of English wheat ground without admixture into a sack of honest English flour.
*****
(New Year, 1900.) The first day of a new century is an event which can only happen once in a man’s lifetime, and cannot be passed over by any thinking man without very grave reflections as to what the new year as well as the new century may bring forth. January 1st, 1900, finds us at the beginning of a war which has already cost the lives of many good and brave men, and which has hitherto been only a catalogue of mis¬ fortunes caused by the want of foresight of those whom long years of comparative peace and prosperity have apparently blinded to the fact that all the conditions of war have changed. The one bright light which has been thrown on the war is the fact that our officers and soldiers have not been enervated by modern luxury, and have not lost the qualities of their forefathers; and that the wonderful skill of modern surgeons together with the excellent organisation of the Army Medical Department assisted by private enterprise have saved from death many who in former wars must have been crippled for life if they had not died of their wounds.
This has been brought home to me by a New Year’s present in the ghastly form of a piece of my only son’s skull torn from his head by a Boor shell at the battle of Modder River and enclosed in a letter which tells me that he is rapidly recovering from wounds, which were described officially as “ very dangerous,” and is now on his way home. Another letter tolls me that a gallant young friend whom I had only just installed as manager of a farm in Essex, of which I shall often have occasion to speak in this diary, feels that he has a duty to his country as well as to me, and begs my permission to resign his appointment and join the yeomanry in South Africa. Of course I cannot refuse such a request as this, and must make the best arrangement I can to carry it on till Ins return, which I hope may not be very distant, for I cannot believe that the Boers can continue their present style of fighting for many weeks longer, and though the reorganisation of South Africa may be a long job, it will have to be done by regular and not by irregular forces.
To me, as a farmer, the most striking thing about this war is that though it has already increased the difficulty of getting labourers, which in many counties is the greatest difficulty a farmer has to face next to the extreme uncertainty of the weather; and though coal is going up by leaps and bounds and is now, on January 14th, ten shillings a ton higher than when I laid in my stock in summer, it has not appreciably affected the price of anything I have to sell.
I have lately threshed a lot of oats for which only sixteen shillings a quarter are offered, and though I can sell them to a hunting stable for a little more, the price is anything but a profitable one. My little lot of wheat, the first I have had to sell for years, made only twenty-six and sixpence in December last, and though we hear that meat has gone up in price in the large seaports, owing to the scarcity and increased cost of freight from America, yet we do not get any more for it here even if there was much to sell.
