Laudator Temporis Acti

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), Great Trade Route (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1937), pp. 42-43:

If you set out to save civilization on the lines here indicated later you will be met at once by the objection that people do not like growing things. . . . There can be no greater mistake. The one thing that all men like is obtaining something for nothing . . . and there is no greater thrill of satisfaction than seeing, pushing through the earth,  the first shoots from the seeds you have sown. . . . Ask any child. . . . Ask, indeed, any schoolmaster whose demesne provides garden plots for the children under his care. . . . You will find that he will say that, cut whatever other class they may, his children will be always ready for tuition in the use of spade and hoe and dibble.

Every child, in fact, ought to be taught reading and writing and to lisp Latin as soon as it can lisp anything. . . . But just as imperatively every child should be given the opportunity to express itself in Earth. It is, like swimming, a primitive art, the knowledge of which, once gained, will never leave you — and never lose for you its fascination.

. . . And no State can be called civilized that, along with bread and circuses, does not accord to all its subjects the sacred right to dig . . . and the land in which to do it.

Id., p. 44:

The greater part of the inhabitants of the great oval whose rim we are to follow never taste real food from their cradles to their graves. They never taste vegetables fresh from the beds, fruit fresh from the trees, bread from wheat not manured by chemicals, meats not rendered unassimilable by refrigeration and again by chemicals. All these thrown together by totally incompetent and careless cooks so that they have none of the appetizing qualities that ensure good digestion. So their brains are for ever starved of good blood, their minds are incapable of reflection, courage, or stability. And so, refrigeration and preservatives having done their work in glutting with inedibilia the markets of the world, prices fluctuate like frightened chickens in a run and at last fall to rock bottom. And, carrying on its back a screaming Mass Production, the bronze bull that is the Machine Age charges the brazen wall called Crisis.

And the brains of the petrified statesmen are fed with the same fluid as that of their flocks.