Women's Land Army Farmers have shown a reluctance to state
their requirements for extra labour that has, apparently, confused both the Ministry of Agriculture and the Women's Land Army. An official appeal for another 5,000 women land recruits has resulted in 4,000 enrolments, and a further rate of enrolment of Soo a week. This is good, and means that there is now a surplus of volunteers. " Many of them," the W.L.A. states, " are from luxury trades. The fact that there are now more than 8,000 land girls on farms shows that they are making good." As any farmer will tell you, it shows nothing of the kind. The organisation behind the W.L.A. takes no account of the fact, apparently, that the English farmer is a conservative and prejudiced animal. He has a very deep suspicion of imported female labour ; he assumes, and probably quite rightly, that a girl trained for a luxury trade will be out cif place on a muck cart. He prefers one man to half a dozen women. Here and there one hears reports of city office girls who, as land workers, adapted themselves magnificently to the bitterest winter for half a century. Reports of others only confirm the farmer's
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