22 MAY 1941, Page 15

If you have never heard of the Iceni Estate and

the remarkable experiments in land-regeneration carried on there since 1932, I think sixpence on I Believe by a Farmer (R. G. M. Wilson, 285 Milton Road, Cambridge) would be well spent. There is something more important here than the review of a practical, if revolutionary, farmer's achievement in creating a great agricultural unit which now employs no fewer than 556 people. One has heard much of those thousands of Dutch lights (9,000 on the Surfleet estate alone), the Indore system of composting and the new methods of marketing and packing produce—so much that I for one look forward to seeing, one day, this remarkable outsize vegetable-garden for myself. But this pamphlet raises other problems Is there really to be an agri- cultural revival after the 'war? If so, on what lines? On those of Surfleet? Or on those of the official mind, which wants everything to be done in terms of the "economic proposition "? Or through State ownership? Capt. Wilson thinks the last, and with it State- controlled education and medical service, which are of course allied problems, since a nation's health arises from the quality not the quantity ot the food it eats and in turn from the health of its soil. And what of the potential 5,000,000 men of the services? What of them, indeed? It seems to me, as it seems to Capt. Wilson, that there had better be some very hard thinking. And this pamphlet gives a pretty sound idea of what that thinking ought to be.