" The Countryman " -
If there has ever been a bad number of The Countryman I have never seen it. The fourteenth birthday number is slim, but in all other respects as admirable as ever. Its range is delightfully wide; it faces all rural problems, as always, with freshness and realism. Half a dozen land-girls, speaking their piece about their work, have some pretty hard things to say about a life of which loneliness seems to be the hardest part. (" You have to be a country fanatic, like me, to stodge on month after month with no prospect of advance- ment.") There are some stony facts from a market-gardener, formerly a public-school boy, about a trade in which, " unless you have excep- tional brains and forethought, your ride is going to be a rough one." He, too, has something to say of land-girls: " Out of my twenty land-girls, only twelve were capable of earning their country minimum on piece-work rates at the end of the month." He favours local women—that race of blowsy Amazons who work in. sackcloth and the old man's cap and look like something left over from a revolution. In this same number rural authors speak on rural education, and farmer-subscribers from all parts give some pretty cold advice to the young soldier who, after the war, wants to fulfil the eternal dream of a farm.
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