18 OCTOBER 1913, Page 2

Equally preposterous was Mr. Lloyd George's suggestion that huge tracts

of the splendid soil of England are wil- fully left uncultivated. To prove his point he artfully com- pared us to Denmark, Belgium, and Holland, flat countries whose configuration allows every inch of land to be farmed. We come badly out of such a comparison as that simply because there is in the United Kingdom so large an area of uncultivable mountain, hill, and down. If the comparison were made with a country like Norway or Sweden or Switzer- land, or even with Italy, we should, we believe, show very favourable figures. Instead of cultivating too little of our soil, in all probability we strive to cultivate too much. There is a great deal, for example, of Wiltshire and Sussex down- land which was broken up during the Corn Laws, in which it would be much better if the struggle to cultivate were abandoned.