312 AGRICULTURAL FACTS AND FALLACIES

times render short term advances desirable or essential. But if credit societies are required for this purpose, the initiative should come from the agricultural community itself. Since the war, there has been a slight reduction in railway rates on agricultural produce, which are still believed to be too high, and it is not too much to hope that further reductions may be effected.

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If the average farmer considers the effect of these r different measures of assistance on his farm accounts for the past three years, he finds that, though none of pe them taken by itself amounts to much, yet in the aggregate they have proved of substantial help. He may also reflect that many of them are capable of further extension. And it only remains for him to consider how far he can supplement them by remedies which lie in his own hands, and which may be summarised as co-operation, better methods, and harder ha work. At present the farmer is a little tired of being advised to adopt co-operation as a panacea for all his the difficulties. It is the favourite remedy of what may be gi begi termed the academic agriculturist. Granted that it has achieved astonishing results in other countries, and notably in Denmark, it appears on examination that the circumstances under which it has succeeded there are is not the same as they are here, and that the logical al fallacy of argument from false analogy will not assisten the British farmer. There is no intention of belittling o the benefits to be derived from co-operation, but it is a mistake-and does the cause no good-to expect too o much of it. On the typical farm which has already been considered, the virtues of co-operation have not been ignored. All feeding-stuffs and artificial manures are bought through a co-operative society: they are not bought appreciably cheaper than they could be from a dealer; but it is something to know that any profit to be derived from the transaction goes into the pockets of the co-operators, and it is probable that the existence of the society keeps the dealers' prices down. The Co-the operative Bacon Factory, organised on Danish lines, gives about the same price for fat pigs as other factories. Wool sold through the Co-operative Woolgrowing Society realises much the same price as can be obtained from the local dealer, and the same is usually true of cattle

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sold at the annual sale of the Milk Recording Society. The principle is right, and the results are encouraging; but, taken by themselves, they would not make the difference between success and failure to the farm. There are difficulties inherent in co-operation which must limit the application of the system and the results to be obtained, quite apart from the attitude of the British farmer-whether this be described as sturdy independence or bigoted conservatism. Prima facie there should be scope for the co-operative use of expensive implements -drills and self-binders for small farms, or threshing tackle for large ones. But it is usually more important to the farmer to be able to carry out these operations at the right moment than to save something in the cost of the necessary implements. To be a successful buying agency for its members, a co-operative society must have a really competent manager and staff: this entails liberal salaries which must to a great extent take the place of the dealers' profit. And so far as selling is concerned, no co-operative society can improve on the practice of selling direct to the consumer, and in country predominantly urban the practice is more common than is generally supposed.

It is frequently overlooked, when comparing agriultural conditions at home and abroad, that the striking lifference between the two in most cases is not so much one of system as of the amount achieved in the working day. It is not urged that the hours or conditions of labour here should or could be as exacting as hey are elsewhere. But neither the labourer with a 52 or 48-hour week, nor the small farmer who prefers upervision to manual labour, can hope to claim protecsion against the produce of the harder workers of other European countries, if this is only to be achieved at the xpense of the urban population. The same is true of arming methods. Under the present abnormal conlitions the farmer must produce the maximum turnover at the minimum cost. It has been indicated that the aw of diminishing returns sets a limit to this, but there must be very few farms in this country where the annual urnover cannot be profitably increased. Of the fifteen million acres of grass land and the five million acres of rough pasture in England and Wales, how many can be made to carry more stock, and to do the stock better,

without an uneconomic expenditure on improvements? Of the thousands of milking herds in the country, how-T many have attained to the maximum economic yield of milk per cow? Of the millions of tons of beef, mutton, bacon, and other food-stuffs produced by the farmer, how many are produced at the minimum cost? How many farmers really believe that they are buying and selling te s upon the best possible terms, and that nothing more is the to be achieved in this direction by better organisation ter and co-operation? All the materials for further improve-phe ment are present-the results of research and education, ily increased facilities for co-operation, and on the whole a thos sympathetic Government and public opinion. In the ble last resort the solution of the agricultural crisis must so depend on the efforts of the British farmer.

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Four main conclusions are suggested by this survey con of the agricultural situation, and of the remedies adopted in or proposed. The first is that though the industry has oppc been hard hit by the falling prices which followed the enc war, there is abundant evidence that it can still produce ins a livelihood-if nothing more-for those engaged in it. or The second is that the various partners in the industry ter are facing their respective difficulties-landlords are int accepting a reduced return from their estates, if they th have been able to retain them; farmers are improving or recasting their methods, and labourers are making pets the best of lower wages. But it is a hard struggle for ed all of them, and results in decreased production and inci rural depopulation, which are matters of national con- The cern. The third conclusion is that the remedial measureser adopted by the Government have been effective—so far as they have gone-that they are capable of further to extension, and demand a corresponding effort from the agricultural community. The fourth is that it is better on the whole to rely on the cumulative effect of small practical measures, about which there can be little divergence of opinion, than to advocate more sweeping changes, which add to the existing uncertainties of agricul-ist ture and may never be adopted. It is more helpful to the struggling farmer to know that prices and conditions will be reasonable, than to hope that they will be exceptional. Stable conditions restore confidence, and confidence is perhaps the first requirement of the industry to-day.

GEORGE T. HUTCHINSON.

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art. 6.—THE PERSONALITY OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

o seek for the personality of a poet in his works is not nly a fascinating pursuit, but also the best way of studyng what he has written. No revelation, if rightly sought, quite so intimate. The painter may reproduce on anvas the face, features, habiliments, pose of his sitterhe outer man with something of his spirit; while the iographer often is able to disclose familiar details of he daily life of his subject-his birth, death, and relaives, those equal aspects of eternity; but, to the mind apable of rightly distinguishing, the truest expression of the soul of a master is found in the thoughts and Ireams that himself has outpoured, written, realised; for unconsciously he is there revealed as he could not be, ven in a planned autobiography with its limitations and opportunities for showing off purple passages in experience and expression. The man's own artistic creations are generally his truest autobiography. He may work, as Shakespeare did, through stage characters presented as kings and queens, peers and peasants; the man in the street, the courtier, the jester, the lover, the bawd, the soldier, the philosopher, bully, cynic; all of them posturing within the frame of a proscenium. Puppets or marionettes they sometimes may appear, yet to the discerning heart those creatures of a man's invention incidentally often reveal himself.

The personality of Geoffrey Chaucer is more easily discovered from his writings than is that of most of the poets; for in all that he penned, from his earliest, 'The Court of Love,' written when he was young at eighteen years of age,' until the depressing epilogue to the Canterbury Tales, where he discloses himself as weary of the world and wrought upon by the fears and the mystery of death, he does not hide his personal opinions, and his readers find themselves associated with a definite, a consistent, and a lovable being.

It will be useful, before beginning the search, to remember the times in which Chaucer was placed, and so gain some idea of his everyday circumstances and environment. He lived through the second half of the reign of Edward III and the whole of the disastrous

reign of Richard II, to die some twelve months after the accession of Henry IV-a moving period, years of passionate national pride, and, also, of an equal humiliation, the heights and depths of martial victory and of moral defeat being within that period attained or suffered. Chaucer was six years old when Crecy was fought and Calais was besieged; sixteen when Poitiers was won so that his young imagination, sensitive and eagerly receptive, must have been stirred and illumined by the chronicles of war-through wandering bards and old soldiers gossiping in hostelry and hall—as well as by the example of the preux chevalier of those days, the Black Prince.

It was an age of tournaments and luxury, possibly the brighter in seeming because of the misery of the very poor, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose backs have ever sustained the dead-weight of the glory of their lords; until, with the sharp irony which is surely an aspect of Omniscience, disaster fell. The Black Death swept over southern and eastern England. Pestilence and famine took the sorest toll, especially of the poorest and least; for even the dark-winged Azrael sometimes discriminates, sparing those with resources and the means of escape. The whole of settled England was swept by the visitation, which in its indirect effects was not altogether evil, for eventually it helped to restore the prosperity of the labourers. Meanwhile, the peasants, driven by necessity, rose in revolt. John Ball, the father of English democracy, raised his belated protest, for the misery of the poor was extreme, as Piers Plowman' testifies; the starved things working in the winter fields with their bare feet bleeding.

The religion of those days was infinitely corrupt. It gave to Chaucer, as to the firmer spirit of William Langland, opportunity for protest. The Great Schism which established rival Popes at Rome and Avignon, marked the decay and degradation of Christendom; while the progress of Lollardy and the glorious failure of Wycliffe were too young to give great hopes to plain men, who felt rather than knew the need of spiritual comfort. The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed. Amid the glistering beauty of daily life a sense of discontent festered and cankered in the common heart. Among such

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