11 JUNE 1927, Page 33

with the decay of agriculture in England. French villages are

coming back to life, ours are wasting away." Small farms are vanishing. The object of the multiple farmer into whose hands more and more land is fallin is to reduce labour and to reduce homes. Farmhouses are occupied by non-farmers, the scattered cottages are in ruins, an immense proportion of land is used "not for producing anything at all, but as a half- vacant space where imported animals can be run and can pick up a sufficiency of food till they are resold." The present state of things, at any rate in certain districts, reminds the author of" the picture drawn by the best Roman writers of the causes of the collapse of their Empire."