From ‘Soldiers for the land’, The Spectator, 13 November 1915: It is certain that, when the war is over, tens of thousands of soldiers will not want to return to their former urban occupations. No man who has enjoyed the liberty of a greater world and a freer life will be reconciled easily to resuming his job of, say, working a lift, or enduring stuffy hours in a shop, or addressing envelopes in an office. The nearest reproduction of the campaigner’s life which will be normally possible for him will be settlement on the land. There he will campaign, against all the pests which try to cheat the farmer of his living, but in all his strategy and tactics he will have the sovereign satisfaction of feeling that he is living at fine and spacious life in which the results correspond to his own energy and judgment.
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