As a consequence of all these happenings connected with a matter which, in its inception, appeared simple and easy to adjust -for it is one of equity, and the anomaly was caused by faulty regulations--I have decided to introduce a short Bill, during the coming Autumn Session, which shall have for its object the inclusion of all the pensioned Army and marine officers who are now excluded from the benefits of Article 572a of the Royal Warrant for Pay, 1914, as amended by Clause XVI., Army Order 324 of 1919, and now included in Article 613 of the existing Royal Warrant for Pay. I have already received many letters from members on both sides of the House assuring me of their support, and I trust that when the Bill is put to the vote the Army pensioned ranker officers will receive their status and retired pay of commissioned rank.

ARTHUR HOLBROOK.

THE LAND PROBLEM: ITS ONLY REAL
SOLUTION

WE are told on all sides that the English working man does not take kindly to the tillage of the soil, that when once he has tasted the joys and excitements of city life he turns away from country pursuits, and prefers town life, however drab and however demoralising, to the cultivation of the land.

To-day the main body of the people, some seven-eighths of the total population of this country, are town-bred, and their outlook on life from infancy up is industrial. They know little or nothing of how the food they eat is produced. They wander through the country in their spare time as strangers in a strange land, without feeling that there is any relation between the fields, the shady lanes and woods, and themselves, though in truth they have a birthright to them as clear as any child's in the land.

In no other country in the world does such a state of things exist. In no other part of the world has industry alienated the main body of the people from husbandry to the extent that it has done here in England.

This gradual alienation has only come about in the last 100 years. We lived under normal conditions before industry laid hold upon the life of the country. The people were practically self-supporting, and industrial employment was the exception, not the rule.

One hundred years ago the total population of the British Isles was little over ten millions; to-day it is forty-five millions. In two generations we have quadrupled our population.

It was said by great philosophers, like Mill and Adam Smith, that the population of a country was directly governed by food and employment, that it rose and fell as opportunity came or left a country, that the renaissance of agriculture and industrial activity create, by natural causes, the people required to maintain them, and in like manner the decadence of industrial prosperity brings in its wake a shrinkage of the population.

Up till now all great national developments have been gradual, have slowly evolved, and have slowly dissipated themselves. It is the first time in the history of the world that a people has quad

rupled its population within two generations. It is also the first time in the history of the world that the activities of a people have suddenly been stopped by such a cataclysm of industrial disaster as that which followed in the wake of the great world war.

England to-day is suffering from no ordinary industrial depression that time will finally relieve. She cannot sit still and hold on as she did after the Peninsular and Crimean wars. Then her disbanded armies were comparatively small in comparison to her population, and could be absorbed into the rapidly growing industrial life of the country. In 1914 her armies practically took the whole of our young manhood, and they have been disbanded during a great industrial depression and shrinkage of trade. Hence our internal economic position is serious and critical.

We have a great town population with nothing to do, the source of their past employment reduced by the impoverishment of the civilised world.

Our great latent wealth has kept our currency high above other countries, and this has dealt our export trade a paralysing blow. The Bishop of Kensington very rightly said in a sermon relating to the Versailles Treaty: In our great wealth are the seeds of our greatest poverty.'

Such conditions as these cannot be put right by mere palliatives, cannot be put right by the rule-of-thumb methods of the past. We have to come down to fundamental principles; we have to absorb our unemployed into useful productive work, or, as a nation, descend into abject want.

This country is living above its income. We had a trade deficit in production and manufacture of the United Kingdom of some 600,000,000l. in 1920, and in 1921 we reduced this deficit to 300,000,000l. by reducing our imports on raw material by some 900,000,000l. No nation can indefinitely import more than it exports. No nation can during industrial depression spurn its own untapped internal resources and pay foreigners a prodigious price to produce the necessities of life for them.

Are we to take it for granted that among the great town population there are none who have the capacity and the desire to turn again into yeomen owning their own land and cultivating the soil intensively like their Continental neighbours?

For an answer we have only to go to the outskirts of our great towns and cities; we have only to look at the waste land in the urban districts, where every little corner that the people can get hold of is cultivated. There are many thousands of acres of small allotments throughout the country that are apportioned out by the perch and rood. In many cases these plots are cultivated more for pleasure in the workman's spare time than for profit.

For an answer we have only to come into touch with the landhungry farm labourers in fertile districts of this country. We have only to go to the auction room, and see the high figure that an inhabitable small holding will fetch, to know that there is in this country a natural desire for ownership and all that it means in healthful employment, security and freedom.

We have only to study the stubborn struggle that our ex-service men have had under an unsympathetic Ministry of Agriculture, we have only to examine the conditions of the average county or borough small holding settlements, to realise how ardently the family hold on, under adverse conditions, to their holdings.

The great Land Settlement policy of the Ministry of Agriculture at the close of the war has dissipated itself in the effort to establish some 14,000 men. Upon the settlement of these men they have wasted a prodigality of money. They bought land at prices that were unheard of in the districts of purchase, they put up buildings that cost some 1400l. each, and saddled the holdings of eight acres with a gigantic financial handicap. They rented these holdings to the men, most of whom were disabled with rents that were out of all proportion to the remuneration that could be derived from the land, and high above those of the surrounding farm land rented to the big farmers.

They promised to maintain home farms for instruction, and from which the small holders could hire implements. These home farms in most districts have been shut down, and the implements sold, leaving the small holders stranded and obliged, without compensation, to buy horses and implements costing 100l. or more to carry on their work.

They have saddled these holdings with incompetent officials, men who know nothing about farming and in many cases care less.

These officials manage the estates by a method of leaving the settler severely alone, and their sole duty is to collect rent and look after repairs. There is a Crown colony of small holdings of some 200 men in Lincolnshire with a rent roll of some 10,000l., and the official local supervision costs in salaries over 1200l. annually. All the rents and the small repair work entailed could be done by part-time men in the district for 200l. to 300l. a year.

The only thing that these officials have done in this district to justify their existence is to raise the rents of these small holders by some 20 per cent. and make them pay rent at from 51. to 71. per acre. In one area the men rose in revolt and brought public opinion to bear upon this unscrupulous policy until, forced thereto by the justice of their cause, the Ministry revoked the order and reduced the rents by 20 per cent.

The general policy of the Ministry of Agriculture and the county council toward the small holder is to place him on the land

and leave him to sink or swim; they may at the outset encourage him to plant fruit trees at a cost of 6 per cent. on a high value per tree, and on the condition that the trees remain the property of the Ministry.

Occasionally in this particular district, and at the urgent request of the settlers themselves, an instructor has come down to show them by a few lectures how to run an orchard, but the general complaint is that they have been shamefully neglected.

Nothing has been done for these settlers to shield them from the unscrupulous middleman, who finds these ex-service men easy prey. One has only to look at their bills of sales to see that more than half the value of the market price is swallowed up in commission and middlemen's services.

Such is the condition under which our ex-service men exist under the Ministry of Agriculture to-day. Such is the treatment meted out to our only really self-supporting communities, who, if they were not where they are, would be swelling the great and pitiable army of unemployed. These men love their holdings, and are fighting manfully, and there is rarely a grumble at past treat

ment.

It has been said that the town man is unsuited to the life of husbandry, yet it has been found that the most successful settler is the town artisan. He comes on to the land with an open mind, he is prepared to study the science of cultivation, he reads up his subject, and as a rule beats the agricultural labour class that uses the rule-of-thumb methods of the average English farmer.

The idea that we English are unsuited by nature to grow our own food is the greatest fallacy of the age. It is directly contrary to the laws of God and man, and can only be conceived by thoughtless minds who dabble in quack philosophy. If such a theory were given voice abroad, every civilised and uncivilised community would laugh to scorn the preposterous suggestion that a community of men could so alienate itself from the inborn, one might say the Divine, instinct of husbandry.

Yet we have to face the fact that seven-eighths of our population has been alienated for two generations from the land; we have to face the fact that thirty millions of our people are dependent on foreign food imports, and that our export trade is but a fraction of what it was and ought to be to maintain the total population of this country.

We are to-day importing bacon to the value of 60,000,000l., dairy produce 24,000,000l., eggs 12,000,000l., and a host of other necessities which we could produce here at home if the people were distributed on the land and properly looked after.

It is said that land settlement is costly, that it requires some