STARVATION, AND HOW TO AVOID IT.
AS we draw nearer and nearer to the actual shortage of food, and more especially of wheaten bread, two things are becoming clear. The first is that with very great care, with knowledge, and above all with the spirit of self-sacrifice, we can just make our food last out. The second is that this can only be done if we (and by " we " we mean every one of us, and not merely an alert and patriotic minority) apply our minds and wills to the duty before us. We can if we will, but only if we will. But immediately comes this further considera- tion. It is hopeless to expect our people to prove ready for the task, to show the willing mind, unless the need is brought home to them. It is hopeless to try to get people to do what is now wanted by willing the end in a vague, languid, abstract way. They must will the means. This involves a sustained effort which they will not, perhaps it would be fairer to say cannot, make unless they have first been brought to understand the necessity fully and thoroughly, unless they are inspired with a true vision of what will and must happen if they do not will the means as well as the end. First understanding, and next and immediately—effort. Those are the two points upon which we must concentrate. What ought to render this concen- tration easier is the certainty that if we do spread the know- ledge and do make the effort we shall be successful. It is not, thank Heaven ! a case of asking people to do something as a forlorn hope, to make an effort which will be haunted through- out by the paralysing thought that when all is done that man can do, all will be done in vain. The nation has got the splendid incentive that comes from certainty. There is a great loaf of bread before us. If we fall upon it like pigs in a v and gobble it up at once, we shall have plenty of hearty meals for six weeks or so, and then we must starve. If, on the con- trary, we show good sense and are given the right directions, we can make it last out perfectly well without any one being the worse in body or mind for his abstinence. But to accomplish this requires, not talking or writing, discussion or debate, but action.
That we have it in our power to do the thing that will make us safe was well brought out in the very clear and excellent speech of Mr. Kennedy Jones, the Director-General of Food Economy, which he made to his constituents at Hornsey last Saturday evening. He shows us that we are very near the edge of a precipice. If we are fools, if we are unworthy of our heritage and the great sacrifices our soldiers and the vast majority of the nation have made during the past two and a half years, we shall blunder over that precipice. This is, however, not inevitable, and if we understand the situation and brace our wills and obey our orders we can skirt the edge with perfect safety. Here are Mr. Kennedy Jones's words, which we cannot better :- " Our stocks of foodstuffs are low—the r-boat is something more than a menace ; it is an active and actual danger. Take it from me, the shortage of tonnage, the partial failure of the world's wheat crop, the depredations of the dastardly submarine—all combine to bring about a shortage in wheat and flour which, unless it is faced boldly and sensibly by the people of this country, may bring us near to the edge of disaster. Think what a calamity it would mean to civilization if in the coming months—between now and the Septem- ber harvest—any shortage, dire and serious shortage, of food should lend strength to those craven souls—there are very, very few of them, thank Cod—who want an inconclusive peace and would snatch from our brave fellows in the trenches tho full fruits of that triumphant victory which the doings of the last few days place straight and sure in the not distant future. I have studied all the submarine figures, the sinkings, the losses of valuable cargoes, the details of the precious foodstuffs, grain, and sugar, which, are rotting at the bottom of the ocean, and I am convinced that if the voluntary ration, as laid down by Lord Devonport, is carried through with sincerity by the people of this country, and with a single eye to helping to tide over the critical months between this and the next harvest, there need be no crying for bread ; no one, in fact, need feel even the pinch of shortage of food."
Mr. Kennedy Jones goes on to explain that though this could, and if necessary must, be done by severe rationing, it had much better be done by inducing the nation to play the game—by (as he puts it) getting every man, woman, and child in the country to start every Monday morning with the good resolution : " I will eat a pound less bread in the course of this week than I eat in normal times ; i.e., two ounces less bread a day than the usual amount I cat."
This two ounces of bread, he explains, is a slice two inches wide, four inches long, and a little over one and a quarter inches thick. That is the amount of abstinence expressed in physical terms which each one of us must practise daily for the next five months to make ourselves safe, and, what is more, as we believe with Mr. Kennedy Jones, to bring the war to an end.
To return once more to the question of compulsory rationing. Though it may become necessary, it is unquestionably a wasteful way of accomplishing the desired end, largely for this reason. When people arc on compulsory rations, they feel that they have a right to eat every crumb of those rations. If the rationing is voluntary, then it is much easier to appeal strongly to those who have the most knowledge and the fullest sense of patriotism to make an extra effort to pull more than their share in the boat. Clearly this can and ought to be done. There are a great many of us in this country in the well-to-do classes who could reduce our daily con- sumption of wheaten bread very much below the amount allowed us by Mr. Kennedy Jones. As far, indeed, as wheaten bread is concerned, a well-to-do man or woman in good health mar reduce consumption almost to nothing. Oatmeal in the form of porridge or oatcake ; barley bread, which has only fifty per cent. of wheat flour in it, or, better still, barley scones, which are made entirely of barley ; rice cakes in various forms ; maize cakes and scones—can all b3 eaten as substitutes for wheaten bread ; though of course these too must only be eaten in strictly limited quantities. There is a double advantage in this. Not only will the actual saving be enormous if it is practised in the two or three million homes of the well-to-do and the educated, but an example of the very greatest force would be set for working- class homes. We must remember that the poorer and less educated classes are inclined to be haunted by the idea that they are asked to make sacrifices which richer people are not called upon to make or will not make. If they see that voluntary abstinence is having the effect we desire, and that the rich are doing without wheat, it will be far easier to get them to be economical consumers of bread. Take as a proof of this the amazing change of attitude that has lately occurred in regard to compulsion on the military side. Instead of compulsion being now unpopular in theory, it is at the present moment the very reverse. The working men have come to recognize that it is not an unfair but a fair way of imposing duties owed to the State. Instead of it working out as compulsion for them but not for the rich, it has proved to be the foundation-stone of fair treatment, and has ensured that the sacrifices required shall be spread evenly. They see that if there have been exemptions from the firing line, and sometimes unfair exemptions, they have not concerned the well-to-do so much as the poor. It is on the farms, in the factories, and in the mines, and not in rich men's houses, that healthy men of military age are to be found. When we say this we are not accusing the working men of being shirkers in any sense, but are merely pointing out that no one can say that exemptions—in many eases no doubt quite necessary —have been used to make things easy for the rich.
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