THE ENGLISH "HODGE"

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19845, 20 May 1927, Page 5

THE ENGLISH "HODGE"

lAN HAMILTON’S DISPUTE

“TAKE OFF MY HAT TO THEM” LONDON, April 28. General Sir lan Hamilton went to Brandon, Suffolk, to bid farewell to a party of ex-servicemen who have been tra.ined in the Canadian style of farming and who left for Canada a few days ago. There are twenty families in this latest batch of emigrants and they arc going under the auspices of the Canadian Government’s Three Thousand Families Scheme. Sir lan said: "For a long time now Canada has drawn steadily upon the dwindling but ever more precious remnant of our agricultural population. I use the word ‘precious’ because the more I see of the farm labourer the more I realise the immense misconception which artisans, mechanics, and other town dwellers have been led, by jokes about ‘chaw-bacons,’ to form about the man who enables them to chaw good bacon. Since I have -worked with farm labourers —since the war, that is to say— I take off my hat to them every day. They are the only folk in this country who could make both ends meet in a desert island. Their knowledge is so great that it is a constant humiliation to the amateur farmer to employ them. ‘‘Land-owning here spells blue ruin. In Canada it spells fortune,” said Sir lan.