PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
time of war reasonably secure, to enable the British people to enter into an alliance with the American people on equal terms, it is essential that we should not be dependent for our food on any foreign country to such an extent as to render it impossible to make good from other sources the supplies which we draw from that country.
From this point of view the larger the amount of foodstuffs we can produce under the British flag, and preferably in the United Kingdom, the greater the equanimity with which we can face the possibility of war.
The vital importance of an agricultural population.3. 'In the decline of agriculture,' said Bismarck, 'I see the greatest danger to our permanence as a race.' Conservatives naturally wish to prevent the policy outlined by Mr. Chamberlain from being represented as protection to a particular industry. But it is on the agricultural industry that the strength of the nation to a great extent depends; for it is from the agricultural population that the best fighting material, whether for the Army or Navy, is drawn, and that the urban population is recruited. The fall in the value of agricultural produce, the large conversions of arable land into pasture, the throwing of land out of cultivation, and the consequent diminution in the demand for agricultural labour have driven workmen from the country into the towns in search of employment, competing with the labour already there, and aggravating all the difficulties of the housing problem with which the social reformer is endeavouring to grapple. There is only too much reason for believing that the decline in the agricultural population and the yearly increasing proportion of children bred and brought up under the unhealthy
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