SUBMARINES, CORN, AND DOGMA

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 101, 28 April 1917, Page 4

SUBMARINES, CORN, AND DOGMA

London advises thai the loss of fiftyfive ships in a /week has impressed the public, and has considerably shaken Liberal, opposition to the Com Production Bill. A great deal of the, Liberal criticism «eems to have been founded not on the war situation—the paramount consideration—but ■on old free trade and laisser faire traditions as unchangeable as the spots upon the leopard. If the German submarine coup will entirely banish for the period of the war this inherited bigotry, it will not have been an unmixed curse. Freetraders like the editor of the Spectator have already seen that the vrar has created an entirely new situation; that measures of State interference necessitated fey war-needs can no longer be negatived on purely doctrinaire grounds ; and that the old angle of approach to economic questions is no longer convincing and all-sufficient. The question is not whether the Corn Production Bill involves some form of protection to agriculture; the question is whether it is needed to win the war. After some ten years in office, Mr. Runciman, taking up a controversial attitude, propounds an alternative—national granaries. But the tinie for establishing these was when Mr. Runciman was himself President of the Board of Trade; if he had builded better in his day, the situation now existing would probably have afforded less ground for criticism. Towards the end of last year (shortly before following Mr. Asquith out of the Ministry), Mr. Runciman at last came before the House of Commons with a scheme of Government control of wheat, and in his speech (delivered in October) he is reported as Saying that " the possibility of thfe release of much wheat now locked up in grain-exporting countries had caused the trade here to become disinclined to hold more than a minimum stock." While hard things may be said of " the trade,." what shall 'Be said of the Government that relied on such a broken reed? Here is the advocate of national granaries (in April, 1917), admitting in October, 1916, a speculative reliance on the vagaries of " the trade " ! Undoubtedly the food-troubles of the present Government are rooted in the record of the last one, and a great deal more of action and a good ( deal, less of tradition will be needed if the intensified submarine danger is to be effectively countered. i