will be partisans, the newspapers will display the same partisanship, and the readers of those newspapers will, as a rule, reflect their partisanship. The more important the treaty, the more contentious it will be, the more it will be discussed, the more the average man will have firm convictions for or against it. Hence while in England the working man or the shopkeeper seldom vehemently champions or denounces a treaty and of the existence of most treaties he would know nothing-in America it becomes the topic on every man's lips, passion is inflamed, prejudice is appealed to, racial animosities are played upon, and the President may be accused of having betrayed the country or bartered away its liberties.

It may seem superfluous to urge the importance of the cultivation of the personal relation between the peoples of the two countries in view of the close contact that has been maintained during the last few years, the visits of distinguished persons, and the numerous societies and other associations that have been established to create this relation; but these merely touch the fringe. What we forget in England, if indeed we ever knew, is that America is a country of 110,000,000 people, and the bulk of those millions-percentages are immaterial— are not distinguished, they are not members of clubs or societies, they neither make speeches nor write books, they do not live in the large houses in great cities; when they travel they remain in their obscurity and do not come in contact, either abroad or at home, with statesmen or the brilliant world of society. They are the great plodding, inarticulate, dull mass; individually of only minor importance, but all powerful because of their mass. The 'distinguished' man-one refers of course to the man whose distinction comes from holding high political office and whose utterances or action in consequence carry weight-owes his distinction to the mass, who give or take away as it may please them. Denied the power of expression they retain the power of action, which they exercise freely. The American who has reached distinction, the President, Senator or Governor, knows this; he knows it is the mass and not the class that made him, and as easily as they made him they can break him. We in England know nothing of the American mass; we know only in a vague way that it exists, but we assume that the class represents America. It does not. That assertion does not need

to be qualified, even if it savours of an utterance ex cathedra. Go into any 'movie' theatre in America, whether it be New York or a village which is only a dot on the map, and you find a cross section of the mass; but the 'Diamond Horseshoe' of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, one of the great sights of the world, with all its beauty and brilliance, and telling its own story of wealth and fashion and culture, is the exotic setting of a class. The patrons of the opera are counted by their hundreds; 20,000,000 men and women daily see life as the film presents it.

What I mean by establishing the personal relation is to do on our side with the same directness what our enemies have with such cunning and so ingeniously done on theirs. The Irish News Bureau has made many thousands of Americans believe that England has done a great wrong to Ireland. Questions of policy, shadowy and disputable historical claims, motives even, can be argued, and the argument is seldom if ever conclusive; but every man feels competent to render judgment on a flagrant act of injustice. The Irish News Bureau has been clever enough to grasp this elementary psychology. It has made Americans believe that England has wronged Ireland; it has made a great many Americans, quite unconsciously, sit as judge and jury and render a verdict; it has made them take a very lively interest in the 'wrongs' of Ireland, and given them a personal interest in the case of Ireland.

It is as good as any If these clouds to a

I take Ireland merely as an illustration. other, but many others could be used. fairer future are to be swept away we must rely not on formal communications between governments and the reserved utterances of officials, always fearful lest they shall say too much or incautiously commit themselves, but on frank and open intercourse. In a word, let the two peoples regard themselves as friends who have no concealments, and who value that friendship so much that they are not too proud to explain whenever explanation is necessary.

A. MAURICE Low.

SCIENCE AND FRUIT GROWING

Science and Fruit Growing. Being an account of the results obtained at the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm since its foundation in 1894. By the DUKE OF BEDFORD and SPENCER PICKERING. Macmillan. 1919.

THE

HE record of researches carried out by the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Spencer Pickering, which is now published under the title of Science and Fruit Growing,' appears at an opportune time. Twenty-five years ago, when the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm was established, fruit growers generally were engaged either in trying to carry on their industry along old lines, or, as was the case with Kentish growers, in renovating their orchards and adapting their industry to modern conditions. It was therefore hardly to be expected that they would be in a position to pay much attention to the scientific side of fruit growing, nor indeed had they been accustomed to look to science for help. Furthermore, twenty-five years ago biological science was so deeply engaged in its own development, and so absorbed in perfecting the laboratory and laboratory methods, as to be oblivious of the scientific problems which the growing of fruit and other crops might present to it for solution. It is true, of course, that many noteworthy exceptions to this devotion to the laboratory may be mentioned, but so far as fruit is concerned the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Spencer Pickering were the only persons in this country who brought the laboratory to the orchard and the orchard to the laboratory.

Conditions have now changed, and prominent among the factors which have contributed to bring about the change are the publication and discussion of the results of the Woburn experiments. During the quarter of a century which has elapsed since the Woburn Station was established, biological and chemical science have increased in wisdom and stature. They can now teach much to the practical grower, and are also better equipped to learn from him and from his growing trees. The solution of the problems recorded will not only benefit the industry of fruit growing, but will widen yet further the range

of botanical science, for among the phenomena presented by growing plants are many undreamt of in laboratory philosophy.

In like manner, the commercial fruit grower has learnt that he must look to science for help. His orchards are beset with many enemies, and to repel their attacks he must learn to recognise them-or at all events their evil manifestations-and to circumvent or counter-attack them. Thus the time is auspicious for the permanent yoking together of science and practice; harnessed singly neither one nor the other can draw fruit growing out of those ruts of routine into which, like all the complex industries of cultivation, it cannot but tend to fall. This conjunction of science with practice will prove of no less benefit to biological science, for it also tends to sink into and to remain in ruts.

It is because science and practice are now better equipped for their several tasks that they are more able to help one another than was the case when the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Spencer Pickering set out as pioneers, determined to prove all things before holding fast to that which is generally accepted.

From time to time since 1897 the publications of the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm have made their appearance as a series of Reports, of which the seventeenth is now in the press. Many of these Reports contain conclusions which challenge the correctness of contemporary practice, and needless to say the Woburn gospels were received by no means always gladly by growers or men of science. At all times to the stay-at-home the pioneer is perforce a ne'er-do-weel, for if he were not he also would stay at home, and all people find it more or less difficult to accept the hard saying, 'There is one truth, whether it please 'or whether it displease.'

To-day the increasing sympathy with science which the general body of fruit growers are showing, and their better understanding of both the value and the deliberate, tentative methods of science, make it certain that practical men as well as professional biologists will recognise in the work done at Woburn a great achievement. They will extend to the authors a grateful appreciation of their labours, and will apply to this record of that achievement and of those labours the detached and considered criticism which the authors themselves would most desire.

The present position of the fruit growing industry is in itself so interesting, and the prospects for its extension are so promising, that the authors of the Woburn experiments will not take it amiss if, before detailed reference is made to the more remarkable of their results and conclusions, the present occasion is used to review both position and book. It will moreover be convenient to follow the sapient Dogberry's advice to 'Write 'God first,' and reversing the order of the title, to speak first of the prospects of fruit farming and then of science in relation to that industry.

Whosoever undertakes to survey the present position and prospects of fruit growing in England and Wales will do well to bear in mind the late Lord Salisbury's aphorism about maps. For as politics should be studied on large maps, so the politics of home food production should be studied on the geological map. A scrutiny of that map shows a mosaic of many formations. Its patchwork brings to the mind the diversity of England; a country of diverse soils and plant climates, and of diverse customs, peoples, and characteristics. It is a land of infinite variety, rebellious to generalisations. A recognition of this variety and natural rebelliousness should give pause to those who assume over hastily that all that is required for the extension of home food production is exhortation; who point the finger of reprobation at those farmers whose orchard trees are heavy with moss and lichen, who urge the adoption of mass production of fruit as carried on in foreign countries, and who are apparently unaware that at the present time, and in certain districts of England, the growing of fruit has been brought to a higher pitch of perfection than in any other country whatsoever.

The great commercial fruit growing districts of England may be described roughly as the Kent, East Anglian, and the 'Worcestershire' regions. Southward and westward from Worcestershire lie the cider and perry orchards which extend through the west country, and cover some 100,000 acres in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Devon. In the 'Kent' district may be included the plantations in Sussex and Essex, and also the Middlesex plum orchardsrelics of the girdle of fruit and market gardens which at one time surrounded London.