HOME FOOD SUPPLIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 32, 6 August 1936, Page 24

HOME FOOD SUPPLIES

MR. CHURCHILL ON

DEFENCE

PLIGHT IN WAR TIME

A resolution urging on the British Government the need of a large increase in the production of home food supplies as an indispensable element in national defence was unanimously carried at a meeting of the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture at the Chartered Surveyors' Institution, Westminster, on June 23, says "The Times." The resolution was supported by Mr. Churchill, who declared that he was surprised and pained to see'vthe lack of comprehension that existed throughout the country of the dangerous position in which we were.

Mr. George Lambert, M.P., who presided, moved the resolution. He said there was probably no greater need from the points of view of health and defence than that we should be supplied with a greater amount of wholesome home-grown food. The means were at hand. They had skilled cultivators who produced the finest cattle and the largest crops. They had also skilled agricultural workers. It was a deplorable tendency of rural life that those irreplaceable men were slowly dwindling in numbers. They had wage regulations, but the wage of the agricultural worker was not equal to the wage of other skilled workers, and therefore he was leaving the land.

Mr. L. S. Amery, M.P., seconding the resolution, said that in the next war, the attack on our ships would be delivered not only from under the surface of the sea but from the sky. It would not be an attack on our ships alone, but an even more direct attack on our great ports of entry. He did not believe we could not develop— and should not have developed much earlier —measures of adequate defence against that type of attack. They should realise how conceivable it was that they might be brought to absolute starvation by those means alone. When it came to war it was not food alone that they had-to import. NEED OF RAW MATERIALS. In the last war the munitions programme was gravely hampered from time to time by the need to subordinate supplies of raw materials to food supplies. In another war, even if they were not engaged in supporting a great Army on the Continent and even if they had not allied armies dependent on them, no one could foreshadow the enormous volume of munitions that would be required for any effective counter-defence against air attack at innumerable points that might be threatened. The only answer was to have their food supplies on the spot and reasonably distributed in times of peace. An increased volume of production was necessary as the first essential condition of defence. Mr. Churchill said he had done his best to warn the Government of the dangers which from every side were gathering and growing about our native land. Not only was the growth of food in close proximity to the populations the highest economy that could be achieved but it was also a very great security. The more food we could grow the more solid would be the foundations on which our very large population reposed, and the less strain there would be on the Navy in time .of war. He believed that, the Navy at present was, and would'be for the next year, fully adequate to any strain that might be cast on it.' If measures were taken now and pressed forward there was no reason why the strength of the Navy should not be adequately maintained. But then there was the complication of the attack by air on our ports of entry as well as on their approaches from the sea. That would certainly impose a new strain on the Navy and might require the use of the westerly ports of the country to a very much larger extent than had occurred before. If that should occur no one could doubt that the possession of large and fertile home-grown resources of food would be of inestimable assistance to this country in times of peril. WAR SECRETARY RIGHT. , The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence was holding an inquiry into the question of our food supplies in time of war; he was endeavouring to co-ordinate the strategy of the country; and endeavouring to secure the execution by the firms and factories of Britain of the programme of rearmament to which the Government had committed itself. He was also endeavouring to set up in shadow an oragnisation of our industries which would enable them to expand and to transform themselves to war purposes should war come. Among all' these many tasks the maintenance and stimulation of our domestic food supply was certainly not the least important. He trusted that that meeting would focus public attention, on the subject. He was surprised as well as pained to see the lack of comprehension that existed throughout the country of the dangerous position in which we were. The Secretary of State for War was quite right when he said that the condition of Europe was far worse than it was in 1914. But our own position was .not nearly so good as it was then. Our defences had been neglected to an extent surprising and astonishing, and the novel menace of the air did not exist to any extent in 1914. Yet, when a Minister like that, in one of the highest positions, with all the secret information of the Government at his disposal, made a statement so alarming, one was astonished that the country did not rouse itself oh the matter, that it did not ask whether it was true, or that it did not insist on minor topics being laid aside and the whole efforts and energies of the country concentrated on placing the country in a position of security. One was no less astonished that when a statement of that kind was made by one Minister, the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence should say that nothing must be done to disturb the peacetime atmosphere of normal trade production. "POLITICAL PARALYSIS." "We are in a state of political paralysis at the present time," said Mr. Churchill. VThis afternoon in the House of Commons we are going to support the Government in a step which is a necessary, indeed an imperative step —namely, the removal of sanctions against Italy. But do not underrate at all the humiliation which shifts and turns and and twists and uncertainties of our foreign policy has brought on this country, and do not suppose that we are at the end, even this year, of painful and unpleasant experiences. All these weaknesses arise from the fact that our defences have been neglected and that our own economic position is essentially artificial. There is no other country in the'world whose position is so artificial as that of Great Britain. There is no population in a position so precarious as the 45,000,000 gathered in this small island.

"If they suppose they can continue their happy, pleasant life, easy conditions, their minds occupied by all the interesting trifles which the newspapers put in their headlines day by day, if they suppose they can continue this without. interruption, while on the Continent—which the air has brought so close that we are no longer an island—preparations are continuously being made, night and day, to place vast educated, scientific, communities