Under Thirty Page
SAFETY FIRST ?-IV
By ALAN UNWIN
[The writer, whose age is 22, came down from Cambridge last year, and is at present engaged in fa-lanai HUNTING experience is certainly better than evading it. Modern civilisation encourages you to do the latter. The huge machine in which we are all cogs of varying utility has so far functioned regularly enough. Provided you do your own part, all is well. No need to watch or understand what other cogs are doing. Miners dig and you have fires ; farmers plough and bring you food ; innumerable factory- workers produce your clothes and furniture. It is easy to take them all for granted. " Why bother to get to know people whose tastes, trade or education are different from yours ? " present-day materialism seems to say, " Don't probe into other peoples' worlds, stick to your own. You'll be much more comfortable there." Only a sudden shock like a strike, war or revolution can shake everyone into realisation of their vital interdependence.
That is one reason why I personally should welcome the institution in this country of some form of Arbeitsdienst or National Service such as Sir Edward Grigg and others have lately been advocating. It would help to shake us out of narrow-mindedness and make people of completely different outlook understand and appreciate each other.
I recently spent six weeks working as a labourer on a Norfolk farm, an interesting and on the whole enjoyable experience, though naturally strenuous. Certainly a complete contrast after any form of head-work. The day's shift lasted from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon, with half an hour's interval for your bread-and-cheese luncheon, and you received a weekly wage of 33s. 6d. I boarded with a labourer and his wife and had to get up at six o'clock every morning to walk about a mile to the farm. Much of the work was occupied in sugar-beet fields which took up 13o out of 870 acres. The beet has to be dug out and separ- ated from its foliage or " tops," as they are called, which are used as cattle-food. It is then loaded into carts and stacked by the roadside, whence giant lorries transport it to the nearest sugar-beet factory. About 15 per cent. of each grimy root is turned into crystalline table-sugar.
Being a novice, I was given a variety of fairly uncompli- cated tasks at first. One day I had to dress barley, another to feed cattle, another to load or unload beet, and so on. Afterwards the work was very hard indeed, but you felt in magnificent health, and always had a Gargantuan appetite and r feeling of general mental and physical well-being. Or so I found.
Six weeks are no equivalent, of course, to the Germans' six months ; but even that short time was sufficient to learn something about farm-work and to realise how absurdly ignorant most of us are about the sources of our food-supplies. I had intended to work three months there, but voracious bugs precipitated a departure that was otherwise unwilling. However, there are other farms where insects are less common, or less virulent, and I hope to do another six weeks, if I can get employment, in the summer.
I mention my farming experiences because I can say that I have had a foretaste of the kind of work British National Service might imply. I learned a lot from it in various ways, and I think a voluntary six-months scheme would be of enormous benefit both to the nation and to individuals. Its advantages have recently been argued, far more eloquently than I could hope to describe them, in The Times and other newspapers. But the following aspects of the subject occur to me : First, the social aspect. We pride ourselves on being one of the most civilised of civilised nations. But there is surely something wrong with a civilisation where 90 per cent. of the population is incapable of producing its own food. Could you, for instance, milk a cow ? Or m.i butter, or bread ? It looks easy enough, but have you ever tried ? True, unless you are an agriculturist of some kind, you are never likely to need to do such things ; but the fact remains that most of us know so little about the preparation of the food that keeps us alive that we could not perform the simplest agricultural task efficiently. " Nothing can endure that is based on sham," Treitschke was fond of asserting. There is evidently an element of sham in our present matter-of-fact dependence on farms, which Arbeitsdienst could help to eradicate. Incidentally, the idea that farm-labour is unskilled and that anyone can do it without training is a fairy tale.
One obvious benefit of Labour Service is its healthiness. Even in six weeks' farming I found that, in addition to feeling abnormally healthy, I gained a pound a week in weight. And from the point of view of muscular development, a professional strong man course could scarcely do more for you than six months on the land.
Another advantage is, as I said, the opportunity it gives for un-class-conscious comradeship. Another, the manifold uses to which labour can be put. Quite apart from ordinary farm-work, forestry, road-making, draining of swamps and reclamation of waste land could be undertaken here.
There is also the question of Unemployment. At present there is genuine labour shortage in many agricultural districts, particularly in the periods May-July and October-January when extra seasonal labour is usually required. Yet it is estimated that nearly 250,000 men have left the land since 1918 to find work in the towns, most of which already had long dole queues. The fact is that farm-work is temporarily unfashionable. It has no kudos attached to it and has the reputation of being harder work for less pay than any town job. As a result, it is now the exception rather than the rule for a labourer's son to wish to follow his father's profession. Farm-work needs to be Government-boosted to be made popular again. A few years ago we were being taught to be air-minded ; now we need literally to come back to earth and be agriculture-minded.
To be efficient, a British Labour Service system will have to be Government-organised ; but I do not see why it should be made compulsory. Judging by the response to most previous national appeals, there would be no shortage of volunteers, however wide a voluntary scheme was made. It would be something to go on with if farmers willing to employ a few recruits this summer—presumably for their keep or a nominal wage—gave in their names to some central authority and aspirants to this form of temporary Arbeitsdienst could do the same.
Eventually we should need permanent camps where the youth of all classes and incomes could be encouraged to work together. Recruits might be asked to sign on for three or six months perhaps. A certain amount of initial leadership and organising would be needed. This might be supplied by existing organisations such as the Territorials and the Boy Scouts ; partly perhaps by asking individual Germans and Scandinavians to come over here and " show us how they do it."
Most Englishmen dislike Fascism as a political system intensely. But we should not let that blind us to the redeeming features of an ugly face. There ought to be—perhaps there already is—a special bureau in this country for studying experiments—whether social, political or cultural—that have proved successful abroad, to see if they can be adapted to our own needs. We should make free democracy a still more alluring rival to Rome, Moscow and Berlin extremes, if we occasionally stole their thunder.
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