durance by an enemy from
abroad, that he turns his reaping-hook into a sword and his muck-fork
into a three-pronged bayonet, exchanges his fowling-piece for a rifle,
and fights savagely for his home and his bit of a field.

England, curiously enough, is almost the only country in the world where
the peasant or ordinary field-worker _has_ no field of his own[22]; and
I find that in the villages and among the general agricultural
population there is even now but little enthusiasm for the present
war--though the raid on our coasts at Scarborough and other places
certainly did something to stimulate it. Partly this is, as I have said,
because the agricultural worker knows that his work is foundational, and
that nothing else is of importance compared with it. [At this moment,
for instance, there are peasants in Belgium and Northern France
ploughing and sowing, and so forth, actually close to the trenches and
between the fighting lines.] Partly it is because in England, alas! the
countryman _has_ so little right or direct interest in the soil. One
wonders sometimes why he _should_ feel any enthusiasm. Why should men
want to fight for their land when they have no land to fight for--when
the most they can do is to die at the foot of a trespass-board, singing,
"Britons never, never shall be slaves!"

If the War is ever finished, surely one of the first things to be
insisted on afterwards, with regard to England, must be the settlement
of the actual people (not the parasites) on the land. Else how, after
all that they have gone through, can it be expected that they will ever
again "fight for their country"? But that this vast landless population
in the villages and country districts--hungering as it is for some sure
tenure and interest in the soil--should actually, as now, be berated and
scolded by superior persons of the "upper" classes, and threatened with
conscription if it does not "come forward" more readily, is a spectacle
sufficient to gratify the most hardened cynic.

Certainly it is remarkable that such numbers of the great working masses
of this country (including villagers) should come forward in connexion
with the war, and join the standard and the ranks of fighting men--as
they do--and it is a thing for which one must honour them. But in that
matter there are not a few considerations to be kept in mind.

In the first place a large number are not really very enthusiastic, but
simply join because pressure to do so i