s where the land had hitherto been
more or less uncultivated; where it had been cultivated by the
moderately large or the very large landowner it always returned a
harvest more considerable than that which the new tenant, insufficiently
equipped and experienced, was able to achieve. Not only would there be
this diminished production--frequently in the proportion of six to
ten--but a large number of employees were thrown out of employment:
sometimes a clever Czech overseer, whose family of six children had
almost become Croat, and sometimes a native farmer whose house was
wanted for the Dobrovoljci. The Czech would return to his own country
and the dispossessed farmer would become a Communist. Yet these material
and human losses to the State might have been endured if there had been
a compensating political advantage, that is to say if the new tenants
had been satisfied. But in far too many instances they were not. And one
cannot help thinking that, in the vast majority of cases, they
themselves would have preferred to wait until the Peasants' Co-operative
Associations--such as flourish in Denmark--had been established. It need
scarcely be said that, from the point of view of the peasant and of the
State, these associations are an absolute necessity. The most deplorable
example of the measures that were taken in such haste is seen, of
course, in a model-property, such as that of Count [vC]ekoni['c] in the
north of the Banat, where the new tenants, seeking as elsewhere to
satisfy only their own wants and paying no heed to any possible exports,
allow a highly developed property to go in a retrograde direction. If
the Dobrovoljci had been skilled agriculturists there would have been no
harm in settling them on this excellent estate; and with a Co-operative
Association the 3000 joch of sugar that were grown there during the War
would not now be reduced to 88 joch. But as it is, what with the
unfortunate inexperience of most of the new tenants and their lack of
means, and what with the stupidity of the local authorities who left to
the previous owner one field here and one field there in the most absurd
fashion, it would have been better both for Count [vC]ekoni['c] and for
the State if he had simply presented to the Dobrovoljci half his land. A
great many mistakes have been made in this question of Agrarian Reform,
one of the most cardinal being--as Radi['c], the spokesman of the Croat
peasants, has pointed out--to bestow the