Food

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24797, 11 February 1946, Page 4

Food

In the week since America’s Undersecretary of State focused worldwide attention on Europe’s desperate need of food, the danger of famine has receded, if only slightly. A “ great gesture ”, as Britain’s Food Minister, Sir Ben Smith, has described it, has been made by the United States. The extraction rate of flour has been raised to 80 per cent., as part only of a programme designed to save millions of bushels of wheat. There may be other such gestures, for President Truman has wamingly said that he will call for a return to meat rationing if it becomes necessary. The American effort has been more than matched in Britain, and from India and Australia have also come reports of measures to save food grains or to divert them to Europe’s. need. Though the picture drawn by Mr Acheson at the beginning of last week remains profoundly disturbing, it is some gain that the gravity of the prospect ha~ been wido’y and frankly admitted and action concerted to lighten it. Even so, the statements President Truman and Sir Ben Smith have sre as curiously incomplete as Mr Acheson’s. When the United States, in November, abandoned rationing of all commodities except sugar, and again when Britain went back to high extraction, it was widely, and reasonably, assumed that the grain sh: .t--age in Europe, in prospect as early as June, had been estimated, and that measures had accordingly been taken to ensure adequate relief, on subsistence level at the worst. Since then there have been indications that there were dangers ahead. For instance, General Eisenhower declared that, unless help reached the people of Europe, the situation “ might become disastrous ”, and Mr Hynd, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was “ in no way opti- “ mistic that we shall prevent catas- “ trophe in Germany this winter ”. The puzzle of the situation is to know why, in view of the evidence which lay behind these two statements and must have been accumu--lating before they were made, earlier steps were not taken to meet the danger; why nothing was said about it: whv Mr Attlee, at the ei • of January, seemed to be promising the people of Britain some relief; and why Sir Ben Smith, only a j

I few days ago, brought back from ! Washington his shattering account of the facts. The House of Commons debate, this week, may be expected to answer these questions and will show Whether estimates which seemed safe last autumn were badly astray or whether measures taken in accordance with them broke down.