A ZEAL FOR THE LAND.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17981, 28 March 1930, Page 9

A ZEAL FOR THE LAND.

LORD BLEDISLOE’S MISSION AN ARDENT AGRICULTURIST. WILL BE MISSED IN BRITAIN. (By Sir W. Beach Thomas, in Overseas.) Lord Blcdisloe, the new GovernorGeneral of New Zealand, by his interests, education and career, may claim to inherit a long and most English tradition; and the tradition is passing over to the English-speaking world overseas, where the master' industry is primary production. An overmastering zeal for agriculture or—to use a better but less popular word—husbandry is still a mark of the class once known as “the English Country Gentleman." He has been much abused, for several centuries, as by Lord Macaulay, and much praised. "Coke of Norfolk,” or Lord Leicester, was one of the Benefactors of Mankind. He contributed much to the revival of of the world’s farming by reforming English farming. His sheep fairs opened the way to the pre-eminence of Britain its a breeding centre for stock, and his practice of a new rotation of crops restored tens of thousands of European farms to fertility. His contemporary, Townshend, when he retired from politics, was proud to be known in the vulgar speech as “Turnip Townshend.” In the eighteenth century we should have had Bacon Bathurst or some such label.. Lord Bledisloe’s political" oareer. though it has never been narrow, is in accord with the same tradition. It is slill roughly, though very roughly, true in England (if not in Wales and Scotland) that the three political parties represent three distinct classes of tlie community—the Conservative represents the rural folk, the Liberal the tradesfolk, and the Socialists the industrial workers.

In the last election, for example, Lord Blcdisloe’s friend, the Conservative Prime Minister, probably polled more rural votes than any head of a Government in the annals. A zeal for the land overwhelmed Lord Bledisloe from before the days when lie entered Parliament as Sir Charles Bathurst. Ho was so active in pursuit of his theme, and so well informed on the science and statistics of farming, that everyone foretold with conviction his eventual appointment to the Ministry of Agriculture. A number of cross currents intervened, lie never became Minister, but took up the less showy but perhaps more influential post of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, which he held from 1024 to .1928, and did voeman service! He had held the same office to the Ministry of Food during the crisis of the war; and for his services was made a peer in 1918. A catalogue of the appointments he has held, almost all connetced in some measure with farming, would occupy a considerable, space without giving any real insight into his Insatiable Zest for his favourite subject. When anything connected with national agriculture" is in the news there are two English names which at once leap to the mind—one is Mr Christopher Tumor’s, the other Lord Bedisloe’s. Both men are considerable hereditary landowners—one in Lincolnshire, the other in Gloucestershire; both in their own counties have practised agriculture, Mr Tumor from Stoke, and Lord Bledisloe from Lydney; Lord Bledisloe has spoken, and Mr Tumor written, voluminously; both have travelled in agriculture and made fruitful pilgrimages to what a German philosopher called “the creative centres” of husbandry, especially Denmark. Both have done real service in stirring interest and adding to knowledge. And the comparison may ho carried yel further—both practised on their own estates the systems they had inspected in Scandinavia. Mr Turnor, after some pioneer failures, has made an economic success of his large dairy farms, organised along Danish lines. Lord Bledisloe, after a tour of Denmark in company with Mr Baldwin, felt he had something like a mission to disclose to the British farmer the Secret of Danish Success in one department at least, in producing bacon. Like many zealots, lie perhaps over-capitalised the venture; and the more one studies the history of farming in England the more clearly one sees the reason why the theorist and the pioneer, such as Arthur Young, have missed an oconomi'c success. They are propagandists as well as farmers. They have a greater zeal for demonstration than for their own pockets. They arc driven by the ardency of their convictions to spend more than a farmer in the strict sense should spend. Their ideal is a picture of the system at its best; ancl good pictures are dear. Doubtless Lord Bledisloe built rather too perfect houses for the pigs that were to help Britain to reduce the enormous sum of £48,000,000 spent annually on imports of pig products; but bis speeches and his exposition of the Danish method were not wanting in value on that account. Few speakers in Britain have an citsicr eloquence. Words come to his call and respond to his zeal, which is therefore infectious; and he has demonstrated this gift not only in the House of Commons, to which he was first elected in 1910, and in a hundred meetings, but as president of the most influential societies in Britain—of the Central Chamber of Agriculture, of the British Dairy Farmers’ Association, of the Central Landowners’ Association, and of the Imperial Agricultural Research Conference. It is a very curious thing that Great Britain, which has more deliberately sacrificed husbandry to industry than any country in the world, is still in certain respects the hub of scientific farming. The Rothamsted Experimental Station, where Lord Bledisloe’ lias often spoken, is not. only the oldest in the world, it is in touch, even in active collaboration, with more scicnlific centres than any other such institution. Moreover, it has lately concerned itself very definitely wilh New Zealand problems. The discovery of the parasites that destroy the earwig and Hie blackberry—two of the special plagues of New Zealand—represents One of the Crispest Successes of modern practical research. Individually, 100, British students share this world-wide experience, as more than one of Lord Bdelisloe’s later experiences may he taken to illustrate, lie has visited both Brazil and Argentina on semi-agricultural missions. When Sir Alfred Mond, now Lord Mel-

chett, wished to organise a worldwide campaign for popularising his new scheme for the intensive cultivation of grass, he at once had recourse to Lord Bledisloe, who travelled on his behalf to South America. It is scarcely surprising that the appointment of so representative an agriculturist to New Zealand, whose proficiency in certain classes of farming is a household word in Great Britain (on the farms as in the markets), should especially interest farmers. It is perhaps rather more than a coincidence that- Lord Bledisloe should have been going to New Zealand at much the same date, even if he bad not been elected GovernorGeneral. He had made all arrangements to lead the party of Empire farmers who are looking forward to a thorough tour of both islands in the spring. The first reason for visiting New Zealand, now ruled out by a second and greater reason, was Lord Bledisloe’s especial fitness for any expedition concerned with Empire farming, and especially with dairying. Lord Stradbrooke’s zeal for farming and knowledge of the subject were reasons why lie was especially appreciated in Victoria. It is not perhaps over-bold to prognosticate a like ex-

perience for Lord Bledisloe. He will be Missed in Great Britain, because he always put the welfare of the industry above party, and freely lent ids services to any party—Coalition, Conservative or Labour. He was, and is, an enthusiast for a national policy. To tliis admirable breadth of philosophy his'interest in the farming of the Empire (especially, as it happens, of New Zealand) in no small measure contributed. Just before he left he launched a plan for the provision of great national parks in Britain, to which townspeople might resort and breathe in the spirit of the deep, deep country. It is perhaps unlikely that his own neighbourhood, the Forest of Dean, will be selected, as he hoped, for a national park, but the scheme progresses fast, and when the national parks come, as they will, we must regard Lord Bledisloe "as their “author and begetter.”