A front-row seat

COUNTRY LIFE has been commenting on the state of the nation for 125 years. Sometimes, the past seems wholly removed, but there are moments when it all seems startlingly familiar

The People's Budget

Supplies of food pour into England from every part of the world and are distributed among the consumers at a cheaper rate of transport than that charged for British produce of the same kind. The State in this battle has given no help whatever to the owner and cultivator. It spends less upon agricultural education and experiment than any other country in Europe... Yet landowners are taxed in England as heavily as though they composed the richest class in the State. May 8, 1909

Britain's proudest moment

No one after the war will dispute that in a test of manhood the British race comes out second to none. We often speak in laudatory terms of past generations, but there is, in fact, no previous period of British history in which so fine an army could have been gathered together. Nor is this all the story. Those who had to stay at home rose to the occasion as well as the soldiers at the front, and the female part of the population, though they could not bear arms, developed a heroism and a devotion to duty which made them most worthy auxiliaries of the fighting Services. November 16, 1918

The Socialist Menace

The Labour Party will be in a precarious position when they come to office, if they do... Over-industrialised Great Britain draws four-fifths of its food and practically the whole of its raw material from foreign countries... The cause of unemployment, broadly speaking, is that a great derangement and partial ruin of our markets has followed upon the war... Any interference with it by those unfamiliar with the springs and movements of the delicate machinery by which it is governed would infallibly end in creating such distress as the country has never before experienced. January 19, 1924

The Silver Jubilee