The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1912. FARMING IN HOLLAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 77, 23 November 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1912. FARMING IN HOLLAND.

It is somewhat singular that one hoars very little about agriculture in Holland, though it is in reality the Dutchman’s strongest point. Recently Dr. Robertson Scott has made more widely known what Holland is doing in this direction in a book lie has published entitled “A Free Farmer in a Free State.” He finds agriculture to be extremely flourishing and tells his readers that “every year 1 live in the country, and every year I know more of what the people who work the land of the United Kingdom are doing, I realise more fully the profound agricultural truth underlying the remark of a skilled Dutch farmer to an English landowner in my hearing: ‘lf you were to come to farm in Holland, you would imitate me; but if I were to go to farm in England,' I should imitate you.’ ” Nevertheless he also says that if village life, in England “is- to be revived not in an artificial but in a lasting way, we may go to Holland for many lessons in how to introduce reality and zest into rural existence.” Among other interesting things the book shows that small though the cultivated area, of Holland is it contains great varieties both of soil and oi population. The peasants in the southeast are said to be on altogether a lower plane of efficiency than the hardy cultivators and cattle-breeders of \orth and South Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, and Groningen. A feature

of tb ecountry is the smallness of the holdings. Only about two dozen people have farms of over 500 acres, only 216* holdings exceed 250 acres: on the other hand, the number of holdings of between 21 to 50 acres is 1K2,01 I, out of a total of 200,302. The superior education of the people as a whole is most marked, and Mr Robertson Scott gives many illustrations of their widespread eagerness to learn, and he also describes the admirably practical work done in their winter classes and their Tent res of agricultural instruction. Another striking point is the capacity for common action, for though the Dutch are individualistic and liberty-loving by character they arc, generally speak- | iug, more co-operative than the country people of Britain. As an in-

,stance ,it is held i.liai tlicy could never have attained tin l extraordinary milkproducing excellence of tlieir best breeds of cows if they had not organised and submitted to a far more stringent herd-book system than that which is maintained lor the great English breeds. free trade is popular with the, Dutch fanners, and Mr Rpberison Scott holds this also to have, had much to do with their success! in agriculture and especially dairy-farming. THE INTELLECTUAL WOMAN. Sydney’s “Daily Telegraph” holds that the intellectual woman is well able to light her .battles in debate, but also arrives at the conclusion that the more intellectual she becomes the more numerous grow the foes by whom she is confronted. , The latest assailants to tilt at the modern woman with plenty of lire and energy are certain members of her own sex—-ladies belonging to the New South Wales Congregational Union—who deplore her clothes, manners, and reading matter, with line comprehensiveness. It is, the “Telegraph” goes on to say, chiefly in her education that the modern woman is differentiated from her mother or her grandmother of the Victorian age. “Nowadays many women are fairly well educated, or at least fairly well read ,and the more .they learn of the world the less they are satisfied with the part which society and fate have

between them allotted to women. Consequently some of them attempt to escape from the cage of dull domestic drudgery in which social convention seeks to pen them for the good ol the race and the multiplication of the units of the nation. It is usually the intellectual who rebel, and-there can be very little doubt that their rebellion is bad for the community, ol which they are an essential part. Hence it has been said, of bourse bv a masculine critic, that ‘intellect in a woman i« as much an evidence of disease as a pearl in an oyster.’ The fact that highly educated women—at for instance, women who have taken University degrees and have then married—produce far fewer children than their less well educated sisters is amply proved by statistics. But it.,is too late in the day now to withdraw the blessing of education from any human soul, The whole matter must be left in the hands of women themselves. Human history tends to show that all such movements have their fluctuations and run a more or less definite course. Doubtless the day of simpler manners will come again. When it does come, the world will receive it g)adly.”