TOPICS OF THE DAY
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RM. FOOD SHORTAGE AND HOW TO MEET IT.
"UNLESS the Government are frightening us without cause over the food shortage question, which is inconceivable, the situation is very grave. They tell us in effect that the difficulties of getting the food required to prevent the people of these islands starving are at the moment considerable, and that they are going to increase in the future. When the nation is, told such a thing as this the time for recriminations 'sad explanations is past. Action alone can meet the case. What is to be done ? There are two ways in which action can he made effective. (1) We must all of us eat less and waste less. (2) We must increase the food supply which we have under our control. To do these two things thoroughly we must form immediately an efficient organization -which shall 'encourage, stimulate, and control all that makes for the conservation of the food we have in hand and for the pro- duction of fresh supplies. We must have a Grand Victualler to the Nation who will give his whole time and energy to the job. Tho matter must cease to be a side-show in an already overburdened Department. We must entrust the work to the man in the nation who is best fitted for it—a man who is able to inspire people to great efforts, who can act with lightning speed, and who will refuse to let himself be daunted, depressed, and sterilized by superficial objections. We must deal with the food question as we dealt with the munitions question, and, unless we are mistaken, we must deal with it through the same magnetic personality. We must put Mr. Lloyd George to work, and we must give him a free hand.
Assuming that we have got the ideal Grand Victualler, let us deal first with what he can do in the matter of conserving the food supplies already in our possession. All waste must be stopped, and all over-eating. Anything which is suitable for human food and can be used for that purpose, either directly or indirectly—by feeding human beings or by feeding the animals which later on will be consumed by human beings —must in future be used for no other purpose. The most obvious example, of course, is that of intoxicants. We must not turn into intoxicants material which can be used to feed either human beings or cattle or pigs or poultry.
But this conservation of food supplies must be achieved not by talking but by drastic action—if necessary by rationing the people as they are rationed in Germany. Every one but the wounded and the sick must be content to go on to three- quarter or, it may be, half rations, and the burden must be borne equally by all. That the British people, if the 'subject is thoroughly explained to them, will not merely acquiesce, but will loyally co-operate in such drastic restric- tions in order to win the war, we do not doubt for a moment. But there must be no holding back of the facts, nor any attempt to gloss them over. Lastly, any refusal by rich or poor to carry out the orders of the Grand Victualler to the 'Cation, or Controller of Food Supplies, or whatever he is called, must be sternly dealt with.
So much for keeping down the waste or over-use of food- stuffs. Now for the question of supply. This subject can be sub-divided in two parts. (1) The Grand Victualler must comb " the globe in order to obtain supplies of food, but must " comb " it very judiciously and without creating a panic. (2) Most important of all, he must do everything to increase the food supply within these islands. He Must make two blades of corn grow where one grew bef ore. Presumably we are for the moment going to find our chief external granary in Australia. Here comes in the secondary difficulty, that of tonnage. It takes nearly three times as long to get corn from Australia as from America owing to the length of the voyage. Therefore it uses roughly three times as much tonnage to supply us from Australia. But quite apart from submarines, our tonnage is short. Therefore we have got to practise the conservation of tonnage as well as of food. Here then the ,Grand Victualler must be empowered to act drastically. No one must tell him that he cannot have this or that ship for carrying food because it is wanted to bring the materials for brewing beer, or for paper for newspapers or books, or for some other luxury which is masquerading under the alias of a neces- sary. But we must not look only to Australia. There is always corn in Egypt, or if not actual corn, the potentiality of corn. There is a country where the work of agriculture is stopped neither by cold nor by heat, and where the constant sun and the beneficent waters of the Nile combine to grow three crops a year on the same piece of land. There may be difficulties . which we do not see, but we should have thought that the land of Egypt might be used to give us quick crops. Again, in other parts of Africa there must be plenty of latent food- stuffs of various kinds, for in the future our stomachs must not be proud. We must learn to eat other kinds of grain besides the best and whitest wheat I Now comes the most vital and the most difficult problem of all, and yet one which will brook no sort of delay. We must at once " make the dirt fly " throughout the United Kingdom. We must get down to the land and sow corn wherever corn can be suitably grown, ploughing up and digging down, not reck- lessly but with wise intention, all the land which is suitable for tillage and not specially suitable for feeding cattle. Above all, we must plant that quick-growing and abundant crop, the potato, and also other vegetable crops, such as beetroot, beans, and peas. And we must act at once. The Grand Victualler when he is appointed, and he must be appointed without delay, must appoint below him a Food Controller in every county, and that County Controller must appoint a District Controller for every rural district, whose sole business it will be to see that every piece of land within his area suitable for increasing the food supply of the nation shall be put to the best possible use. No doubt many things done in this kind of scramble will be done badly and wastefully, but nevertheless they must be done, for there is no time to lose. It must be the munitions business over again—the right thing done in the wrong way and at the wrong time. Wherever a suitable place could be found to erect a shell factory it was erected, often with great waste, but still in the end with the practical results required. The great thing is to stop the scandal of muddy meditation and take action. And there must be no nonsense as to insuperable difficulties, no use of the word " impossible "- " that fool of a word," as Napoleon called it.. And all the time; though we know we are recommending panic measures, there must be no panic spirit. " Steady there!" must be the essential, the ever-remembered motto of all the action taken and of every man who acts.
One word of warning. There must be no attempt to practise the mad policy of an artificial reduction in the prices of food alongside of the policy of food conservation. Indeed the impulse should be the other way. A rise in prices, if properly understood and properly used, will be our salvation, not our injury. High prices help conservation, and, what is still more important, they help supply. If prices are to be lowered here by an arbitrary decree, who is going to be such a fool as to help us out of our difficulties ? We have to let the whole world know that they may make their fortunes by growing food quickly and sending it here rather than by keeping it at home. If we artificially cut down prices here, we sterilize instead of stimulating the impulse to feed us from abroad. We are in effect saying to the world : " If you are such fools as to send us food, we warn you that you are not going to obtain inflated prices. You will get nothing more here than what we choose to tell you is a fair price. Our peopld, even if they want to do so, are not going to be allowed to pay you a penny more than we think suitable." Instead of this we must let, high prices hoist to the whole world the cheery signal : " Here's your chance." We want to proceed along the line of giving bounties to the producer, not of cutting down his remuneration. One of the ways of doing this, perhaps the best, is to see to it that the freights are low. While we put obstacles in the way of the people who want to block our ships with luxuries, every path, physical and financial, must be smoothed for those who wish to send us food.
No easy task lies before the Grand Victualler to the Nation, and yet it is one of vast importance, one that any patriot might be proud to be called upon to perform, one which, as we said last week, is not too big for any man, however great. Wo pointed to Mr. Lloyd George last week without naming him. But whether it is he or another, let us remind him that, though the job is difficult, it is by no means impossible. Indeed, if it is handled in the right spirit its very importance will tend to make it easy. Thank God ! we have the most patriotic people in the world, even though the most stubborn. Once convince them that they have got to make sacrifices and to do as they are told, and there is nothing that they will not do to serve and save the State. After all, it is only a question of will. If the will is constant and rightly directed, our difficulties will dis- appear, and we shall find that the thistle which we braced our- selves to grasp has turned in our hand to a ,sheaf of ripe corn.
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