Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 006
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| Year | 1940 |
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1 ‘III l in \l! I) ‘lll Hi TRANSACTIONS OF THE HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF SCOTLAND *— THE EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON AGRICULTURE. By SIR JOHN BOYD ORR, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S., &c., Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen. WHILE it is easy to predict some of the immediate effects of the war on agriculture, it is impossible to predict what the ultimate efiects will be, because no one can foresee what world conditions will be after the war. It is certain that they will be very difierent from those of 1938. The war is part of a world crisis, possibly the greatest crisis which civilisa- tion has experienced. Its cause lies much deeper than German dissatisfaction with the Versailles peace terms which, indeed, were not so severe as those Germany imposed on Russia in 1917 or on France after the Franco-German War. The fundamental cause is to be found in the social and economic upheaval which is taking place in the world. The application of science in the nineteenth century led to the tremendous expansion of industry and the production of wealth on a scale unthought of in the eighteenth century. The new wealth, however, was very unevenly distributed. The decline 111 British agriculture, side by side with the enormous wealth of the City of London, is only one aSpect of the maldistribution of the wealth which the nineteenth century created. There are wealthy nations, such as ours and the Dutch, with their great overseas possessions, and there are poor nations with no possessions outside their own boundaries, and, within VOL. LII. A T it i ,‘q |
| Title | Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 006 |
