(5) Education that shall raise not only the standard of knowledge but the standard of taste in town and country.
All these ideals are already well in the public eye—on paper. But they are incoherently viewed and urged; they do not as yet form a national creed. Until welded and supported by all parties in the State, they will not have driving power enough to counteract the terrific momentum with which towns are drawing us down into the pit. One section pins its faith to town improvement; another to the development of small holdings; a third to cottage building; a fourth to education; a fifth to support of the price of wheat; a sixth to the destruction of landlords. Comprehensive vision of the danger is still lacking, and comprehensive grasp of the means to fight against it.
We are by a long way the most town-ridden country in the world; our towns by a long way the smokiest and worst built, with the most inbred town populations. We have practically come to an end of our country-stock reserves. Unless we are prepared to say: "This is a desirable state of things; let the inbreeding of town stocks go on—we shall evolve in time a new type immune to town life; a little ratty fellow all nerves and assurance, much better than any country clod!"—which, by the way, is exactly what some of us do say! Unless we mean as a nation to adopt this view and rattle on, light-heartedly, careless of menace from without and within, assuring ourselves that health and beauty, freedom and independence, as hitherto understood, have always been misnomers, and that nothing whatever matters so long as we are rich—unless all this, we must give check to the present state of things, restore a decent balance between town and country stock, grow our own food, and establish a permanent tendency away from towns.
All this fearfully unorthodox and provocative of sneers, and—goodness knows—I do not enjoy saying it. But needs must when the devil drives. It may be foolish to rave against the past and those factors and conditions which have put us so utterly in bond to towns—especially since this past and these towns have brought us such great wealth and so dominating a position in the world. It cannot be foolish, now that we have the wealth and the position, to resolve with all our might to free ourselves from bondage, to be masters, not servants, of our fate, to get back to firm ground, and make Health and Safety what they ever should be—the true keystones of our policy.
III
In the midst of a war like this the first efforts of any Government have to be directed to immediate ends. But under the pressure of the war the Government has a unique chance to initiate the comprehensive, far-reaching policy which alone can save us. Foundations to safety will only be laid if our representatives can be induced now to see this question of the land as the question of the future, no matter what happens in the war; to see that, whatever success we attain, we cannot remove the two real dangers of the future, sudden strangulation through swift attack by air and under sea—unless we grow our own food; and slow strangulation by town-life—unless we restore the land. Our imaginations are stirred, the driving force is here, swift action possible, and certain extraordinary opportunities are open which presently must close again.
On demobilisation we have the chance of our lives to put men on the land. Because this is still a Party question, to be sagaciously debated up hill and down dale three or four years hence, we shall very likely grasp the mere shadow and miss the substance of that opportunity. If the Government had a mandate "Full steam ahead" we could add at the end of the war perhaps a million men (potentially four million people) to our food-growing country population; as it is, we may add thereto a few thousands, lose half a million to the Colonies, and discourage the rest—patting our own backs the while. To put men on the land we must have the land ready in terms of earth, not of paper; and have it in the right places, within easy reach of town or village. Things can be done just now. We know, for instance, that in a few months half a million allotment-gardens have been created in urban areas and more progress made with small holdings than in previous years. I repeat, we have a chance which will not recur to scotch the food danger, and to restore a healthier balance between town and country stocks. Shall we be penny-wise and lose this chance for the luxury of "free and full discussion of a controversial matter at a time when men's minds are not full of the country's danger"? This is the country's danger—there is no other. And this is the moment for full and free discussion of it, for full and free action too. Who doubts that a Government which brought this question of the land in its widest aspects to the touch-stone of full debate at once, would get its mandate, would get the power it wanted—not to gerrymander, but to build?
Consider the Corn Production Bill. I will quote Mr. Prothero: "National security is not an impracticable dream. It is within our reach, within the course of a few years, and it involves no great dislocation of other industries." (Note that.) "For all practical purposes, if we could grow at home here 82 per cent, of all the food that we require for five years, we should be safe, and that amount of independence of sea-borne supplies we can secure, and secure within a few years.... We could obtain that result if we could add 8,000,000 acres of arable land to our existing area—that is to say, if we increased it from 19,000,000 acres to 27,000,000 acres. If you once got that extension of your arable area, the nation would be safe from the nightmare of a submarine menace, and the number of additional men who would be required on the land would be something about a quarter of a million." (Note that.) "The present Bill is much less ambitious." It is. And it is introduced by one who knows and dreads, as much as any of us, the dangerous and unballasted condition into which we have drifted; introduced with, as it were, apology, as if he feared that, unambitious though, it be, it will startle the nerves of Parliament. On a question so vast and vital you are bound to startle by any little measure. Nothing but an heroic measure would arouse debate on a scale adequate to reach and stir the depths of our national condition, and wake us all, politicians and public, to appreciate the fact that our whole future is in this matter, and that it must be tackled.
If we are not capable now of grasping the vital nature of this issue we assuredly never shall be. Only five generations have brought us to the parasitic, town-ridden condition we are in. The rate of progress in deterioration will increase rapidly with each coming generation. We have, as it were, turned seven-ninths of our population out into poor paddocks, to breed promiscuously among themselves. We have the chance to make our English and Welsh figures read: Twenty-four millions of town-dwellers to twelve of country, instead of, as now, twenty-eight millions to eight. Consider what that would mean to the breeding of the next generation. In such extra millions of country stock our national hope lies. What we should never dream of permitting with our domestic animals, we are not only permitting but encouraging among ourselves; we are doing all we can to perpetuate and increase poor stock; stock without either quality or bone, run-down, and ill-shaped. And, just as the progress in the "stock" danger is accelerated with each generation, so does the danger from outside increase with every year which sees flying and submarining improve, and our food capacity standing still.
The great argument against a united effort to regain our ballast is: We must not take away too many from our vital industries. Why, even the Minister of Agriculture, who really knows and dreads the danger, almost apologises for taking two hundred and fifty thousand from those vital industries, to carry out, not his immediate, but his ideal, programme. Vital industries! Ah! vital to Britain's destruction within the next few generations unless we mend our ways! The great impediment is the force of things as they are, the huge vested interests, the iron network of vast enterprises frightened of losing profit. If we pass this moment, when men of every class and occupation, even those who most thrive on our town-ridden state, are a little frightened; if we let slip this chance for a real reversal—can we hope that anything considerable will be done, with the dice loaded as they are, the scales weighted so hopelessly in favour of the towns? Representatives of seven-ninths will always see that representatives of two-ninths do not outvote them. This is a crude way of putting it, but it serves; because, after all, an elector is only a little bundle of the immediate needs of his locality and mode of life, outside of which he cannot see, and which he does not want prejudiced. He is not a fool, like me, looking into the future. And his representatives have got to serve him. The only chance, in a question so huge, vital, and long as this, is that greatly distrusted agent—Panic Legislation. When panic makes men, for a brief space, open their eyes and see truth, then it is valuable. Before our eyes close again and see nothing but the darkness of the daily struggle for existence, let us take advantage, and lay foundations which will be difficult, at least, to overturn.