In reporting the same meeting, the Vossische Zeitung tells us that the purchase of agricultural requirements by the cooperative societies during the year totalled 259,000,000 marks (12,950,000l.), while 'purchase and sale together amounted to 459,000,000 marks (22,950,000l.) as against 303,000,000 (15,150,000l.) in the previous year.' There were present at the meeting representatives from the Prussian Home Office, the Treasury and the Department of Agriculture, as well as from the Board of Trade and the Military Command of the Province. The delegates were welcomed on behalf of the Imperial Minister of Agriculture by 'Ministerialdirektor' Dr Müller (himself a well-known cooperator), who expressed the regrets of the Minister that he was unavoidably prevented from attending in person. Dr Brümmer subsequently addressed the meeting on behalf of the Prussian Department of Agriculture, and remarked that the war had laid upon agriculture, and consequently upon the cooperative societies, unusually heavy burdens:

In face of the starvation policy of our enemies, cooperation stands as our staunchest asset in bringing this policy to naught. The cooperative societies are called upon to work with us in the fullest possible manner, in order to ensure the feeding of our people and the provisioning of our armies.'

These quotations will suffice to show the importance attributed to the cooperative movement in Germany. Our enemies are practical to the point of brutality, as we have good reason to know; and it is unlikely that they took so much trouble to give an air of authority to this cooperative meeting on merely sentimental grounds. A similar meeting held in London would pass practically unnoticed both by officials and by newspapers. Unquestionably in Germany the importance of cooperative societies is fully recognised. We can realise why this should be the case when we find that Dr Rabe (a cooperative leader from Halle), in giving 'a retrospect and a forecast of cooperation,' made the following remarks:

'The economic strength of the peasantry is rendered all the more important by the consideration that, even after peace is declared, economic warfare is bound to go on for some time longer. Tickets for bread, meat and butter, and very likely

for other articles, will probably have to be used for some time after the declaration of peace. . . . It is urgently necessary to set up store-houses for grain, food-stuffs and fertilisers, in order to render useless all future attempts on the part of our enemies to starve our people, and also to secure ourselves against failures of the harvest.'

A Government supported by an association of more than 2,500,000 farmers, whose spokesman can take this line, would be indeed foolish not to foster and utilise it.

The history of the attitude of the German Government to cooperation would, if it could be written, afford an interesting illustration of the gradual realisation of that fact. The Schulze-Delitzsch Union, the oldest of all, which is mainly concerned with the organisation of credit societies and building associations among the artisans of the large towns, has steadfastly resisted all advances on the part of the State; while the Union of Distributive Cooperative Societies, which was suspected of social-democratic tendencies, was regarded with active disfavour by the authorities and the middle classes. But the position of the Unions of agricultural societies was very different. The Raiffeisen Union alternated between appeals for better treatment-which in the early days of the movement were unavailing-and suspicious withdrawal when the Government actually proposed to give it support. The old difficulty-how Government aid can be accepted without a loss of freedom-arose in its acutest form. Eventually, the late Herr Haas, who stood high in the favour of the central authorities, created the Imperial Union (Reichsverband) of agricultural cooperative societies, to which the Raiffeisen Union and many smaller bodies were affiliated.

This marked the high-water mark of the rapprochement between the State and the agricultural cooperator. The intermediary links were found in the personality of Herr Haas and his friends, in the newly-established Preussenkasse, a State Bank which acted as a central cooperative society, and in the Chambers of Agriculture. It was not long before the Raiffeisen Union perceived that it was threatened, in return for benefits received, with a considerable measure of interference; and, shortly before the war, it again severed its connexion with the

Reichsverband, which was further weakened by disasters which reflected discredit on some of its principal credit societies. But the State had come sufficiently closely into touch with the movement to ensure that on the outbreak of war all such differences would disappear; and during the last two years a highly useful harmony has prevailed. Even the unpopular Union of Consumers' Societies has come into favour not only with agricultural cooperators but with Government; the most significant token of that fact being that Dr Müller himself was a leading industrial cooperator and is now a prominent official in the Department of the Food Dictator.

What services have the cooperative societies been able to render in return for the position of importance conceded to them? Four main problems have faced Germany-the distribution of feeding-stuffs, the handling of the potato supply, the war loans, and the policy with regard to price and distribution of food-supplies, particularly grain, live-stock and dairy produce. In all of these, cooperative societies, under the guidance of the Chambers of Agriculture, have played an important part.

From the beginning of the war it was clearly seen that the stock-breeders of the Empire would have to be rationed by some central body, if the available supply of feeding-stuffs were to be made the most of. In spite of the efforts to render German agriculture self-supporting, the Empire has imported of recent years feeding-stuffs to the average annual value of more than 20,000,0007. During the war most of this vast amount has had to be dispensed with, and the problem has been how to use the remainder to the best advantage. One of the first steps taken was to order the wholesale slaughter of swine, in order to economise food. This order, indiscriminately applied, proved disastrous, as it resulted in inexperienced people undertaking the slaughtering, with tremendous losses to the nation; moreover, it was seen that fresh pigmeat would be required later to supplement the rations of the people. In this case, as in others to which we shall refer, the authorities eventually realised that it is practically impossible to control agriculture to the best advantage by governmental orders or prohibitions. Not only do local conditions, both human and natural, make it impossible to say what effects may be produced, but there is no

method of exercising a really effective control over farmers who desire to evade such laws, without irreparably damaging the whole industry. The problems must be approached from a standpoint of business-like opportunism, combined with local knowledge.

As a result of such reflections, the Government finally took the remarkable step of handing over the whole control of distribution and trade in fodder to a nonofficial cooperative central body-the Bezugsvereinigung or Collective Purchasing Agency of the agricultural cooperative movement. This Agency was founded in 1901, on the initiative of the Imperial Federation, and includes that body as well as the German Agricultural Society and the Agrarian League among its shareholders. Its main purpose was originally the purchase of basic slag for its members; and it has made contracts for as much as 620,000 tons of this commodity in one year. But the handing over to it of a virtual monopoly of one of the most important branches of Germany's war-time commerce is a proof of the trust reposed in it, which must seem incredible to those who take the traditional English view of the cooperative movement as an amateurs' hobby. So far as information is available, the results have been excellent; at all events there is no recrimination against this body such as has been rife against the Getreidegesellschaft (the official body for dealing with grain and bread) and all the other curious combinations of joint-stock companies and government departments with which Germany experimented.

Almost before the problem of fodder had been brought more or less under control, the authorities were confronted with the spectre of a shortage in the potato supply. In this matter there is no doubt, from what we can read in every German agricultural paper, that serious mistakes were made by the Government departments, in spite of the warnings of the Chambers of Agriculture and practical farmers. It seems probable that too much was expected of the crops which were supposed to be rendered available for food by the restriction of the enormous acreage under sugar-beets and alcohol-producing potatoes. In any case there has been a serious deficiency at each harvest since the outbreak of war, in comparison with the estimates which had been formed.

Attempts to meet this shortage by prohibitions on the use of the crop for feeding pigs on the one hand, and by maximum prices and similar inducements on the other, broke down almost completely, for the reasons we have already stated. Every form of abuse arose, and serious discontent was created among the people-so serious in fact that agitation on this score, coupled with the handling of the bread question, led to the appointment of the Food Dictator. Even by this drastic measure it will be impossible of course to cope with a real shortage; but a previous step is more interesting for our purpose.

On April 12, 1915, a central body, under the Imperial Chancellor, was established to supervise the distribution of potato supplies for the civil population, particularly the poorer people. This Board worked almost entirely through local authorities, using the Chambers of Agriculture and the cooperative societies as its chief helpers. The whole country was divided into districts where the supply exceeded the demand, and those where the contrary was the case-called respectively Uberschusskreisen and Bedarfskreisen. The local authorities in the former class of districts have to supply the needs of the Stateparticularly the army and navy-first, and thereafter to store carefully all their surplus and to furnish a return of it to the central body. The authorities in the districts of scarcity, on the other hand, must state their case to the central body, which decides on its merits and, if necessary, transfers to the district some of the potatoes stored in the other parts of the country. The comparative failure of all this machinery was due to real shortage, not to a defect in the machinery; had the system not been in existence, the distress would have been terrible. Our point is that the system could not now be created without vast labour in England, whereas, through the existence of such thorough local organisation as we have described, it was practically already created in Germany and only waited to be used for some such purpose. Before leaving the subject of potatoes, we may mention the fact that a special cooperative society was organised in Berlin early in the year 1915 to provide land, machinery, seeds and manures, by which the members of various labour organisations in the city and suburbs could cultivate several hundred acres of waste lands and put