CANNOT BE STARVED

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4463, 13 August 1941, Page 7

CANNOT BE STARVED

POSITION OF BRITAIN. COMPARISON WITH LAST WAR. FOOD SITUATION WELL IN HAND. In January, 1917, the German Kaiser presided at a Council at which he said; “We will frighten the British flag off the seas and starve the British people until they kneel and plead for peace,” writes Mr Clynes, food controller from 1918 to 1919, in an English exchange. When I was Food Controller British food-ships were being sunk sometimes at the rate of sixty a week. Steel-grey shoals of submarines glided beneath every sea, along invisible trails of death; and for a long time we could not sink them nor restrict their activities. Then, by the most amazing minebarrage system, with one barrier across the Dover Straits and another from the Orkneys to Norway, and with mines sunk sometimes to more than 300 feet, with great steel nets, and other secret devices, we penned almost the entire U-boat fleet into the North Sea; while new swift mos-quito-craft and warplanes carried certain death to the few raiders that came alive through the barrage. A CONFIDENT NOTE. In this war we began where, last time, we left off. Now the Navy has the U-boat menace under its thumb. We had some terrible crises to face at the Food Ministry while I was there during the last war. This time those crises cannot recur. Hitler may build more submarines; he may use (when he has blasted out the sunk block-ships left there by the British Navy) the Dutch, Belgian, and French ports; he may launch the full weight of his Luftwaffe warplanes against our convoys and our food depots; but he cannot seriously disturb this island’s food supplies or their distribution. Britain lost 9,000,000 tons of shipping in the 1914-18 war, and our Allies and the neutrals lost 6,000,000 tons. In three months, in a bad period, Britain alone lost nearly oneand a half million tons ! Such dreadful losses caused Cabinet crises of which no word was allowed to escape at the time. On one occasion Lord Rhondda, when Food Minister, said sombrely to me, “ It might well be, Clynes, that you and I, at this moment, are all that stand betw’een this country and revolution ! ” Food shortage in Russia early in 1917 caused bread riots, and the fists of starving men and women beat down the sabres of the Czar’s famous Cossack Guards, stormed the royal palace, and forced Russia to make a separate peace with the enemy. “ WATER-TIGHT.” This time Britain will have good rations of all necessary foods. Already the country has been divided into hundreds of “ water-tight compartments,” each with ample food supplies already stored. We have food in a million dumps, flour available everywhere, huge l tinned pupplies, and alternative transport arrangements. In the last war things were very different. The strain of continual food crises killed my predecessor at the Food Ministry and turned my hair white. Yet, sometimes, there were gleams of unexpected humour.’ Once the Chief Rabbi applied for i special issue of white flour for the Passover Feast. We had no white flour to give to anyone. So we quoted him the precedent from the Book of Leviticus, when the Lord granted Moses a special Passover dispensation “ because there was a famine in the land ” ! Sometimes we had moments of fun from issuing ration cards. There was a certain Royal Princess who delayed filling in her surname on her card. Of course she could not get her rations, and someone was sent to get the card filled in. Then Her Royal Highness explained bashfully that she did not know what her surname was, and had felt too embarrassed to ask anyone to tell her ! We managed to smooth out that difficulty. One day during a. critical food debate in the House of Commions Mr Lloyd George shivered the tension into laughter by complaining bitterly that, through a clerical error, he, the Premier, had not been able to get any sugar that week. In England we do not have one ration for the leaders and another for the people !' A famous Cabinet Minister refused to enter his age on his food cards, filling in the space provided with the words: “See any book of reference.” This modesty caused tfig cards to be sent back to him instead of any meat, sugar, qf tea. NOT ALL AMUSEMENT. But it was not all amusement. We had grave times. Once, during 1917, we found that

the countries with which we had meat orders were short of our needs by just under 100,000,000 animals. At the same moment the United States wheat export fell short by more than 400,000,000 bushels of the amount on which w’e had been depending. Turkey had shut the Dardanelles and closed in the Rumanian and Russian supplies. Germany had invaded Rumania, made peace with Russia, and temporarily reduced our imports to less than half our needs. We had to dilute with bean-flour. At a critical moment someone found that the brewers had a reserve of 2,000,000 quarterns of barley, and we impounded that. Somehow we struggled through. In this war the position is different. We have ample reserves and our imports are not noticeably interrupted. There will be no struggling through. In three months the .enemy sank 50,000 tons of sugar, and for some weeks only high Ministry officials knew how nearly famine was upon us. We -imported all our sugar then. Now we grow a great proportion at home, and, in addition, have big reserves. . GREAT WORLD DEFICIT. Once a secret food report to the Cabinet showed that there was a great world deficit in breadstuffs, that the world potato crop had failed, that world fish supplies were 64 per cent below normal, that we were facing the greatest difficulties in gettingfeeding stuffs for cattle, that livestock numbers were consequently falling sharply, vegetables were acutely short, and thousands of acres of British farm land were weed-cov-ered and had fallen derelict. So serious was the position that even British Army rations were, for a time, cut down. These crises cannot recur. This time we have the food situation well in hand and adequate food stocks thoroughly distributed all over the > country as well as import arrangements to meet all our needs. German destruction of foodships has been on only a fractional scale compared with last time. So we need not worry about rations. In this war not even beer is threatened I I recall a beer shortage last time, affected by the intense demands for grain for bread. At the time, while I was discussing Army supplies one day with a famous Allied leader, our talk was interrupted by my clerk bringing me details of the sinking of a vessel carrying thousands of barrels of stout. “ BEER, GLORIOUS BEER ! ” The General listened as if we had suffered a great reverse. After a minute’s silence he told me, in language I cannot repeat, that he would have forgiven the enemy almost anything but that ! At that time there was a powerful movement in the House of Commons to stop brewing and use all grain for bread. I knew that workmen in heavy industries relied on moderate amounts of beer as a food, and I spoke in the end successfully in its defence. After my speech a member spoke to me. “Clynes,” he said, “ you are upsetting your temperance friendsWe know you have to defend Government policy—but you do it with such damned whole-heartedness ! You sound as if yOu enjoy every word ! ” Whether or no, beer remained available; and in this war I do not believe it will be necessary even to defend it, for we have adequate grain supnlies.