In the autumn of 1918 we had a notice that 35 per cent. of every holding must be ploughed, and “substitution of quota (from one holding to another) will not be allowed under any circumstances.” Suppose arrangements had been made for ploughing an acre of productive land on one holding instead of an acre of unproductive land upon another. It was forbidden by these fools, in the name of Food Production. Farmers often blundered, and have been ridiculed for that; but after all they only blundered here and there and now and then. As things are, they have to blunder on a bigger scale, and may be prosecuted if they fail to blunder as prescribed. As for the people who prescribe these blunders, it is charitable to think that they are merely fools: they may be something worse. The law assumes that everyone intends the natural consequences of his acts, and might very well assume that they intended doing all they could to damage agriculture, without increasing the supply of food. Such things have been done before. Thus, the London County Council wanted an excuse for running steamers on the Thames, and therefore made it impossible for the steamboat companies to carry on. It then ran steamers at a loss, using money from the rates, and finally came to grief with them. These public bodies come to grief in the most foolish ways. I am one of the trustees of a property in London, and the County Council scheduled part of it for “betterment.” We could not comprehend how houses in one street would be bettered by the Council’s widening another street that ran parallel with it some hundred yards away. But the Council then decided on making a new street at right angles to the street that it had widened, and demolished these houses to make way for the new street. It wanted now to buy them at their market value, but we made it buy them at their “bettered” value--we could not, as trustees, sell property to the Council for less than the Council’s own valuation of it. So the Council paid us (with the ratepayers’ money) for a “betterment” that never existed except in some cranks’ brains. Lawyers abbreviate trustees into trēēs, and a careless copyist will sometimes write trustees for trees, if the crossing of the _t_ is rather long. On looking into a deed, I found a power to cut down and sell trustees by public auction or by private treaty, etc., etc., and I was one of the trustees there. In another trust there were two sums of Consols in the joint names of myself and co-trustee. They were entered in the usual way as A and B accounts, and it happened that our B account went on long after our A account was closed. My co-trustee was a knight, belonging to various orders, and ‘B act.’ came next the groups of letters following his name. After a time this was altered into ‘Bart.’--an excusable mistake, as there was no ‘A act.’ and he was ‘Sir.’ Having thus become a baronet here, he was entered as ‘Bart.’ in other stocks standing in his name.