BRITAIN’S FOOD

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1945, Page 4

BRITAIN’S FOOD

OVERSEAS SUPPLIES LONDON, March 22. The “Daily Telegraph” in a leading article said: “Amid anxieties, material and political, aroused by the food storm one highly gratifying fact has been seen. The Dominions 01 Australia, New Zealand and Canada have turned at once to the job of seeing how they could send us more food. They needed no telling that our food policy has not been selfish. This confidence may not be surprising, but it is, none the less, deeply appreciated by peoples of these islands.

FRENCH DEMONSTRATIONS

LONDON, March 21

Women carrying empty shopping baskets and shouting “we are living on air” yesterday marched through Pans from the Bastille to the Town Hall. The women said they had had no butter, margarine, or lard for three months. One woman said: “We get only potatoes, carrots, and bread. Oui children are tubercular.” Another alleged that butter was available on the black market at 4/- a pound. A French Food Ministry official, who described the situation as chaotic, said demonstrations could not be permitted. Otherwise there might be bloodshed. He revealed that the daily ration of calories a head in Paris had fallen to under 1000, which was said to be the lowest since 1870. Conditions were much worse in southern France where “famine is imminent.” “Demonstrations against food conditions by 50,000 trade unionists at Marseilles yesterday, following demonstrations in Paris, Nancy, and elsewhere, are only the loudest echoes of a profound feeling throughout the country,” says the “Daily Telegraph’s’ Paris correspondent. “People are disappointed that seven months after their liberation the food situation is worse than before. They are angry at the thought that large stocks exist but they are already scanty. Transport is often misused. A transport expert joints out in ‘Les Nouvelles du Matin’ that although exactly half the pre-war number of wine waggons have been returned to service, the wine ration in Paris is only two bottles a month.”

CRISIS IN GERMANY.

LONDON, March 21.

The prospect of a possible total cut in the meat ration and other essential food ite’ms was mentioned by the German Agricultural Commissioner CSturz) in a broadcast in the German Home service. “All our plans are wrecked.” he said. “Everybody is asking ‘shall we succeed in bridging the gap until the next • crop comes in.’ Some decrees have already been issued which cut deeply into everybody’s rations. More measures will follow. We shall, however, have to turn to a vegetable diet and push meat more and more into the background.” Sturz said potatoes would henceforth form the basis of the national diet. Most German stock and poultry would be compulsorily slaughtered to save grain and animal feeding stuffs. The wholesale dislocation of the transport system had compelled the authorities to divide Germany into selfsupporting districts, for which reason no additional supplies of agricultural products from elsewhere would . be available.