the next market town. The Danish farmer's eyes are on the needs of the British breakfast table.

There are, nevertheless, several reasons why it is profitable to enquire into the causes underlying the success of agriculture just across the North Sea. One of them is that British agriculture and Danish and Dutch agriculture are at least comparable in this that they are carried on by men of the same stock, living under the same conditions of administrative and political liberty, and with all the advantages or disadvantagesaccording to the reader's view-of Free Trade. The main agricultural products except cheese are admitted to Denmark duty free.* In Holland a determined attempt to pass a Tariff Bill has lately been defeated; and since 1877 all the prime necessaries of life, including grain and flour and most raw materials for agricultural and industrial purposes, have been admitted free.† Import duties in Belgium did not average more than 1 per cent. on the value of the supplies brought from abroad.

But the chief reason why those who are attempting to promote rural progress in Great Britain may usefully look about them in Denmark and Holland particularly, and examine some ideas in the light of Danish and Dutch experience, is that the Danes and the Dutch, because of the lack of minerals in their countries, have been able to devote to the consideration of land problems an amount of attention, on the part of men of science, educationists, social reformers and business men, which in Great Britain must be shared with other questions. Possibly, when we realise what a magnificent dividend has been returned by the attention given by Denmark

* There is a duty on preserved meats and preserved foods, on fruit, hops and sugar.

The Dutch are as near a "free breakfast table" as we are. The only things to eat or drink on which duty is payable are honey, confectionery, dried fruit, nuts and spices, meats, tea and intoxicants. Jam, marmalade, syrup, treacle, sugar, dried and preserved fruit, chutney and condensed milk, tea and intoxicants, are mulcted by our Customs. With regard to the Dutch duty on fresh, dried and salted meats, seeing that mutton and pork come in free and the whole Customs income from fresh, salted and dried kinds together is only 1600.-the import is 384 tons against an export of 35,400 tons-it is no great matter. On the other hand, coffee and cocoa, on which we levy duty, are admitted free, and manufactured tobacco comes in at the nominal rate of 10s. per cwt. Our Customs receives 14,000,0007. a year from these articles.'-'A Free Farmer in a Free State' (p. 275).

and Holland to their agriculture, we may increasingly feel that in our own country, where agriculture not only employs a larger proportion of the population than any other pursuit but furnishes that reservoir of physical strength and vigour by which the physical, mental and moral stamina of the towns is so largely sustained, clear thinking about rural life and industry, and resolute and wise action in its interests, may be of immeasurable value to the nation.

There are now half-a-dozen Danish farmers working land in England. What is it that one learns from these men, from one's Danish friends, and from travelling about Denmark? Three lessons of the simplest possible kind, so simple that they can never be repeated too often. The first is the lesson of adaptability, of enterprise, of willingness to march with the times. The second is the lesson of education and character. The third is the lesson of mutual aid. These are lessons for every country, irrespective of economic and climatic conditions.

Because the creameries and wholesale cheese-making of the Danes and Dutch pay handsomely, it is not necessarily good business for our farmers to give up catering for the almost unlimited demand for household milk at a rising price. The fact that the prosperity which has come to the Danes has been aided by cooperative bacon factories, while the equally successful Dutch have left co-operative pig-killing alone, may not be a conclusive reason for pressing upon our farmers prospectuses for co-operative bacon production in every county town. That the Danes and the Dutch see their way to big crops of sugar beet is not of itself a reason for insisting on all our farmers at once giving large areas to that crop. Because a Danish or Dutch farmer is a member of half-a-dozen or a dozen co-operative societies, that is not to say that at this moment it is co-operation of which our three-hundred-acre farmers are most of all in need. Because a Christian GoatBreeding Society' and a 'Catholic Egg-Collecting Society'

*

This is not to say, however, that the case for sugar beet for certain agricultural areas in England is not made out. In the opinion of the present writer it is made out.

play parts of some economic and neighbourly importance in Brabant, there is no reason to believe that goats would fill the pockets of the plum-growers of Pershore, that egg-collecting would pay at Epping, or that we should organise our agricultural life on a denominational basis.

6

But can we ever hear enough about the fruits of adaptability, of enterprise and of willingness to march with the times, particularly when the lesson is the invigorating message of a small, hard-pressed nation to a big and more happily situated one? Upon the disasters of 1864* there followed closely the agricultural depression of the seventies and eighties, caused by the arrival in Europe of cheap corn from overseas. But while the extraordinary sight was to be seen of one of the counties into which the greatest city in the world has sprawled becoming steadily 'derelict,' little Denmark was resolutely turning from corn-growing for sale to corn-growing for an increasing farm stock and to the production of fodder crops for that farm stock's further use. A rural gospel-from Scotland-of muck, muck, still more muck' was preached incessantly; cow-houses were added to cow-houses; and steadily growing piggeries, containing animals of English strain, did their share towards the better fertilising of the land. To-day there are twice as many cattle in Denmark as there were before 1864, and about five times as many pigs. The acreage under roots, not including potatoes, has increased a hundredfold. When butter was found to be in greater demand than beef, Denmark reduced the number of its bullocks and increased its dairy herds. The average annual harvest of corn and fodder, which was worth 16 millions for the five years 1875-9, reached close on 34 millions in 1903-12. Before 1864 the acreage devoted to grass and fallow was half of the cultivated area; it is now only a third. But the cultivated area itself has been largely increased. The extension of the cultivated area from six to eight million acres is largely due to the attack on the 3000 square miles of heath in Jutland. It is not surprising, then, to find that the rural population of Denmark is increasing; and that Danish farmers, besides supplying their home

* During the invasion of Denmark by Prussia and Austria.

market, send abroad, on the average, produce valued at more than 17. per week per head.

The bringing of poor land under cultivation necessarily keeps down the crop averages of the country; but, in spite of this, the yield of wheat per acre, which in 1878-82 was 30 bushels, is now 42; barley, which stood at 28 bushels, is now 36; oats, which amounted to 32 bushels, are now over 41. And the same with the livestock. The annual yield of butter per cow, which was 80 lbs. in 1864, and 116 lbs. in 1887, was, in 1908, as high as 220 lbs. (The average annual milk yield per cow is now 5664 lbs.) The value of the bacon and pigs produced is four times the figure attained in 1881-5. Against the 1,500,000l. worth of butter made in 1881-5, there is to be set the 10,300,000l. worth produced in 1908-12. And only half a century ago a British Consul reported Danish butter to be 'execrably bad'! The Danes, wrote Mary Wollstonecraft a little earlier, 'seem averse to innovation.'

Further figures illustrating as remarkably as those cited the reality of Danish agricultural progress might easily be added. Reference has been made to the tremendous application of farmyard manure to the land of Denmark; it is significant that 20,000 farmers are reported to be in possession of covered dung sheds, while 90,000 have watertight liquid manure tanks. The import of nitrate, which was 5000 tons in 1890, was 360,000 tons in 1912. The import of potash rose from 10,000 tons to 260,000, and that of other fertilisers from 300,000 tons to 1,190,000. Then there is the indirect fertilising of the land by means of feeding stuffs. The value of the import was, in 1911, 3,700,000l.; grain is imported to the value of 4,300,000l.

How has all this advance been brought about? There is no doubt whatever. Denmark is what it is to-day simply because the rural population has been in a position to do its best. The rural advance which has taken place in England, Scotland and Ireland during the last few years is remarkable, more remarkable than is imagined by those who do not possess a wide experience of our rural districts or have not kept themselves informed as to the facts by means of such books as Mr Hall's 'Pilgrimage of British Farming.' That the advance has not been greater is due to the fact that our

rural population has not been in a position to do its best. Happily this is a matter as to which there is no longer any controversy. The truth is established by the statements of the informed writers and speakers of all parties, as is shown in ten recently published pages of extracts in parallel columns from Unionist, Liberal and Socialist authorities."

The devotion of our rural population to the land can be strengthened in three ways only. It can be strengthened, in the first place, by the rural population of every grade obtaining! a greater hold on the land than it now feels that it possesses. It can be strengthened, in the second place, by an increasing realisation, brought about by the right kind of education, general and technical, of the abiding interest in, and the far-reaching possibilities of, agriculture and rural life. It can be strengthened, in the third place, by the development of a greater neighbourliness, leading to mutual aid, economically and socially.

In making progress in these three directions we are continually stimulated by the agricultural history of Denmark. A bold peasantry, its country's pride' has been amazingly preserved. 'Bold' indeed! Here is no bovine and forlorn peasantry. Nearly one half of the population of Denmark consists of peasants, but wellclothed peasants with money in the bank, and usually the possessors of a nice vehicle and the freehold of their holdings. Three quarters of the outstanding people in the kingdom are of peasant birth. Of the last Cabinet of nine members, four were peasants.

From the 14th century we have Danish legislation forbidding the sale of peasant land; from the 16th, laws enacting that land let to peasants must be leased for a lifetime, though the lessee may give notice to quit. Since the 17th century it has been provided that the land must be let not only for the lifetime of the peasant farmer but for that of his widow. In the same century it was enacted that peasant land should not be enclosed in estates. In the 18th it was made law that, though a man may own several peasant farms, they must each, even if adjoining one another, be farmed independently,

* In the Mouth of Three Witnesses.' 'Nineteenth Century,' April, 1914.