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ood is heir to. That medicine may become a mosaic of specialities, and, like the atom breaking up into electrons, eds become disintegrated and lose its comprehensive outlook on the individual, is not probable. But to combine the undoubted advantages of trained specialised observation with those of the wisdom of a man whose vision of the patient as a whole is the outcome of extensive experience, a remedy is in being, especially in America; this is team work; a number of medical men each of whom are specialists become associated with one or more men fitted to correlate the collected findings, who, in consultation with them, are thus enabled to arrive at a final decision. The patient first goes the round of specialists and is finally submitted to the verdict of the supervising physician. This group medicine,' practised in so-called diagnostic clinics, is best exemplified by the famous Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minnesota; but in this country it is at present comparatively little developed. HUMPHRY ROLLESTON.

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Art. 12. THE NATION AND THE LAND.

THE Conservative party pledged itself at the polls to carry out a national and not a class or sectional policy, thus accepting anew Disraeli's massive saying: If the Tory party is not a national party, it is nothing,' and since the Election Mr Baldwin has convinced the country that this pledge will be honoured in spirit and in letter, in the sense, at any rate, that class or sectional interests will not prevail. But a national policy involves something more than the avoidance of a class or a sectional outlook. And that something more' is nowhere more necessary, more difficult, more elusive than with regard to the land, the agriculture, the countryside of Britain. For of it perhaps more than of any other question, is it easy to take a narrow rather than a national view. The risk is not of a class point of view being accepted and adopted: it is that the rural problem should be regarded as a matter for the country community alone. is a sectional not a class outlook that is to be feared. The tendency to treat town and country as if they necessarily existed in separate watertight compartments is great, as every politician knows who has felt the temptation to discuss rural questions only with country audiences, urban questions only in the cities, and perhaps has even found himself expressing to the former views which he would hardly be able to maintain in the latter. This is, of course, the line of least resistance and leads inevitably to a sectional treatment of rural problems, and to any policy, so restricted in its appeal, being still-born. The first test of a national policy is that it can be stated, explained, justified, not only to a section, but to the whole of the nation.

To arrive at a national policy for the problems of the rural world, it is, first and foremost, essential to regard the land, its produce, its population, as constituting the country estate of the nation. For thus, and only thus, do the future and the fate of the countryside become one of spacious master-topics in which the whole people can be made to feel a concern, with regard to which its sympathies and its sense of responsibility can be quickened, and only thus, too, do the questions which must be asked, if a national policy is to emerge, become

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pointed, pertinent, pressing. These questions are-What s Britain going to do with her country estate? Does heit need development, can it be developed? and, most pregnant question of all, which line of development, if more than one be possible, will best reinforce and harmonise with our urban system and therefore arouse to the utmost the sympathy and interest of the urban population? And these questions have this further merit. They show plainly to what address they must be posted. It is obviously idle for those who feel a deep concern for country things to put these questions to each other. This the ruralists' have done too long. They would be more usefully employed in making arrangements to take in each other's washing.

For it is not the country districts which can decide whether and how Britain is going to develop her country estate. Only the cities and the towns can make that decision. They, politically, are Britain. Nothing that they disapprove can be done. Nothing that they approve long remains undone. There is, of course, no place in our public life to-day for an 'Agrarian Party,' self-sufficing and self-contained, dominating Parliament and deciding policy, for not only are the county constituencies a minority of the House of Commons, but even of these, there are but few in which the town voter does not outnumber the country and the village voter. Irresistible is the conclusion, therefore, that if Britain is to develop her country estate, the policy must be one which commends itself to the urban democracy and still more must arouse in it a vivid sense of the interdependence, even in an industrialised nation such as Britain, of the interests of country and of town.

Hopeless, at first sight, such a task might be thought; for Britain has been towards her country estate, for years, a mere absentee landlord. Its people are strangers: its problems a mystery: its life a dull farce played in front of a rural drop-scene. Does the townsman require more of his country-estate than a site for his week-end cottage; first-class roads for his car or charabanc; holiday lodgings for his family; for himself, a good train service back to town? And the difficulties. lie deeper still. The rank-and-file, the mass of the people, are always responsive to sound views, honestly

set before them. The dice are loaded against the development of Britain's country estate in a much more serious way. The mass of the urban population, if they seem indifferent to its fate, only adopt the tone set by the urban leaders. There is not one of the main interests, which influence the policy of the nation and form its opinion, which has any desire (or apparently any motive) to give a moment's thought to what lies beyond the buses and the street lamps.

The dwindling country population offers no expanding market. The manufacturer feels that it does not interest him. The produce of British fields pays no freight. It is of no use to the shipping magnate. To deal in that produce no great importing agencies are needed. Why should the city merchant care? From the financial transactions involved, the bill-broker and the merchant banker get no pickings. Their eyes are turned elsewhere. Rural Britain does not interest the Stock Exchange, for it is not expressed in terms of shares. Big business has no use for it. There is no money in it.' To the banks, who gallantly do their thankless task, agriculture only means a pile of overdrafts. In a word, if from time immemorial the town has had difficulty in understanding the country, the City' does not even want to begin to try to understand it. Many industrial and financial leaders, it may even be hazarded, have convinced themselves that the development of rural Britain is only a fad, and cherish the hope that in the ideal Britain of the future, the factories will stretch from shire to shire and the bungalows from sea to sea.

But that is not all. Just as town and city dominate the general life and thought, so amongst the departments of Government does the Treasury spread its influence far and wide in the administrative life of Britain. This, indeed, is as it should be, for finance is as truly the sinews of government as it is of war. But, unfortunately, it is those very interests which are most indifferent to rural Britain which are the intimates of the Treasury. One may be better loved than another, but it is to the industrialist, the shipowner, the merchant, the banker-big business and high finance-that the Treasury unbends. There are no causeries intimes in those inner sanctuaries for rural Britain, and small

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vonder; for to Treasury eyes, rural Britain embodies The most unattractive features of a country cousin and poor relation. Even the Treasury is human enough to withdraw itself instinctively from an object at once so anattractive and so distressing. There are, of course, exceptions: a beetroot or a hop are from time to time "observed and even recognised. The fact remains, however, that among the nations there is none in which the general official temperament is less disposed to concern itself with rural and agricultural development. The Treasury cannot escape responsibility for this, for the Treasury view' is the dominating view, and it is definitely inimical to the call of the countryside. The Treasury merely wishes that rural Britain would go away and not bother.' Nor can it be said that it is not the business of the Treasury to develop a constructive view on such a topic. The Treasury, as the expert adviser on taxation to successive Governments, has, since 1894, taken a leading part in destroying the existing structure of the rural community. The Death Duties of 1894 laid the axe at the foot of the tree, and, as originally framed, the revised scale of 1925 would have completed the work. Indeed, it would have done more. It would have struck a serious blow at the farmer who owns the land he cultivates. 1925, that is, would have hit the very type which 1894 began to produce. A concession to outside opinion, quite unnecessarily makeshift and clumsy in method, averted this misfortune, but it may well be asked what, in the Treasury's own view, is the proper land-system for Britain? Obviously not the large estate with its tenant farmers cultivating the land, and now, apparently, not the owneroccupier. If England has been an absentee landlord to her country estate, the Treasury, it would seem, has been a short-sighted and a heedless land-agent. Be that as it may, the time has clearly come for landlord and land-agent alike to face the facts.

For what, to-day, is the condition of Britain's rural estate? The picture has again and again been painted in the blackest colours, so dark, indeed, that no one could accept it as altogether correct who knows the extent to which agriculture in Britain is still a profitable business, and the British farmer, whether arable, grazing, dairy