gh that policy
mainly enriched the capitalist, they assumed in its support the
semblance of enthusiasm for humanity, if not of the passion of
religion. But between the two, as between the upper and nether
millstone, the rural population of England has been ground to powder.
Not for the first time in history the desolation of a kingdom has been
wrought by time-serving politicians.

{62}

And with the devastation which our national policy thus wrought in the
countryside there passed away, slowly but steadily, the ancient
landowners. These men had in their veins the life-blood of England;
they built up the Empire and sent forth their sons to be the
'frontiersmen of all the world.' Innumerable ties bound them to the
people. Squire and peasant were at one in love of the land, and each
knew that his welfare was bound up with that of the other. But the
lands had to be sold, and the new-rich came from the cities and
replaced the aristocracy of the countryside. They had no ties binding
them to the sons of the soil. They knew not the traditions to which
the landlord and tenant were loyal. They only sought to transplant a
bit of the city into the heart of the country. It was then that the
country folk awoke to the insecurity of their lives. At a word they
were sent forth homeless wanderers. The hint of a right to be
vindicated brought down unemployment and eviction on the head of {63}
England's freedmen. The cottager in the country could no longer call
his soul his own. In the city he could at least call his thoughts his
own, and he could give them utterance in stumbling words without
incurring the risk of being made homeless. No wonder the rural
labourer escaped for his life. The nation, as usual, awoke too late to
the realisation of its ebbing life. It began to make provision for the
people of England acquiring a moiety of the land of England. But it is
easy to turn a smiling land into a wilderness; to convert the
wilderness back into a garden is the baffling problem. 'To-day,'
writes Mr. Masterman, 'land is being slowly and laboriously offered to
the people, a generation after the people who once hungered for that
offer have flung themselves into the cities or beyond the sea.' Any
parvenu can sweep the population of a parish forth into Poplar and
Lambeth; it may well pass the wit of man to bring their children back
from Poplar and Lambeth to the land.

{64}

II

To-day four-fifths of the population