England, curiously enough, is almost the only country in the world where the peasant or ordinary field-worker _has_ no field of his own[22]; and I find that in the villages and among the general agricultural population there is even now but little enthusiasm for the present war--though the raid on our coasts at Scarborough and other places certainly did something to stimulate it. Partly this is, as I have said, because the agricultural worker knows that his work is foundational, and that nothing else is of importance compared with it. [At this moment, for instance, there are peasants in Belgium and Northern France ploughing and sowing, and so forth, actually close to the trenches and between the fighting lines.] Partly it is because in England, alas! the countryman _has_ so little right or direct interest in the soil. One wonders sometimes why he _should_ feel any enthusiasm. Why should men want to fight for their land when they have no land to fight for--when the most they can do is to die at the foot of a trespass-board, singing, "Britons never, never shall be slaves!" If the War is ever finished, surely one of the first things to be insisted on afterwards, with regard to England, must be the settlement of the actual people (not the parasites) on the land. Else how, after all that they have gone through, can it be expected that they will ever again "fight for their country"? But that this vast landless population in the villages and country districts--hungering as it is for some sure tenure and interest in the soil--should actually, as now, be berated and scolded by superior persons of the "upper" classes, and threatened with conscription if it does not "come forward" more readily, is a spectacle sufficient to gratify the most hardened cynic. Certainly it is remarkable that such numbers of the great working masses of this country (including villagers) should come forward in connexion with the war, and join the standard and the ranks of fighting men--as they do--and it is a thing for which one must honour them. But in that matter there are not a few considerations to be kept in mind.