tion upon them to make agriculture in
this country a greater thing not only for themselves as the three
partners, but for the mass of the community at large. And if it is
necessary to do that in the farmers' interest or the landowners'
interest, it was at least as necessary to do it in the interest of the
agricultural worker, and I put his claim first, not because he is the
sole contributor to any yield that may come from the land, but because
he is the most numerous body, and numbers in this as in other respects
may well be the determining factor; and because if he withholds his
labour there will be none of the fruit of the soil for which we look
year after year. I follow up this statement by an authoritative one from
another quarter. Lord Lee, who as we know was the Director of the Food
Production Department at the Board of Agriculture, spoke some time ago
on this aspect of the case, and said: "Take the agricultural labourer
for example. Does anyone suppose, or suggest, that he should return from
the trenches--where he has distinguished himself in a way unsurpassed by
any other class in the community--to the old miserable conditions under
which, in most parts of the country, he was under-paid, wretchedly
housed, and denied almost any pleasure in life, except such as the
public house could offer him? Those conditions were a disgrace to the
country, and I shall never be content until they are swept away for
ever. I do not say this only in the interest of the man himself; it is
necessary these conditions should go, in the best interests not merely
of the labourer but of the farmer and of agriculture." So it may be that
unity and oneness of purpose and of action will be driven upon us as one
of the bye-products of war conditions. For your simple plain
agricultural worker will come back feeling that as he has fought for the
liberties of his country he will be entitled to enjoy a little more of
it than ever before, that if the land is to be freed from designs of the
tyrant abroad it must be freed also from any wrong at home, and that he
must have a larger share in the fruits of his labour than he has enjoyed
before. My own view is that you will not on that account make the farm
worker a less efficient harvestman, but you will make him a happier
father, you will be making him a more contented citizen, and may make
him a more profitable worker than he has ever been.

Various remedies have been tried or thought of to give effec