1 MARCH 1946, Page 20

Farming in War-Time

Land at War. Prepared by the Ministry of Information. (H.M.S. Stationery Office. Is. 6d.)

MINISTRY booklets, like Ministry films, tend to overlook the failures necessary to the achievements they praise. Being, after all, propa- ganda, they must paint everything a little larger, a little glossier, than life. Land at War—an account of our wartime agricultural effort—is no exception. The facts and figures are impressive and there is no gainsaying them: 175,000 tractors in 1944 as against 55,000 in 1939; six and a half million new acres ploughed up ; rabbits gassed by the hundred thousand (and England short of food); and an orgy of rat-killing, one pair of which would have been capable of producing 88o offspring in a year, each of which could have eaten ten shillings' worth of food. Then there is the notable work of the county W.A.E.C.'s ; of the Women's Land Army ; of the farmers

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and farm-hands themselves ; and of the Pest Control staffs—not forgetting lady dress-designers turned rat-catchers. It all adds up to a tale of quite extraordinary endeavour ; and, within its limited space, no doubt this little book, with its well-chosen photographs, does it justice. No doubt, too, it was no part of the anonymous author's job to tell why British agriculture, prior to 1939, had been allowed to fall into so bankrupt a state. All the same, his story would have been the better if he had not so energetically tried to turn it into a success story only. Any farmer (not on the staffs of the W.A.E.C.'s) would have supplied him with plenty of material, the inclusion of which, if it somewhat toned down his high colours, would have made his booklet more acceptable to those in the know, and, incidentally, more salutary to those who are not. It would have been a gracious gesture, too, if the important part played by the Italian prisoners of war had received more acknowledgement than an irrelevant sentence or two ; without their aid the farmers' handicap

would have been far greater than it was. C. HENRY WARREN.