First Advice to Would-Be Farmers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1919 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI FARM COLONIES FOR DISCHARGED SOLDIERS AND SAILORS TO those who have sacrificially protected our land from invasion or who have defended our honour abroad we owe a deep debt of gratitude. The least we can do for these defenders of our property and of our lives is to ensure that their bread shall in future be earned by them without a taint of servitude. It is our duty to show that the country they offered to die for shall be a country fit for heroes to live in. As I intimated at the beginning of the book, there is a general consensus of opinion that a large number of men who have breathed the air of the plain and of the mountain, who have weathered the open seas and who have lived in camps, will never return to the immured life of the office, the mill, the workshop, and the mine. Having tasted the sweetness of the wind and of the rain and of the sun, the only life possible for them is the open air. And England hath need of them. She hath need of a bold peasantry. We have experienced how difficult it is to strangle nations which have drawn their manhood and their economic strength from the land. It has taken a world-war to make us realize the urgent need of the thorough cultivation of the soil, not only for the sake of supplying ourselves with bread, but also for the rearing of a race which shall have a smaUer number of the physically unfit should a brutal militarism ever again threaten our liberties. Life has been spent with a chivalrous abandonment unequalled in the annals of the race. Surely, then, we in our turn can afford to sacrifice a fraction of our property. The Government of a country which has been able to equip, feed, and pay a force of 6,000,000 men to use weapons of destruction should be able to find ways and means to employ a multitu...