new fields and new
supplies. She is planning to increase her tea and coffee growing in
Ceylon and make cotton plantations of huge tracts in India and Africa.
The control of the metal fields of Australia has reverted to her hands;
she will get tungsten and oil from Burma. It took the war to make her
realise that, with the exception of the United States, Cuba and Hawaii,
all the sugar-cane areas of the world are within the imperial confines.
They will now become part of the Empire of Self-Supply. Even a partial
carrying out of this far-flung plan is bound seriously to affect our
whole export business.

You have seen how this self-contained idea may work abroad. Go back to
England and you find it forecasting an agricultural revolution that may
be one of the after-war miracles.

For many years England has raised about twenty per cent of her wheat
supplies. One reason was her dependence on grass instead of arable land;
another was the inherent objection of the British farmer to adopt
scientific methods of soil cultivation or engage in co-operative
marketing. The old way was the best way; he wanted to go "on his own."

The war has opened his eyes, and likewise the eyes and purse of the
ultimate consumer. Denmark did some of this awakening. England depended
upon her for enormous supplies of bacon, cheese, butter and eggs. When
the war broke out and the ring of steel hemmed Germany in, the
speculative prices offered by the Fatherland were too much for the
little domain. Holland also "let down" her old customer, poured her food
into Germany, and fattened on immense profits. Norway and Sweden, which
were also important sources of more or less perishable British food
supplies, have done the same thing. When peace comes you may be sure
that England will have a reckoning.

This scarcity of food, coupled with the incessant sinking of supply
ships by enemy submarines, the rigid censorship of imports, and all
those other factors that bring about the high cost of war, has made the
Englishman sit up and take notice of his agricultural plight.

"We must grow more of our food," is the new determination. To achieve it
plans for collective marketing, for intensive farming, for co-operative
land-credit banks, are being made. The gentleman farmer will become a
working farmer.

England's gospel of self-sufficiency has a significance for us that
extends far beyond her growing independence in foodstuffs and raw
materials. It is fashioning