There is yet another peril that would be lessened in proportion to the increase of vegetarianism—the dependence of this country on the importation of food from abroad. "At present," says Mr. W. E. A. Axon, "probably one-half of the population is dependent upon a foreign supply. That England should be, and is, the last country in the world to desire a Chinese wall for the exclusion of foreign commodities, need not blind us to the fact that there may be grave national dangers in the soil of the country providing food for about half its people. A nation of vegetarians would create such a demand that rural England would be, if not a cornfield, yet a vast orchard and market-garden."[43] Footnote 43: _Manchester Vegetarian Lectures_, "Vegetarianism and National Economy." For a clear statement of the present shocking neglect of agriculture in this country, see "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," by P. Kropotkin, 1899, where it is shown that _two-thirds_ of our food-supply is now imported from abroad. Enough has now been said to show that the habit of flesh-eating, involving as it does the sacrifice of vast tracts of land to the grazing of cattle, and the consequent starving of agriculture, is far too costly to be justified, in the face of an extending civilisation, unless by a much clearer proof of its necessity than any which its advocates have essayed; in fact, it only remains possible, on its present large scale, through the temporary use of huge pasture-grounds in remote semi-civilised regions which will not always be available. For pastoralism belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism in morals.[44] It seems, generally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in suffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome and harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the cheapest and most humane. Footnote 44: Against the sea fisheries, it may be noted, the same objection cannot be raised, as they do not diminish, but supplement the produce of the soil. DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES We have next to deal with a special class of irregular foemen, the guerillas and Bashi-Bazouks of the flesh-eater's army, whose game it is to waylay and harass the vegetarian movement by a small fire of doubts and difficulties as to what the future has in store. The alarmists they are, whose apprehensive minds are concerned not so much with the rightness or wrongness of the system, as with the anxieties of "what would happen" if the triumph of vegetarianism should be won; and so gloomy are their forebodings as to suggest a probable collapse of the whole fabric of society, if once that great prop and mainstay of civilisation—the habit of eating dead animals—should be disloyally undermined.