Sometimes the grains are dry and shrivelled and hard as shot, sometimes
they are large and full and have a juiciness about them, sometimes they
are a little bit red, others are golden, many white.
The sack stands open
in the market - you can thrust your arm in it a foot deep, or take up a
handful and let it run back like a liquid stream, or hold it in your palm
and balance it, feeling the weight. They are not very heavy as they lie
in the palm, yet these little grains are a ponderous weight that rules
man's world. Wherever they are there is empire. Could imperial Rome have
only grown sufficient wheat in Italy to have fed her legions Caesar would
still be master of three-fourths of the earth. Rome thought more in her
latter days of grapes and oysters and mullets, that change colour as they
die, and singing girls and flute-playing, and cynic verse of
Horace - anything rather than corn. Rome is no more, and the lords of the
world are they who have mastership of wheat. We have the mastership at
this hour by dint of our gold and our hundred-ton guns, but they are
telling our farmers to cast aside their corn, and to grow tobacco and
fruit and anything else that can be thought of in preference. The gold is
slipping away. These sacks in the market open to all to thrust their
hands in are not sacks of corn but of golden sovereigns, half-sovereigns,
new George and the dragon, old George and the dragon, Sydney mint
sovereigns, Napoleons, half-Napoleons, Belgian gold, German gold, Italian
gold; gold scraped and scratched and gathered together like old rags from
door to door.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 144 of 394
Words from 38777 to 39074
of 105669
