who are following Mr. Baldwin's example is much larger than it was in pre-war days. But there are still far too many employers who, because they cling to the laisser-faire ideas of the Manchester school, do not feel that they owe anything more than the weekly wages to their employees, and, what is even more perilous, the modern organisation of industry on the plan of the limited liability company tends to the oft-heard complaint of the aggrieved worker: 'I can't find a man to have it out with.' The old employers, who laid the foundations of all great industries, were always accessible to hear a grievance and render rough-and-ready justice; in the days of my boyhood in Lancashire such disputations were as often as not conducted in broad dialect. The lack of this personal contact between man and man (it is commoner in America to-day than in this country) is a constant cause of the friction which may lead to the form of civil war known as a strike. Wherever and whenever possible, it must be restored.

It is with the Conservative faith, not with the Conservative creed (i.e., the 'platform' of proposed measures which must be formulated from time to time), that I am mainly dealing at present. Even the essential Conservative is too apt to forget that his political mission is to conserve the country, not any particular social order or system of governance. You could not conserve a plant, for example, by arresting its development at one particular stage. History shows us, and so does the study of the backward races which still survive on this planet, what becomes of a community which stereotypes its social order. The true vitality of the Western nations is essentially the outcome of being involved in the stream of tendencies called politics, which is always sweeping away dead matter, institutions that have survived their serviceableness. To be a Conservative, then, is to conserve all the principles of healthy growth, not the tangible results of wealth or the mechanisms of a system of governance. It is the people which it must be our chief aim to conserve, for without them the country itself would be a worthless wilderness.

In the past the professed Conservative has thought more about the conservation of property than about the conservation of life. The war, which was won by men, not by things, has taught us all to revise our scale of comparative values in this matter. Even if we reduce the problem to cash terms, the utter absurdity of allowing a specimen of homo sapiens, who can or could work, and is worth at least 2000l., to run to waste is apparent at a glance. If valuable machinery were allowed to remain unused, neglected, and rusting into a pile of red dust, we should rightly regard the owner as a candidate for Colney Hatch. What, then, is to be thought of a great and wealthy nation which tolerates the existence of more than a million unemployed, a VOL. XCV-No. 567

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percentage of them losing character and rusting into unemployables, in its midst ?

recurrence.

It is a problem of which we are heartily ashamed, and all anxious to find a solution. It cannot, however, be solved in a day; it could not even if the country were as rich as it was in pre-war days. The Socialists have their remedy, which, they think, will not only cure the existing ill, but also for ever prevent its For the sincere, convinced Socialist I have a good deal of respect, remembering the sagacious saying of King Oscar of Sweden that a young man who is not a Socialist before the age of twenty-five has no heart, and if he remains a Socialist after that age has no head. There is nothing wrong with the Socialists -except that they have not grown up intellectually. And their plan, which has the simplicity of a schoolboy's thesis, and is built up out of the science-confuted dogmas of Rousseau and Karl Marx, has always broken down and failed to have the desired effect when, as has often happened, it has been tried on a small scale. It is the first and last duty of those who wish to conserve the race to prevent the Socialists from ever having the chance of repeating these experiments on a colossal scale, and wrecking for ever (for once they had really got to work a return to the old economic order would be impossible) a social system which is the slow and steady growth of thousands of years. But their child's thesis appeals to the untrained mind of childish simplicity, and it is only by exhibiting a better alternative plan and explaining it to the people in all its bearings that we can hope to prevent the advent of a Socialist Government, with power as well as place, which would use direct as well as indirect action to accomplish its declared ends. The Communists, no doubt, would succeed in wrecking a Socialist Government. But that would be a still worse evil; for the Communists are zealots (having the temper of the Puritan sectaries who hoped to erect a theocracy to their minds and destroy not only the malignants,' but also all that differed from them on minute points of doctrine), and would not shrink from destroying the whole race if they could thereby realise their jungle-life ideal. From this nearer and further danger we cannot hope for a personal deliverer. A Mussolini has been possible in Italy, where the conception of the imperium entrusted to two persons, or to one in a crisis, is deeply rooted in national history. No such rootconception exists here.

The Conservative Party, now that the Liberals have committed political suicide by an uneasy alliance with the Socialists, not for a mess of pottage even, but to gratify party rancour, are the only safeguard for the future. They must build up their policy on the axiom that the most important, the invaluable and indispensable, product of each and every industry is the man who works in it. That

is to say, the conservation of the race, its brain-power and its hand-power, is the first thing to be considered; and next to that the natural well-tried organisation of capital_direction—and labour which, though it may have faults that can be amended, cannot be safely replaced by any machine invented by doctrinaires in a study.

E. B. OSBORN.

THE LAND: OUR NEED OF SMALL HOLDERS

THE only stable industry of a people is the husbandry of the land. In it a nation can absorb practically the whole of its population, and there are few necessities of life that cannot be supplied on 10 to 20 acres of good land.

A man, if he is properly instructed and owns a small holding, cannot starve in this country. He can sow his wheat and oats. The miller will grind them in return for a portion of the grain. The farmyard will supply a family with eggs, bacon, and milk, which are all products constituting the foundation of natural, wholesome food, and will always fetch a price in every market town.

So far our great political leaders, be they leaders of party or faction, are persistent in their profession of ardent desire for the alleviation of unemployment and the betterment of the condition of the people.

The Conservative Administration passes away after brief office, and after staking all on fiscal reform for the relief of unemployment.

The Liberal Party comes forward with no solution, and adopts a policy of antagonism to all proposals, while fervently proclaiming the needs of the destitute workers.

The Labour Party takes office, but up to now its solution of unemployment lies merely in unremunerative work, such as roads, lighting, and other county and municipal enterprises.

All this futility of effort points to a lack of perception, points to the narrowness of vision of our political leaders, whose drab outlook on all political questions is that of the average urbanised Englishman.

In any other country but ours the obvious solution to this problem would be the opening up of the land to the people.

How long would our Continental friends stand for a policy of kennelling people in large and industrially stagnant towns when there were lying at hand many thousands of acres of rich land partially cultivated and rapidly turning to grass? To-day we have a depopulated countryside and a congested town population. To-day we have the most coveted agricultural produce markets in the world, and at the same time we have the largest

slum centres in Europe, where the best blood of our race is steeped in misery and demoralisation. All this must be attributed to past Administrations. To-day the main body of the people know less than nothing of real security and freedom, know less than nothing of our primary and national occupation-husbandry.

On the continent of Europe land reform had come in before this industrial awakening. The French Revolution had swept away the domination of the nobles and opened the land to the people. Germany, Holland and Denmark, through wise counsels, had legislated for and encouraged a system of small holdings which gave security, stability and freedom to these countries such as we have never known. Under our existing system agriculture has deteriorated and productiveness has shrunk. The pleasures of game preservation and a general carelessness of farming interests have led to this mismanagement and have played havoc with an industry that should be the main stay of a country.

Have the farming classes degenerated? Have they become insular and mentally stagnant? Are they allowing this rich country of ours to revert to the conditions that prevailed in mediæval England? The whole tendency of agriculture at this moment is to revert to grass farming. The average farmer is content to eke out a living by slovenly and crude cultivation. He is content to produce small profits on large farms, to produce a small yield per acre with the least trouble to himself. What little constructive thought he puts into his work is to save himself trouble and responsibility. He has handed over to the foreigner markets worth 300,000,000l. In short, he is content to make two ends meet, and to allow rural England to sink back into pasture.

In last year's Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, Mr. C. S. Orwin, of the School of Rural Economy of Oxford, had a leading article on agriculture. In it he vigorously attacks intensive cultivation. He emphasises the law of diminishing returns. He writes as the experts and professors of the laboratory write. He gives careful lists of experiments, with tables of diminishing returns on artificial manures, and concludes by advocating the laying down of grass, the breaking up of small farms, and the adoption of a primitive ranching policy. And while he applauds the value of research work, he strongly recommends the English farmer to have nothing to do with it. He is the typical agricultural expert of to-day, who preaches primitive methods and professes scientific knowledge.

If these experts of ours took up the question of deeper tillage, the breaking up of hard pan and the efficient pulverisation and cleansing of the land, they would become useful servants to the industry. If they preached the reclamation of the low-lying rich