We note that Lord Beresford is going, sailor fashion, to
ask a question on the supply of wheat which, if it is answered truly, as it must be, will awaken the nation. We arc also glad to ace that Wednesday's Times in a leading article speaks quite plainly about the shortage of wheat and other cereals, and as to the conse- quences which must soon be realized by the British people. That is well. But the very able and well-informed conductors of the Times must have known for at least three months the true position ! The situation as regards the supply of cereals which they now announce so plainly is no news to them. How does it happen, then, that they have made no protest against the conversion of foodstuffs into Beer ? Not a word of sympathy and support has been given by the Times to those who, like ourselves, have been engaged in the unequal struggle against the Trade and the Govern. ment with the object of saving the whole of the barley in the kingdom for food. Yet such a word must have turned the scale. The Times and its colleagues of the Northcliffe Press boast, or at any rate let their friends boast, that they turned out the old Coalition and put in the new. If that is so, why have they not insisted• that the Ministry should take the first step to avert the worst results of starvation by the prohibition of the destruction of cereals in the manufacture of intoxicants ? As yet the nation is not awakened to the issue. When it does awake, who can doubt that it will demand an inquiry into the turning into beer of barley which would have supplied the nation with four weeks' food—the figures are not ours but the Prime Minister's—an inquiry which will be on far sterner lines than that of the Dardanelles Commission ?
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