to secure by submarine piracy what she cannot win on the battle-field.

Meanwhile changes which will have far-reaching consequences after the
war are taking place in our own home food-supply. The long neglect of
our home agriculture, the slow and painful dwindling of our country
populations, are to come to an end. The Government calls for the sowing
of three million additional acres of wheat in Great Britain; and
throughout the country the steam tractors are at work ploughing up land
which has either never borne wheat, or which has ceased to bear it for
nearly a century. Thirty-five thousand acres of corn land are to be
added to the national store in this county of Hertfordshire alone. The
wages of agricultural labourers, have risen by more than one-third. The
farmers are to be protected and encouraged as they never have been since
the Cobdenite revolution; and the Corn Production Bill now passing
through Parliament shows what the grim lesson of this war has done to
change the old and easy optimism of our people.

As to the energy that has been thrown into other means of food-supply,
let the potatoes now growing in the flower-beds in front of Buckingham
Palace stand for a symbol of it! The potato-crop of this year--barring
accidents--will be enormous; and the whole life of our country villages
has been quickened by the effort that has been made to increase the
produce of the cottage gardens and allotments. The pride and pleasure of
the women and the old men in what they have been able to do at home,
while their sons and husbands are fighting at the front, is moving to
see. Food prices are very high; life in spite of increased wages is
hard. But the heart of England is set on winning this war; and the
letters which pass between the fathers and mothers in this village where
I live, and the sons at the front, in whom they take a daily and hourly
pride, would not give Germany much comfort could she read them. I take