COUNTRY LIFE MANY of us hoped that the War Agricultural
Committees were an in. stitution that might solve many of our farming troubles. Their work includes the best features of the Russian system: the provision of machinery from a central depot, which gives the smallest farmer tilt advantages of the capitalist farm. Besides lending him the services of tractors and threshers and drainers, they can even help him to keep down such noxious vermin as rats and rabbits. Here and there the hopes of these committees have been realised, but it seems—to judge by the scores of complaints, some within my experiente, angry and bitter, which reach me—they grow more and more unpopular. In some coun- ties they threaten and bully and fine not the worst but the better farmers and landowners. Their decisions as to which land should be ploughed up are often founded neither on wisdom nor justice. Sometimes they themselves begin to clear land obviously ill-suited for cultivation and presently desist after spending much-needed labour and money, only to leave the site unlovely. They have failed miserably in their own half-hearted methods to destroy vermin. All this is a great pity for such centralized bodies in each county are destined to be permanent and might be a permanent benefit. Perhaps the fault lies in their pride in their autocracy.
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