A rough census taken in 1916 among our soldiers gave the astounding figure of 750,000 desirous of going on the land. That figure will shrink to a mere skeleton unless on demobilisation the Government is ready with a comprehensive plan. The men fall roughly into two classes: those who were already on the land; those who were not. The first will want to go back to their own districts, but not to the cottages and wages they had before the war. For them, it is essential to provide new cottages with larger gardens, otherwise they will go to the Dominions, to America, or to the towns. A fresh census should be taken and kept up to date, the wants of each man noted, and a definite attempt made now to earmark sites and material for building, to provide the garden plots, and plan the best and prettiest type of cottage. For lack of labour and material no substantial progress can be made with housing while the war is on, but if a man can see his cottage and his ground ready, in the air, he will wait; if he cannot, he will be off, and we shall have lost him. Wages are not to fall again below twenty-five shillings, and will probably stay at a considerably higher level. The cottage and the garden ground for these men will be the determining factor, and that garden ground should be at least an acre. A larger class by far will be men who were not on the land, but having tasted open-air life, think they wish to continue it. A fresh census of this class and their wants should be taken also. It will subdivide them into men who want the life of independent medium and small holders, with from 100 to 20 acres of land, and men who with 5 or 10 acres of their own are willing to supplement their living by seasonal work on the large farms. For all a cut-and-dried scheme providing land and homes is absolutely essential. If they cannot be assured of having these within a few months of their return to civil life, they will go either to the Dominions or back to the towns. One of them, I am told, thus forecasts their future wants: "When we're free we shall have a big spree in the town; we shall then take the first job that comes along; if it's an indoor job we shan't be able to stick it and shall want to get on the land." I am pretty sure he's wrong. He will want his spree, of course; but if he is allowed to go back to a town job he is not at all likely to leave it again. Men so soon get used to things, and the towns have a fierce grip. For this second class, no less than the first, it is vital to have the land ready, and the cottages estimated for. I think men of both these classes, when free, should be set at once to the building of their own homes and the preparation of their land. I think huts ought to be ready for them and their wives till their homes are habitable. A man who takes a hand in the building of his house, and the first work on his new holding, is far less likely to abandon his idea of settling on the land than a man who is simply dumped into a ready-made concern. That is human nature. Let him begin at the beginning, and while his house is going up be assisted and instructed. Frankly, I am afraid that in the difficulty of fixing on an ideal scheme and ideal ways of working it, we shall forget that the moment of demobilisation is unique. Any scheme, however rough and ready, which will fix men or their intention of settling on the land in Britain at the moment of demobilisation will be worth a hundred better-laid plans which have waited for perfection till that one precious moment is overpast. While doctors quarrel, or lay their heads together, the patient dies.
The Government, I understand, have adopted a scheme by which they can secure land. If they have not ascertained from these men what land they will want, and secured that land by the time the men are ready, that scheme will be of little use to them.
The Government, I gather, have decided on a huge scheme for urban and rural housing. About that I have this to say. The rural housing ought to take precedence of the urban, not because it is more intrinsically necessary, but because if the moment of demobilisation is let slip for want of rural cottages, we shall lose our very life blood, our future safety, perhaps our existence as a nation. We must seize on this one precious chance of restoring the land and guaranteeing our future. The towns can wait a little for their housing, the country cannot. It is a sort of test question for our leaders in every Party. Surely they will rise to the vital necessity of grasping this chance! If, when the danger of starvation has been staring us hourly in the face for years on end, and we have for once men in hundreds of thousands waiting and hoping to be settled on the land, to give us the safety of the future—if, in such circumstances, we cannot agree to make the most of that chance, it will show such lack of vision that I really feel we may as well throw up the sponge. If jealousy by towns of country can so blind public opinion to our danger and our chance, so that no precedence can be given to rural needs, well, then, frankly we are not fit to live as a nation.
I am told that Germany has seen to this matter. She does not mean to be starved in the future; she intends to keep the backbone of her country sound. She, who already grew 80 per cent. of her food, will grow it all. She, who already appreciated the dangers of a rampant industrialism, will take no further risks with the physique of her population. We who did not grow one-half of our food, and whose riotous industrialism has made far greater inroads on our physique; we who, though we have not yet suffered the privations of Germany, have been in far more real danger—we shall talk about it, say how grave the situation is, how "profoundly" we are impressed by the need to feed ourselves—and we shall act, I am very much afraid, too late.
There are times when the proverb: "Act in haste and repent at leisure" should be written "Unless you act in haste you will repent at leisure." This is such a time. We can take, of course, the right steps or the wrong steps to settle our soldiers on the land; but no wrong step we can take will be so utterly wrong as to let the moment of demobilisation slip. We have a good and zealous Minister of Agriculture, we have good men alive to the necessity, working on this job. If we miss the chance it will be because "interests" purblind, selfish and perverse, and a lethargic public opinion, do not back them; because we want to talk it out; because trade and industry think themselves of superior importance to the land. Henceforth trade and industry are of secondary importance in this country. There is only one thing of absolutely vital importance, and that is agriculture.
IV
INSTRUCTION
I who have lived most of my time on a farm for many years, in daily contact with farmer and labourer, do really appreciate what variety and depth of knowledge is wanted for good farming. It is a lesson to the armchair reformer to watch a farmer walking across the "home meadow" whence he can see a good way over his land. One can feel the slow wisdom working in his head. A halt, a look this way and that, a whistle, the call of some instruction so vernacular that only a native could understand; the contemplation of sheep, beasts, sky, crops; always something being noted, and shrewd deductions made therefrom. It is a great art, and, like all art, to be learned only with the sweat of the brow and a long, minute attention to innumerable details. You cannot play at farming, and you cannot "mug it up." One understands the contempt of the farmer born and bred for the book-skilled gentleman who tries to instruct his grandmother in the sucking of eggs. The farmer's knowledge, acquired through years of dumb wrestling with Nature, in his own particular corner, is his strength and—his weakness. Vision of the land at large, of its potentialities, and its needs is almost of necessity excluded. The practical farmers of our generation might well be likened unto sailing-ship seamen in an age when it has suddenly become needful to carry commerce by steam. They are pupils of the stern taskmaster bankruptcy; the children of the years from 1874–1897, when the nation had turned its thumb down on British farmers, and left them to fight, unaided, against extinction. They have been brought up to carry on against contrary winds and save themselves as best they could. Well, they have done it; and now they are being asked to reverse their processes in the interests of a country which left them in the lurch. Naturally they are not yet persuaded that the country will not leave them in the lurch again.
Instruction of the British farmer begins with the fortification of his will by confidence. When you ask him to plough up grass land, to revise the rotation of his crops, to grow wheat, to use new brands of corn, to plough with tractors, and to co-operate, you are asking a man deeply and deservedly cynical about your intentions and your knowledge. He has seen wheat fail all his life, he has seen grass succeed. Grass has saved him, and now he is asked to turn his back on it. Little wonder that he curses you for a meddling fool. "Prove it!" he says—and you cannot. You could if you had it in your power to show him that your guarantee of a fair price for wheat was "good as the Bank." Thus, the first item of instruction to the farmer consists in the definite alteration of public opinion towards the land by adoption of the sine quâ non that in future we will feed ourselves. The majority of our farmers do not think their interests are being served by the present revolution of farming. Patriotic fear for the country, and dread of D.O.R.A.—not quite the same thing—are driving them on. Besides, it is the townsmen of Britain, not the farmers, who are in danger of starvation, not merely now, but henceforth for evermore until we feed ourselves. If starvation really knocked at our doors, the only houses it would not enter would be the houses of those who grow food. The farmers in Germany are all right; they would be all right here. The townsmen of this country were entirely responsible for our present condition, and the very least they can do is to support their own salvation. But while with one corner of their mouths the towns are now shouting: "Grow food! Feed us, please!" with the other they are still inclined to add: "You pampered industry!" Alas! we cannot have it both ways.
The second point I want to make about instruction is the importance of youth. In America, where they contemplate a labour shortage of 2,000,000 men on their farms, they are using boys from sixteen to twenty-one, when their military age begins. Can we not do the same here? Most of our boys from fifteen to eighteen are now on other work. But the work they are doing could surely be done by girls or women. If we could put even a couple of hundred thousand boys of that age on the land it would be the solution of our present agricultural labour shortage, and the very best thing that could happen for the future of farming. The boys would learn at first hand; they would learn slowly and thoroughly; and many of them would stay on the land. They might be given specialised schooling in agriculture, the most important schooling we can give our rising generation, while all of them would gain physically. By employing women on the land, where we can employ boys of from fifteen to eighteen, we are blind-alleying. Women will not stay on the land in any numbers; few will wish that they should. Boys will, and every one would wish that they may.