I asked him for his solution. He had several of
which nothing need be said here and now, but it is worth notice— whether we agree or disagree—that he stressed very strongly the national folly, as he called it, of admitting the import of flour. He is strongly opposed to the taxation of wheat, but is confident that all the wheat we consume in Britain should be milled in Britain, both for the sake of cheap fodder and offals and for the sake of employment. In some respects his views exactly coincided with those of the New Health Society, though he did not know it. Two-thirds of our people, he maintained, consume not fresh but tinned milk, as well as much other tinned food (as you could infer ocularly from the village dump). He would prohibit or heavily tax this tinned milk for the sake of the national health, not less than for the good of the farming community. A taste for fresh homegrown food is essential to the physical welfare of our people. It was at least interesting to find a very practical farmer coming to much the same conclusion as Sir Arbuthnot Lane and other famous doctors by an entirely independent route. Incidentally the neighbouring village was plastered with notices from the milling interest, put forth as a counterblast -to the whole-meal and home-grown bread campaign of the New Health Society.
* * *
Previous page
