[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR. " ] Srn,—I see in your
article entitled " How to Ruin Agri. culture," which appears in your issue of October 18th, relating to Mr. Lloyd George's land campaign, that you take exception to his contention that the English labourer is worse housed, worse fed, and worse paid than are labourers on the Continent, and that in a short paragraph in the same number you state that the average of "peasant labourers' houses" "in Normandy, Brittany, Provence. or in any part of Italy " is " infinitely below that of England." Of these specific countries your statement may be true. But when you speak of the Continent, you presumably do not omit Austria and Germany. I hold no brief for Mr. Lloyd George, but I have just returned from long and extensive wanderings in Tirol, Salzkammergut, and the Bavarian Highlands, with the strongest convictions that in these districts, at least, the condition of the peasant is immeasurably better than that of his compeer in England; that he lives almost invariably in a house larger and better built than any English labourer could aspire to; that, though he buys all his necessaries in a much dearer (because a rigorously protected) market, he is better dressed and better fed; and at least has the appearance of being a happier and a more self-respecting person. That his extraordinary thrift accounts for some of his prosperity is doubtless true. But that it is impossible it should account entirely for the marked difference in his favour, and that there is "something rotten" in the system under which his English brother lives, is a conclusion which would, I think, be forced upon anyone who contrasted the two from personal obser- vation. Trusting to your invariable fairness to publish this [No doubt the richer peasants in districts like Tirol, who are really yeomen tilling their own lands, have excellent houses, as have our farmers, but below them in most parts of the Continent are peasant labourers who partly live off their small-holdings and partly on wages. Their houses are dis- tinctly worse than our cottages, and it is they, the lowest grade of rural workers, who must be compared to our farm labourers.—En. Spectator.]
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