What irony it is that a newspaper like the Spectator
should, in a year of famine, be pleading on its knees to the Government not to destroy a million quarters of grain, and a Government who at the same moment are telling us, and perfectly truly, that if we do not take care we shall have to meet not only the inconveniences of shortage, but the actual horrors of starvation, horrors particularly appalling to a closely packed island ! However, we have no power except to exhort, for, strange as it may seem, we have had no popular support for our policy as regards malt. All we can do therefore, as we have said, is to fall on our knees before the Govern- ment and implore them to think what they are doing. As far as we have seen, very few members of the House of Commons seem to have worried themselves much over the malt problem ; at any rate, none of them dared to move the adjournment of the House or to take any really strong measure. If the present writer had been in the House of Commons when there was such an issue before the nation, he would have moved the adjournment of the House every day till his plea was heard. But then, as he has often been told, ho does not understand politics.
