FOOD FOR GERMANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17089, 22 August 1917, Page 6

FOOD FOR GERMANY

FROM SCANDINAVIA AND-HOLLAND. A despatch from Washington on July 7 says that evidence that Germany is obtaining vast quantities of food from the European neutral countries has been presented to the United States by Great Britain for the American Government's guidance in determining an export control policy. Much of this, the British statistics purport to show, is replaced by the neutrals with imports from America.

From Scandinavia and Holland, the British information sets forth, enough fat is going into Germany to supoly 7,700.000 soldiers, virtually the entire army of effectives in the empire. German imports from these countries, it is declared. reduced to oalones, will equal the total ration • of 2500.000 troops, the size of the German Army in tho west. German purchases of foodstuffs abroad are made through the Government Department of the Interior, which has : organised a special division to buy from tho neutrals In the early days of the war the German Government stimulated importation of food by excluding imports from operation of maximum price laws, but this drew such a vigorous protest from German producers that the practice was stopped. Now the German authorities are said to bo using coercion, exchanging for foodstuffs bought in the neutral countries coal and other commodities necessary for maintenance of the neutral industries. To some extent these coercions have been recognised by the British in operation of their blockade, but with tho entry of America into tho war the British believe an arrangement can be made for supplying the neutrals with most of their necessary requirements from the Allied countries.

All of the Northern European neutrals havo made regulations limiting food exports to Germany, bnt producers and merchants, tho British claim, are violating the laws because of lrgh prices thoy are obtaining. Some merchants, they declare, have made millions out of this illegal trade. The Brit-'sli data carry the following table as representing the minimum of food oxports from Scandinavia and Holland ro Germany in 1916:—Butter, 82,600 metric tons; meat, 115.800 tons; pork products. 68.800-' condensed milk. 70.000; fish. 407,000 ; cheese 80 500; ogsrs. 46.500; potato meal, 179 500 •' coffee. 58,500; fruit, 74.000; sugar, 12 COO : vegetables, 215,000.

These figures are most impressive, it is asserted, in relation to fats, the scarcest food in Germany. Fat. it is claimed, is the only food seriously lacking now in the diet of the German people. Imports of this food, tho British declare, furnish one-fourth of the daily German fat rat'on.

American oilcake exports to the neutrals, tho British brief says, find their way into Germany through the sale by neutrals of dairy products: the United States, it is declared, now holds in its hands the power to prevent all exports of butter and cheese from neutral countries into Germany by refusing to licence foodstuffs ohipments.