The scheme could hardly be started with men accustomed to the present methods, and the cost of obtaining vacant possession of land would make it difficult to try with new men.  I am sure, however, that something of the sort is a good and hopeful idea, and the best way of making the ladder complete.  And I am emboldened to think that something of the sort will be tried gradually in some places, when I see the number of landlords’ sons who are in this and other universities taking the best courses they can get in the science and economics of agriculture.  They know this is the only way to retain a remnant of the old acres.  It is quite new since the war—­and a most hopeful sign.

INDEPENDENCE

I need not urge the importance in our villages of real independence of life.  It was the absence of independence combined with long working hours and little occupation for the hours of leisure, which, more than low wages, caused the pre-war exodus from the country.  Should the prospects of industry improve, but agriculture remain depressed, there will be another exodus from the country-side of the best of the young men who have come back to it after the war.  It is of first-class importance, both from the national and from the agricultural point of view, that they should stay, for there was a real danger before the war that agriculture might become a residual industry, carried on mainly by them, too lethargic in mind and body to do anything else.

In a preface which he wrote to Volume I of the Land Report, as chairman of Lloyd George’s Land Inquiry Committee (it seems a long time ago now that Lloyd George was a keen land reformer), my father sketched out the idea of setting up commissions to report parish by parish in each county, in the same way that commissions have reported on the parochial charities.  They would record how the land was distributed, whether the influence of the landowners told for freedom or against it, whether there was a chance for the labourer to get on to the land and to mount the ladder.  Whether there was an efficient village institute, whether there were enough allotments conveniently situated, whether the cottagers were allowed to keep pigs and poultry, and what the health and housing were like.

It is a good idea, and should be borne in mind.  I confess I do not know enough to know whether it is now as desirable as it seemed to be before the war.  I would fain hope not, but I am not sure.  I believe that there is a good deal more real independent life in the villages now than there was ten years ago.  There are, I think, now fewer villages like some in North Yorkshire before the war, in which the only chance for a Liberal candidate to have a meeting was to have it in the open-air, after dark on a night with no moon, and even then he needed a big voice—­for his immediate audience was apt to be two dogs and a pig.  Now, it seems to me that people like having political meetings going on, but do not bother to listen to any of them.