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With his subject Nationalisation of the Land and his arguments I had been perfectly familiar for years. As a boy I had read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" with the superciliousness of the young believer in the divine right of Britain's landed gentry, and before the Eton Debating Society I had demolished the whole theory to my own and every one else's satisfaction.
A silence settled on the smoking-room, a silence broken at last by the opening and shutting of the door. Sir John had retired for the night. . . . At the moment that Vane paused at the entrance to his bit of fairyland Sir John was in full blast. "What, sir, is the good of educating these people? Stuffing their heads with a lot of useless nonsense. And then talking about land nationalisation.
In either event, the new Government will have received a serious blow to its credit at the outset of its career. A reduction of rates has been held out as the great resulting boon of nationalisation ever since the Irish Parliamentary Party specifically raised the question in Parliament in 1899. It would be years, if ever, before such a loss could be recouped, however the traffic was increased.
A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step of nationalising shipping and coal.
It would find it quite a difficult thing to shout; and it would find exactly the same difficulty with all the advanced formulae about nationalisation and internationalisation and class-conscious solidarity. No rabble could roar at the top of its voice the collectivist formula of "The nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange."
"Nationalisation" is often taken to mean that Government is to buy land and let it out in small plots. But apart from expense of Government management and objections to Government interference, we may safely assume that there would be a national loss by this procedure: the private owner would discover very quickly if he could make a profit by letting his farms piecemeal.
It seems probable that in default of right action she will be compelled to maintain her national ideals against Europe united under German guidance. The action required consists on the one hand in the perfecting of the British navy, and on the other of the military organisation of the British people on the principle, already explained, of the nationalisation of war.
Then as to independence, it may fairly be questioned whether a good agricultural workman, now practically liberated from the Law of Settlement, and who can command a fair wage anywhere, is not really more independent than a French peasant absolutely tied to a three- acre plot for life. The real difference between the advocates of the nationalisation of the land and the Conservatives is this.
It is for this reason, or at least partly for this reason, that democracy tries to nationalise all employment, as a step in the direction of the nationalisation of everything. For instance it can partly nationalise the medical profession by establishing appointments for doctors, at relief offices, schools, and lycées.
Arthur Samuels suggests a scheme of State assistance to a cheap transport which may require attention later on, though it can only form part of a larger scheme of traffic reorganisation. The Nationalist Party seems definitely to have pledged itself to a scheme of nationalisation. This policy has been urged in season and out of season upon an apathetic Ireland by the Freeman's Journal.
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