11 DECEMBER 1915, Page 27

The State as Farmer. By George Radford. (Smith, Elder, and

Co. 2s. 6d. net.)—The State is to step in to breed stock, store rains, destroy weeds, cure bacon ; the present system of land tenure is to go. But how and at what cost ? Mr. Radford is nebulous. Until the valuation of land is completed "our hands are paralysed." Although the effects of the War are referred to vaguely, Mr. Radford's pre-war stock-in-trade is large. "The owner of the deer-forest is the very first to scream for conscription when war comes ; he makes desolate the region where thews and sinews should flourish, and then coolly asks the State to save him by taking men by force from other places." We should have said that the lesson of the war was widely different.