nt for all these things that he had once held a
momentarily unimportant association with the man of "blood and
iron," how much more inconceivably and immeasurably high and exalted
is the station of the farmer who is, in a measure, a fellow
craftsman of the God of Nature, of the great First Cause of all
things, and people don't know it. No wonder the boys leave the farm!

_The underlying training of a people_

This, then, is the landsman's obligation, and his joyful privilege. But
it must not be supposed that he alone bears the responsibility to
maintain the holiness of the divine earth. It is the obligation also of
all of us, since every one is born to the earth and lives upon it, and
since every one must react to it to the extent of his place and
capabilities. This being so, then it is a primary need that we shall
place at the use of the people a kind of education that shall quicken
these attachments.

Certainly all means of education are useful, and every means should be
developed to its best; and it is not to be expected that all the people
shall pursue a single means: but to the nation and to the race a
fundamental training must be provided.

We are now in the time of developing a technical education in
agriculture, to the end that we may produce our land supplies. Already
this education is assuming broad aspects, and we begin to see that it
has very important bearing on public policies. It is a new form of
exercise in natural science,--the old education in this great realm
having become so specialized and departmentalized as to lose much of
its value as a means of popular training.

It is a happy augury that in North America so many public men and
administrators have taken the large view of education by means of
agriculture, desiring, while training farmers or those who would
be farmers, to make it a means of bringing the understanding of the
people back to the land. The Americans are making a very remarkable
contribution here, in a spirit of real statesmanship. In the long run,
this procedure will produce a spirit in the people that will have
far-reaching importance in the development of national character, and in
a relation to the backgrounds of which very few of us yet have vision.

It will be fortunate if we can escape the formalizing and
professionalizing of this education, that has cast such a blight on most
of the older means of training the young, and if we can keep it
dem