27 JULY 1918, Page 2

The issue has been a good deal complicated by complaint.,

often only too well founded, that the wrong sort of grassland has been brought under the plough. To plough up rich old pasture when the inferior or middling grasslands are still untouched by the plough is utterly wrong. Unhappily there have been failures in judgment on the part of the Agricultural War Committees owing to the fact that they have entered into a kind of friendly rivalry in extending their areas of newly ploughed land. There are bound to be some indiscretions when the principal motive of a Com- mittee is to "make a good show" and to brandish its figures in proof of its zeal. At the same time, the critics should remember that the whole of the Agricultural War Committee business has had to be improvised during the war, and that, though there have been many mistakes, the results over the whole country have been better than might have been expected, and indeed have been surprisingly goo&