THE BLOCKADES

Grey River Argus, 13 March 1940, Page 9

THE BLOCKADES

PROFESSOR J. B. S. HALDANE’3 VIEWS. At the present moment the British and French are trying to blockade Germany, and the Germans to blockade Britain. Incidentally a number of neutral countries are undergoing a partial blockade. For the Germans are sinking their ships, and the Bn - ish will doubtless try to stop them from importing food for re-export to Germany. This blockade does not merely extend to metals and other materials which could be used for munitions, including fats which arc a source of glycerine, one of the raw materials for cordite and similar explosives. It extends to foods of all sorts. At present neither blockade is very effective. The U-boats are ‘ess effective than in 1914-18, because the British Navy then found out how to deal with them. And the Germans will probably be able to buy wheat from the Soviet Union. It is more doubtful whether they will get meat and dairy produce But later on, either side may be more successful, if only because growing economic difficulties may make the belligerents Governments use their shipping and foreign currency for munitions rather than food. This has been the German policy for some time. In a recent speech, Mr Lennox Boyd has foreshadowed a policy ot guns before butter for Britain also. Let us see what a successful blockade would mean. In 1914-18 there was no serious food shortage in Britain. It was terrible not only in Germany, but in neutral countries. In Britain the average weekly consumption of flour for bread, biscuits and so on, rose from 6ib. in 1913 to 6ilb. in 1918. In Germany it fell from 6 a to 5, in Holland from 7i to 3. Meat consumption fell slightly in Britain, catastrophically in Germany and Holland.

Now foods are needed for several purposes. First of all they are needed as a source of energy for heat and work. The energy value of a diet is measured in kilcalories. In Germany the energy value of the food fell from about 4,000 to 2,000 kilcalories. A Viennese professor stated that at least a hundred thousand people out of seven million died of starvation. The survivors could not work. The output of workers in Berlin had fallen to half by the end of the war. And they were spiritless and apathetic. To a physiologist one of the most amazing things about the Russian Revolution is that Kolchak, Donikin and Yudenitch were defeated by hungry men and women.

For body-building proteins are needed. Those are found in large amounts in meat, fish, milk, cheese and eggs, to a less extent in broad beans and some other foods. A lack of them slows down the growth of children The average weight of Viennese babies at one year old was 35 per cent, below normal in 1918. Tn adults

protein shortage leads to hunger

dropsy. The blood contains proteins which hold its water back, as golatin does in jelly. If they fall below normal, water leaks out of the blood. The belly, and sometimes the legs and face, become puffy. This happens in kidney disease if the blood proteins are lost in the urine. It also happens in famine. In 1917 a thousand Czech civilians died from this cause alone. Some cases occurred in English workhouses and mental hospitals.

Then there are diseases due to a shortage of one of the vitamins. About half the elementary schoolchildren in England are already so short of Vitamin A that they tak longer than well-fed children to see properly in darkness. This is because they do not get enough butter, milk or high-grade magarine.

Things are almost certainly worse in Germany. A greater deficiency leads to re* night-blindness. The victims can see no better in a blackout after half an hour than on going out Into the street. At the same time they get skin eruptions and soreness of the eyes which may lead to blindness.

Scurvy, which is due to lack of Vitamin C, found in fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, occurred on a large scale in Europe. The symptons include bleeding from the gums, pain and easy bruising of the limbs, uncontrollable bleeding and so on. In babies there is severe pain in the joints. There were small outbreaks in Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle in 1917, due to a shortage in potatoes. A shortage of Vitamin D, also found in butter and good magarine.. leads to rickets in children and softening of the bones in adults, particularly pregnant and nursing mothers. The leg bones may bend and the pelvis be so deformed as to lead to death in childbirth. If the Franco-British blockade succeeds, it is likely that the civilians who will suffer most will be those of Czechoslovakia and Poland and, of course, the Jews. In 1914-18 the Polish children suffered terribly. Yet blockade is regarded as more than the bombing of civilians. There is a reason for this. Professor Starring reported that even in 1919 about a third of the population of Berlin was reasonably well fed. BombfßiH <' rich and poor alike, but sta&'ation

does not. Rationing is applied to the commoner and cheaper foods. The rich man can get bootlegged foods, as in Gerfriany, or expensive foods which have not been rationed, as in England in 1918. The country districts are generally better off than the towns, and the rich can move out into the country. For this reason, blockade, unlike bombs and gas, is no serious menace to the ruling class, unless indeed it causes revolution. And anyway, bombs are so destructive to property.... I have seen the effects of blockade on the children of Spain, and regard it as one of the most inhuman‘of all war measures. It means in practice, war <?n the weak,