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.
What has been done so far, and what more can be done? A bounty on corn
has been introduced. I suppose nobody, certainly not its promoter, is
enamoured of this. But it does not seem to have occurred to every one
that you cannot eat nuts without breaking their shells, or get out of
evil courses without a transition period of extreme annoyance to
yourself. "Bounty" is, in many quarters, looked on as a piece of petting
to an interest already pampered. Well--while we look on the land as an
"interest" in competition with other "interests" and not as _the_ vital
interest of the country, underlying every other, so long shall we
continue to be "in the soup." The land needs fostering, and again
fostering, because the whole vicious tendency of the country's life has
brought farming to its present pass and farmers to their attitude of
mistrust. Doctrinaire objections are now ridiculous. An economic basis
must be re-established, or we may as well cry "Kamerad" at once and hold
up our hands to Fate. The greater the arable acreage in this country,
the less will be the necessity for a bounty on corn. Unlike most
stimulants, it is one which gradually stimulates away the need for it.
With every year and every million acres broken up, not only will the
need for bounty diminish, but the present mistrustful breed of farmer
will be a step nearer to extinction. Shrewd, naturally conservative, and
somewhat intolerant of anything so dreamy as a national point of view,
they will not live for ever. The up-growing farmer will not be like
them, and about the time the need for bounty is vanishing the new farmer
will be in possession. But in the meantime land must be broken up until
8,000,000 acres at least are conquered; and bounty is the only lever. It
will not be lever enough without constant urging. In Mr. Prothero's
history of English farming occur these words: "A Norfolk farmer migrated
to Devonshire in 1780, where he drilled and hoed his roots; though his
crops were far superior to those of other farmers in the district, yet
at the close of the century no neighbour had followed his example."
But even the break-up of 8,000,000 acres, though it may make us safe for
food, will only increase our country population by 250,000 labourers and
their families (a million souls)--a mere beginning towards the
satisfaction of our need. We want in operation, before demobilisation
begins, a great national plan for the creation of good small holdings
run on co-operative lines. And to this end, why should not the
suggestion of tithe redemption, thrown out by Mr. Prothero, on pages 399
and 400 of "English Farming: Past and Present," be adopted? The annual
value of tithes is about £5,000,000. Their extinction should provide the
Government with about 2,500,000 acres, enough at one stroke to put
three or four hundred thousand soldiers on the land. The tithe-holders
would get their money, landlords would not be prejudiced; the
Government, by virtue of judicious choice and discretionary compulsion,
would obtain the sort of land it wanted, and the land would be for ever
free of a teasing and vexatious charge. The cost to the Government
would be £100,000,000 (perhaps more) on the best security it could have.
"Present conditions," I quote from the book, "are favourable to such a
transaction. The price of land enables owners to extinguish the rent
charge by the surrender of a reasonable acreage, and the low price of
Consols enables investors to obtain a larger interest for their money."
For those not familiar with this notion, the process, in brief, is this:
The Government pays the tithe-holder the capitalised value of his tithe,
and takes over from the landlord as much land as produces in net annual
rent the amount of the tithe-rent charge, leaving the rest of his land
tithe-free for ever. There are doubtless difficulties and objections,
but so there must be to any comprehensive plan for obtaining an amount
of land at all adequate. Time is of desperate importance in this matter.
It is already dangerously late, but if the Government would turn-to now
with a will, the situation could still be saved, and this unique chance
for re-stocking our countryside would not be thrown away.
I alluded to the formation within a few months of half a million
garden-allotments--plots of ground averaging about ten poles each, taken
under the Defence of the Realm Act from building and other land in
urban areas, and given to cultivators, under a guarantee, for the growth
of vegetables. This most valuable effort, for which the Board of
Agriculture deserves the thanks of all, is surely capable of very great
extension. Every town, no matter how quickly it may be developing, is
always surrounded by a belt of dubious land--not quite town and not
quite country. When town development mops up plots in cultivation, a
hole can be let out in an elastic belt which is capable of almost
indefinite expansion. But this most useful and health-giving work has
only been possible under powers which will cease when the immediate
danger to the State has passed. If a movement, which greatly augments
our home-grown food supply and can give quiet, healthy, open-air,
interesting work for several hours a week to perhaps a million out of
our congested town populations--if such a movement be allowed to
collapse at the coming of peace, it will be nothing less than criminal.
I plead here that the real danger to the State will not pass but rather
begin, with the signing of peace, that the powers to acquire and grant
these garden-allotments should be continued, and every effort made to
foster and _extend_ the movement. Considering that, whatever we do to
re-colonise our land, we must still have in this country a dangerously
huge town population, this kitchen-garden movement can be of
incalculable value in combating town-blight, in securing just that air
to lungs and mind, and just that spice of earth reality which all
town-dwellers need so much.
Extension of arable land by at least 8,000,000 acres; creation of
hundreds of thousands of small holdings by tithe redemption, or
another scheme still in the blue; increase and perpetuation of
garden-allotments--besides all these we want, of course, agricultural
schools and facilities for training; _co-operatively organised finance,
transport, and marketing of produce_; for without schooling, and
co-operation, no system of small holding on a large scale can possibly
succeed. We now have the labourer's minimum wage, which, I think, will
want increasing; but we want good rural housing on an economically sound
basis, an enlivened village life, and all that can be done to give the
worker on the land a feeling that he can rise, the sense that he is not
a mere herd, at the beck and call of what has been dubbed the "tyranny
of the countryside." The land gives work which is varied, alive, and
interesting beyond all town industries, save those, perhaps, of art and
the highly-skilled crafts and professions. If we can once get land-life
back on to a wide and solid basis, it should hold its own.
Dare any say that this whole vast question of the land, with its
throbbing importance, yea--seeing that demobilisations do not come every
year--its desperately immediate importance, is not fit matter for
instant debate and action; dare any say that we ought to relegate it to
that limbo "After the war"? In grim reality it takes precedence of every
other question. It is infinitely more vital to our safety and our health
than consideration of our future commercial arrangements. In our present
Parliament--practically, if not sentimentally speaking--all shades of
opinion are as well represented as they are likely to be in future
Parliaments--even the interests of our women and our soldiers; to put
off the good day when this question is threshed out, is to crane at an
imagined hedge.
Let us know now at what we are aiming, let us admit and record in the
black and white of legislation that we intend to trim our course once
more for the port of health and safety. If this Britain of ours is going
to pin her whole future to a blind pursuit of wealth, without
considering whether that wealth is making us all healthier and happier,
many of us, like Sancho, would rather retire at once, and be made
"governors of islands." For who can want part or lot on a ship which
goes yawing with every sail set into the dark, without rudder, compass,
or lighted star?
I, for one, want a Britain who refuses to take the mere immediate line
of least resistance, who knows and sets her course, and that a worthy
one. So do we all, I believe, at heart--only, the current is so mighty
and strong, and we are so used to it!
By the parasitic and town-ridden condition we are in now, and in which
without great and immediate effort we are likely to remain, we degrade
our patriotism. That we should have to tremble lest we be starved is a
miserable, a humiliating thought. To have had so little pride and
independence of spirit as to have come to this, to have been such
gobblers at wealth--who dare defend it? We have made our bed; let us,
now, refuse to lie thereon. Better the floor than this dingy feather
couch of suffocation.
Our country is dear to us, and many are dying for her. There can be no
consecration of their memory so deep or so true as this regeneration of
The Land.
1917