accommodation in most of those that now exist, means would be provided for giving a good grounding to the children who have left the village school with a flair for agriculture, and by adopting a system of 'winter courses' at these institutes, those who cannot be spared from a small farm throughout a year, or those who cannot afford a year's course and have not been lucky or successful enough to win a scholarship, could be given valuable instruction that would be to their own and the nation's benefit. The winter course' system has gradually grown in favour on the Continent, and it has much to recommend it. The poorer class of farmer often cannot afford to dispense with the services of a strong pair of young hands in the busy times of the agricultural year, and the independent student can often only raise the funds for this stage of his education by working on a farm for part of the year. As the words suggest, these courses are held in the slacker winter months, and although they deal chiefly with the technical side of agriculture and stock management, most countries have realised the importance of including that general education which turns out a mentality elastic and receptive, ready to accommodate itself to changed circumstances, or to be open to that life-long readiness for education and progress of which our strange phrase 'finishing school' is such an ironical criticism. With a love for agriculture born in his blood and fostered by every means in his childhood, with the opportunity for obtaining a sound grounding in the technical side of the subject on leaving school, in addition to two or three years' practical work on a farm under the direction of others, the village child should now be mentally equipped for setting up on his own with some prospect of success-better prospect, at least, than he has at present. It is true that education is not the panacea for making farming and small-holding successful in this country; but whatever is done in the way of reforms in land tenure, of organisation, or of credit facilities, agriculture can never come into its own unless pains are taken to ensure all its followers being suitably educated for their calling. England once gave the lead in agriculture to the whole world, but now the British farmer, in his attitude of 'I know what my grandfather did, and that's good enough for me,' is in danger of becoming a laughing-stock. Other countries accepted the lead that we gave them in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but whereas our enlightened methods were confined to a few of the more prominent agriculturists, and have been so ever since, other countries have applied what we taught them universally and systematically, with a fixed method and definite objective.

Time moves quickly in these days of scientific development, and the agriculturist who knew his business perfectly ten years

ago is out of date to-day if he has not kept pace with the happenings and discoveries since made in his industry; therefore his education, even on its purely technical side, cannot be left at the winter courses he attended as a youth. Here again the farm institute can, and does, help him. The institutes have farms attached to them half arable, half grass, and they are used for experiments in manuring, cropping, stock-feeding, breeding, etc. Small plots of land of varying soil conditions in different parts of the county are also used for similar experiments, and here is the trained farmer's opportunity for keeping abreast of the times. His county institute becomes his information bureau, and makes for his benefit experiments that he may not care to risk. The instructors who supervise the club work might also be profitably used in giving courses of free lectures in the different villages, their circuits being organised so that each village has the opportunity of hearing lectures on the maximum number of agricultural subjects at least once for each subject in a year. The day of the visit of an instructor would be known beforehand, so that individual farmers needing his advice could obtain it on the spot. For if the educational scheme were effective, the farmer would be anxious to obtain all the knowledge he could, the bad old days of regarding the offer of advice as an insult having passed. But care would have to be taken in picking the men who are to act as such advisers. The first essential is that they be practical men, not merely theorists, and themselves once creditably engaged in actual farming at their own risk. Nor should they cultivate an attitude of superiority, but rather of free and easy friendliness, ready to give what help they can if it is asked.

So much for rural education on its general and technical side. There remains its social aspect to be briefly dealt with. Since the war life in the villages has become far brighter, partly from the growth of ideas amongst those who joined up and rubbed shoulders with others, partly from improved communication by means of motor omnibuses and the more general use of bicycles, partly from the improvement in the standard of general education that has taken place through various mediums. These causes have resulted in the villages developing out of their own roots,' and every institution that assists this process is educative in the broad sense. By keener games and more time for playing them something of the public-school spirit has been imparted to many of our hamlets that meet in weekly rivalry. The 'women's institute' movement has done immense good, raising the village woman from the vegetable stage to one in which she takes a keen interest in passing events, in other countries and other manners, and at the same time making her a more efficient housewife. She is no longer dumb and awkward at the monthly meetings,

but will come forward and sing a song, take part in a dramatic sketch, or make a suggestion as readily as the gentry.'

But there is still room for improvement. We need more village libraries, more active performers in village sport, more of such innovations as bathing facilities and billiard-tables, and more of that esprit de corps and aliveness' in village affairs that is the mark of the mind that has not become dormant. Even the village public-house can play its part by becoming more of a club (and less of a beer-drinking establishment), where the village men and their wives can mix in friendly sociability and exchange conversation and ideas. For it is in the public-house that village opinion is formed and subjects of the day most freely discussed ; therefore it is worthy to be considered in the field of a liberal education' at which we are aiming. We want something more than a race of efficient food-producers. We want to recapture in our country districts something of that zest for work and play, of that dynamic capacity for living, that once characterised rural life in the days of ' Merrie England.'

On the one hand we have crowded towns with their C3 populations, unemployment, and a gigantic bill for imported food. On the other we have a depopulated countryside (from which the towns have to recruit if they are to maintain any standard of healthiness), thousands of acres totally or partially uncultivated, understocked farms and holdings, and a comparatively poverty stricken peasantry.

It is surely remarkable that no scheme seems able to be brought forward for finding the link between the two that obviously must exist. There must be some means of reconciling this supply and demand, of reuniting agricultural enterprise and skill with urban and national requirements. Hitherto all attempts to do so have failed. If we may be guided by other countries who have faced the same problem, the first step in the rehabilitation of agriculture is a rural population educated on rural lines, brought up to appreciate and live country life to the full, and to regard agriculture as a liberal calling,' second to none in dignity and honour.

L. F. EASTERBROOK.

WITH THE PRAIRIE FARMER IN CANADA

In the peopling of the Canadian western prairies there is something which reminds us of former ages of history when Asia poured its undisciplined hordes on Europe, and Roman civilisation emerged, through much anguish and travail, into the glorious dawn of Christianity. The historian, though he perforce see the life of mankind only through so many coloured glass prisms, can yet grasp that humanity is everlastingly in a state of flux and reflux. There has been a continuous movement of human units in search of ' lands of promise' from long before the days of the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt into the land of Canaan, down to the migration of these Doukhobors from Russian steppes into the plains of Saskatchewan.

It is perhaps a saying worthy of the ferocious destroying pride of Attila that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trodden. The modern pioneer can truthfully use the same phrase, but he can also add that he planted wheat or other more valuable products in place of these hoof-prints or buffalo trails. Therein lies the fundamental difference between the old time migration and the modern settlement.

The pendulum swing of white civilisation in the Dominion of Canada has long since reached the waters of the Pacific. Nowadays it tends northward towards the Arctic, and who shall say what immense new impulses of the mighty force we vaguely call civilisation will arise in pursuit of that endless task of man, the substitution of the lovable for the terrible in Nature?

The western prairie farmer is the heir to the rude work of the settlers and pioneers. He is also the static force on the Canadian prairie around which rally the elements of older civilisations and all the hopes of the new.

In the beginning there was the improvement in Red Fife wheat due to an Ontario farmer and the building of the Canadain Pacific Railway by a band of enthusiasts who believed in iron rails as a bond of Dominion and Empire, and were not afraid, looking at the then recent financial success of the transcontinental railways to the south, to risk their all. These two principles, the growth of experimentation and the development of communication, are

still at work, and they have placed the prairie farmer in the position he now occupies.

Between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes we have farms embodying all the latest results of human knowledge as devoted to agriculture: well-bred live stock, rotation of crops. select seed, buildings replete with labour-saving and hygienic conveniences; all kinds of machinery and methods, from milking machines and wireless telephones to silos and disc harrows. Also, as in any other country, we find farmers and farms good, bad, and indifferent.

Sectionalism in Canada is to be deprecated, but it should not be ignored. It has ever been to the honour of the British race that it has always found its supreme sport in surmounting difficulties, and ignoring hurdles is no part of the game for any steeplechaser. In pursuit of what is called the Imperial spirit the most ardent Imperialists sometimes show a parochialism worthy of Thrums or the principality of Monaco. There are several factors in the growth of Western Canada which are of salient interest to all true Imperialists, British or Canadian. The very idea of Imperialism implies a certain measure of monopoly, the Empire-and the world outside.

Western Canada was originally in the possession of the Hudson's Bay Company, which, with small opposition, obtained absolute control of the fur-trading industry. It was, and is, a wisely administered company, but it left in later days the preservation of buffalo in national parks to the Alberta Provincial Government, and now the Edmonton farmer has also turned to rearing silver foxes. No one thinks less highly of the Hudson's Bay Company for these reasons, but business is not statesmanship, and it is not statesmanship which has confirmed recently the grant by legal title of over 6,000,000 acres in Western Canada to this same concern.

Germany is the home of things colossal, and there is something of the German spirit to be recognised in the United States of America to-day. In fact, the same infection has also spread, especially since 1918, in other enlightened European countries along with other Yankee (?) ideas. We allude to 'big business,' 'mass production,' and various other synonyms for the same thing, which in reality spells generally 'private monopoly.' No one has any quarrel with 'big business' or 'mass production' so long as they do not interfere with the liberty of the subject or the supreme power of the State. As a matter of fact, they are a stupendous improvement on isolated efforts, which are often only wasted, but the harm they can work is incalculable. The American people recognised a gentleman in Theodore Roosevelt when he went round with a big stick,' and a 'big stick' is useful to a statesman.