10 JULY 1941, Page 4

I have received, and genuinely appreciate, some friendly comment on

my paragraph on egg-control. The gist of a long, pertinent and reasonable letter is contained in a single para- graph: "As things are at present some people with hens of their own, or friends with hens, can have all the eggs they want, and others are lucky if they see an egg a fortnight. That is not equality of sacrifice. . . . What has gone wrong? Is the scheme not calculated in fact to bring about equal sacrifices? Or has the Ministry of Food failed to put it over to the public in the right light? Or are we in fact not nearly so enthusiastic about equality of sacrifice as we make out, when once our own larder is affected? " There is much in all this. The real answer, I think, is that at the best the scheme will produce so singularly few eggs per head per month that the individual consumer will be hardly any better off than he is today. Whether a scheme involving so much elaboration and irritation (and so much waste of eggs) is worth while may well be questioned.