The Press WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1946. Saving Food

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24869, 8 May 1946, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1946. Saving Food

In a statement printed tq-day the National Famine Emergency Committee appeals to the public to cooperate in the plan to save food by voluntary rationing; and the appeal can only be endorsed and urgently recommended. As the com- 1 mittee says, the voluntary system is “ a challenge to the public con- “ science ”, It is fairly said; and those members of the public who have studied the facts and felt their dreadful import will already have put the issue to themselves in the same way. This is the plan now working; and, while that is so, it is a universal duty to contribute genuinely to its success. Head and heart can be at one acknowledging it.

It is not easy, however, to go much further with the committee. The statement does more than urge the public to support the plan: it defends the plan as one “ arrived at “ for good reasons ”, which, in a rather inconsecutive, repetitive style, are then elaborated. They will not stand close inspection. They may be summarily put as follows. First, “ equal sacrifice would not “ result necessarily ” from harder compulsory rationing. No: family, 1 personal, and local conditions vary; and there will always be selfish dodgers and snatchers, and others ready to serve them. But compulsory ‘ rationing must, on the whole, work more equitably than voluntary, must spread sacrifice more generally, and must produce a greater 1 total saving. If it were safe and 1 sufficient to appeal to the “ public 1 “ conscience ”, no compulsory meas- ■ ures would have been necessary 1 during the war. Individual con- 1 sciences are more or less sensitive; ’ individual judgment is varyingly < clear and honest; many individuals, ’ in circumstances such as these, had 1 rather be told what measure of '

hardship they should accept, of a ' kind they accept in principle, than < apportion it to themselves. Harder < compulsory rationing is needed, not i because it will certainly and strictly j make sacrifice “ equal ” —though it i will certainly make sacrifice more j general and more nearly equal—but i because it will load more ships and j save more lives. 1 Second, the committee’s statement ; enlarges upon the difficulties that ] would be met if severer rationing j were to be imposed upon a com- i munity in which consumers are dlf- ; ferently situated. Some families are : large; others, small. Problems of dis- i tribution and supply are harder in ; one district than another. “In a “ great many cases, because of home j “ conditions, geographical situation, ■ “ age, physical fitness, and working ] “ conditions, the present scale of i “ rationing bears heavily ”, The • committee should have struck out this sorry plea, which will make i many of the consumers for whom it is advanced feel ashamed of their spokesmen. There is nothing in the , situation of New Zealand consumers , as a whole to justify the suggestion . that they will suffer unduly, or unendurably, if their scale of living is lowered a little nearer to that* of ■ British consumers as a whole. Special grpups and classes—the aged . and the sick, for example—would

be, and should be. protected under severer rationing, as they are now. Workers in heavy industries would be, and should be. protected, as they are now—though the Government has never plainly announced what groups and numbers draw additional rations and what thdse additions are. The committee had no right to argue as if special allowances were not made now and could not be made under a severer scheme. It had no right, lumping protected and unprotected classes together, to plead that rationing already “bears “heavily” on many consumers—so heavily that they can bear no more. The people of Britain are bearing much more, as they have for years; and they are now to bear more yet, under harder rationing, to help the peoples of other countries, who are bearing famine.

Third, the committee turns to what it calls the "practical impds- “ sibility ” of distributing smaller rations of butter. This is the sort of practical impossibility that the British Government and the British

people have coped with for years. The committee descends to childishness, but is not addressing children. “ The extra burden ” of serving a smaller ration would be “ intolerable “ for retailers ”. The committee is not in office to spare retailers but, sparing nobody his fair and full exertion, to help to avert a catastrophe. The committee says, with truth, that the voluntary plan is “the “ only way at the present level of “ rationing tfiat allows people to say “ how they can save extra butter “ and meat, what they can save at “ any particular time, and when “ they can. make a sacrifice to fit in " with individual conditions ”, Of course it is—"at the present level “of rationing ”, The committee’s explanation of a plan which not one consumer in five clearly understands or wholly trusts is no more than an apology for it. If the ration stands as it does now, everybody can please himself.- But the committee does not say, and cannot say, that pleasing ourselves we are sure to do our utmost; and nothing less than the utmost is enough.