Mr. Truman on Food •
Every time the food crisis seems likely to subside something occurs to revive it. Not all the new factors are real. Half the sur- prises which the British public have had in the past have been due not to new disasters but to the discovery of some fact which was there all the lime. The process was lengthened by Sir Ben Smith's unfortunate practice of blowing hot and cold on a situation which was always bad. The American public are now going through the same process with the same equivocal assistance from their leaders. But nothing in British experience can equal President Truman's astonishing statement that the worst might be over in ninety days. Sir Ben Smith at the worst has never claimed to be a rainmaker, but President Truman has appropriated that office— and with retrospective effect, for the real damage was done by last year's droughts. Perhaps Mr. Truman had in mind the flow of wheat from American granaries which a price rise could produce. The price factor has been neglected, and Mr. Truman ought to know what money can do out west. It can probably do more than the competition in imaginary sacrifices and exchange of unasked advice now going on between this country and the United States. But a miracle is wanted if there is not to be mass starvation. Short of a miracle, something may be achieved by redistribution and sub- stitution. Nothing will be done by ill-considered speeches.
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