n any trading interest, will have very little effect upon
the farmers' interests either. So far as I know, the Development
Commissioners have not decided what course to take in this strange
situation. It may be that Ireland will lose the grant altogether; but in
any case I can well believe that they must hesitate to reverse the
policy already approved for England and Scotland, and in the face of
all experience commit the work of organising agricultural co-operation
to a State Department rather than to a voluntary association possessing
such a record as the I.A.O.S. has placed to its credit.

If now we ask what are the grounds of the hostility of the Nationalist
Party to the most hopeful Irish movement of recent years, the answer
appears to be twofold. The first is economic, or purports to be
economic: the second is frankly political.

1. Co-operation, it is urged, injures the middleman and the small
trader.

To encourage farmers to do well and economically for themselves what is
now done indifferently and expensively for them by the middleman, must
of course act injuriously on some existing interests. This is not
disputed. But the change is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of
rural Ireland, and this objection cannot be allowed to stand in the way.
Looked at in its broader and more enduring aspects, co-operation is
bound to stimulate and improve general trade by increasing the spending
power of the farmers. The Chambers of Commerce of Dublin and Belfast
have not been slow to perceive this, and have warmly endorsed the
Society's application for a grant from the Development Commissioners.

2. The political objection to the movement, so far as it takes the
definite form of charging the I.A.O.S. with being a propagandist body
aiming under the mask of economic reform at the covert spread of
Unionist opinions, will not stand a moment's examination. There is not a
particle of evidence in support of such a charge, and the presumption
against it is overwhelming. To mix political propagandism with
organisation would be the certain ruin of the movement. The Committee of
the I.A.O.S. consists of men of all shades of political faith. These men
could never have joined hands except on the basis that politics should
be rigidly excluded from the work of the Society. The members of the
co-operative societies founded by the I.A.O.S. number nearly 100,000.
Probably at least three-fourths of these are Nationalists.

In order, h