2. By modifying our agricultural methods so that preference is given to those which demand the least proportion of manual labor....
All the associations which are fortunately so numerous in our country, all the agricultural societies, all the co-operative societies which are already formed, should double their efforts to put at the disposition of their members those implements which on account of their high price are not available for the individual farmer.
Prices will rise after the war, but this, argues Professor Zolla, will be beneficial rather than otherwise.
High prices will be offset by large production: this excess of production will, however, follow on the activity of the rural producer, and that activity will be maintained and increased by high prices which always insure large profits.
In short, the rise in price wall be most favorable to the agricultural interests just at a time when the difficulties of obtaining labor will come to swell the necessary expenses of production. The crisis which might be in store is thus dissipated and the agricultural situation remains much as it was before the war—that is to say, very satisfactory.
The losses undergone will be considerable in the invaded regions, the obstacles which the farmer must overcome will be great but not insurmountable, but success will recompense the valor and the hard labor of our countrymen. And to be just we must not forget that this will be made possible by the work of the French women in the fields.
A French Rejoinder
In the Revue des Deux Mondes (Paris), of which he is managing editor, M. Francis Charmes, of the Académie Française, replies to a speech made by von Bethmann-Hollweg before the Reichstag, in which the German Chancellor expressed sympathy for the deluded French soldiers, who had not an inkling of the true course which the war was taking. M. Charmes ironically remarks:
We do not publish, he [von Bethmann-Hollweg] claims, any of the German dispatches, so that opinion is quite unenlightened as to what is actually happening on the field of battle.