in England in the same direction. A large multiplication of small-holders, with facilities for their combined action and co-operation, is to-day the one promising outlook for British agriculture. Yet it is notorious that the County Councils are much more inclined to hinder than to help this movement. And why? There may be different reasons; but undoubtedly one of the most powerful is—sport. It is obvious that a population of small holders—particularly if associated and combined—would form a very serious obstacle to the latter. A squire with three or four farms under him, of 500 acres each, can easily make terms with his tenants, and persuade or compel them to favour the hunting and shooting; but what would he do with fifty small-holders? It would be a very different pair of shoes, and he would have to walk (like Agag) somewhat delicately. The compensations, and the obstructions, and the complications generally, would bring the old order to an end.
Thus we come very clearly, I think, to a certain parting of the ways in the matter of our agricultural future in this country. It all comes to this: Are we going to continue for ever playing at the land question—that question whose vitality and importance we daily more and more perceive—or are we going to be serious about it? We cannot take both ways. On the one hand, we have the Scottish Highlands depopulated for the sake of deer; we have English farms more or less ravaged, and farmers terrorised for the sake of fox-hunting; we have grouse-moors and pheasant-covers, with their concomitant evils, let to rich Americans and titled grocers; and, on the other hand we may have a real live agriculture and a brisk independent rural population. We cannot have both. If we retain the present system—conducing, no doubt, to a healthy schoolboy type of squire—it means a downcast, stupefied, unenterprising peasantry. If we turn seriously to the re-establishment of agriculture, and of a real live, manly population on the land, that will undoubtedly mean the abandonment of a good deal that goes by the name of sport.[8]
The time grows short, for indeed anxious problems lie in the near future before this country, and a choice has to be made—a choice that may have a good deal to do with the position of England in the world. The country-sides have got to stop playing at rural life, and to take it up seriously. Nor, after all, would the abandonment of sport as the chief object of the country gentleman’s existence mean the abandonment or discouragement of all wild life. Rather the contrary. We all in these over-civilised times appreciate the value and importance of wild nature; and however effective and widespread we may make our agriculture, we shall surely also demand the establishment of extensive natural reserves for all kinds of free plants and creatures. We have seen that “sport” is not really favourable to wild nature life, but only to some very artificial and limited forms. With the abandonment of sport in its present shape, it is possible that the landowners of the future—whether private individuals or public bodies—will turn their attention to the making of splendid nature-resorts in wood and mountain and moor, where every kind of creature may have free access and free play, unharmed by man, and open to his friendly companionship and sympathetic study.