FOOD IN WAR TIME

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 2 June 1930, Page 2

FOOD IN WAR TIME

PROBLEM IN BRITAIN HOW GERMANY PREPARED LORD BLEDISLQE’S experience

Tho difficulties experienced by Great Britain in procuring foodstuffs during the Great War and the method by which tiie nation’s supplies were looked after were outlined by the Governor-General, Lord Tlledisloc, speaking at the Auckland Returned Soldiers’ Association social last week. Lord Bledisloe was Assis-tant-Food Controller, and later Sugar Controller during the Great War. “In 1916, tho food position had become very serious,” Lord Bledisloe said. “The potato crop throughout Europe was the lowest for 40 years, while the wheat crops of North and South America, as well as of England, were short. The supply of beet sugar, produced in Central Europe, was cub off, and the supply of cane sugar from the West Indies was precarious. England knew very well that not only does ‘an army fight on its stomach,’ but that a nation cannot carry a- war to a successful conclusion unless tile home population is well fed.”

Lord Bledisloe said that in war-time the energy-producing foods, such as bread, potatoes, and other starchy foods, as well as fats, were more essential than bodybuilders such as cheese, eggs and meat. The Germans, by scientific foresight, had taken care to develop their supplies of pigs and potatoes, both providing great energy-producing foods. “There is every reason to believe that Germany would’ never have provoked the war were it not for the fact that they thought they would be able to starve us.into.defeat,” said Lord Bledisloe. “Moreover,” if tlie Germans had not developed their supplies of pigs and potatoes, the war would have ended a year earlier than it did.” It had been found impossible to ration bread and meat, but sugar supplies were carefully rationed. “I had quite an interesting controversy with Mr Herbert Hoover, then sugar controller of the United States, about the relative rations' of sugar that should be allotted to English and Americans,” Lord Bledisloe re-; marked. “In the end I had to agree that: the Americans should have slightly more per head, because in .normal times the, average American consumes 97-981bs of sugar in a year in various ways, compared with the Englishman’s 75-781 b. It was a tough proposition, I can tell you, to negotiate with Mr Hoover.” The rationing of “starchy” foods also led to restriction on the use of starch in the laundry, and Lord Blelisloe remarked how for a considerable period most of the members of Parliament wuie soft or celluloid collars.