VICTUALLING THE NATION. T HE control and conservation of the supplies
of food which we have in this country are a problem of great importance, and the Government are quite right to insist upon our duties in the matter of food wastage being strictly carried out. But far more important is the problem of supply, whether home-grown or foreign. In respect of growing food at home, the Government and the nation are, we believe, doing all they can do. But that is not and cannot be enough. Even if every available acre of ground in this country were ploughed, we should for Many years be a long way short of supplying our own needs in the way of all kinds of foodstuffs. Are the Government content with the supplies of food that are reaching this country from abroad ? Are we getting not only enough to provide us with the prescribed rations, but enough also to build up again—if only to a small extent—our depleted reserve supplies, supplies that ought to be held in this country against the possible failure of the coming harvest ? If the Government are satisfied with what is being accom- plished in this work of victualling the nation, there is of course no more to be said. If they are not satisfied, as we fear it is only too plain that they are not, then it is the duty of the Press, the duty of the House of Commons, and the duty of all good citizens to call upon them, while there is yet time, to make the most strenuous efforts to revictual the country. That this can be done we are convinced. But it must be done quickly, and it must be done in two ways : first, by what we may term " emergency victualling "—.by getting in food to meet the needs of the next few months, we had almost said weeks ; and secondly, by a victualling policy which will look ahead and cover not merely next year, when probably the pinch will be worse than this year, but three years ahead. What makes the need for immediate Government action imperative is the fact that the Government have already begun to meddle with the delicate work of the victualling of the nation. That they could not help meddling, we admit. They control the tonnage of the nation, and have to apportion it. Therefore it was impossible for them to leave the victual- ling problem alone, though we are still convinced that if it had been possible to leave it alone high prices and a free market would have drawn food supplies here like a magnet. However, it is no good thinking of that now. The danger that we have got to avoid is the danger which always follows Government action in times of famine. If the history of food scarcity in the world were to be written, it would be found that the first efforts of Governments to deal with scarcity invariably aggravate the evils which they are designed to cure. Governments when they deal with such problems are like the old type of empirical doctors. They try to treat the symptoms and not the causes of the disease. Indeed, they regard the symptoms, which in reality are Nature's struggles to cure, as if they were the disease. They seo prices very high, and they try to lower those prices, just as the doctors used to try to bring down the temperature of a patient with a fever at all costs, rather than find out and check the causes of the fever. Once Governments interfere in the matter of food supplies, they cannot adopt half-measures. They must make themselves responsible for creating supply as well as for manipulating it. If prices are allowed to have their own way and to mount up, there is no morn potent plan discoverable in the first place for checking waste, and in the second place for calling supplies out of the ground. If, however, it is unfortunately found necessary for various reasons to interfere with prices or with transport, then the Government must use their imagination, look far ahead, and undertake themselves the difficult and delicate work of supply. Otherwise they will find that they have withdrawn from mankind the inducement to plant new acres and grow new crops, or to rummage the world for fresh sources of food supply. The individual when encouraged, or even merely left alone, will do great things. If discouraged or driven too hard, he simply throws up his hands in despair and does nothing but lay up his talent in a napkin.
Take as a very simple example what the Government have lately done in regard to food exports. They have most rightly and properly forbidden the export of the thousands and thousands of barrels of salted herrings which are, we under- stand, now piled up at Stornoway. It would clearly have been madness to allow this valuable supply of food to leave the country, even if it had been possible—which seemingly it was not—to provide transport for it. So far then we have no complaint to make, but have the greatest cause for satis- faction at, nay, gratitude for, what the Government have done. We are keeping here what is, as we pointed out some time ago in the Spectator, an essential food supply. But. the Govern- ment must not stop, as apparently they have stopped, at merely preventing this food from going out of the country. They must, not only in fairness, but as an act of self-preserva- tion for the nation, purchase the herrings, and at once. The reason is clear. If they do not do so, no one is going to be such a fool as to catch or to salt any more herrings. Then, instead of an anti-famine measure having been adopted, action will have been taken which later on will intensify the shortage of food and the diminution of supply. The men who catch and the men who salt herrings do so with one object, and only one object, in their minds—the sale of their product. They do not care whether the persons to whom they sell are foreigners or their own countrymen, but sell they must. If they are told that they arc not allowed to send the herrings out of the country, and nobody buys them here, then most naturally they cannot and will not continue to fish and to salt. The supply will dry up. But that is an example of what is going on all over the world. If a price is fixed at which potatoes are to be sold next year, unless it is fixed tremendously high you will create a prejudice against planting potatoes, because you will in effect be saying to people : " Whatever the conditions and whatever changes take place, and no matter what your expenses are, you will never be able to get better prices for such-and-such a crop." That is a great killer of enterprise. What you ought to say to the potential grower, but, alas I never do say, is : " Here is a wonderful opportunity for you to make a fortune out of potatoes. This is what we are going to do for you. We are going to fix a minimum price for your crop, but we are not going to fix a maximum. This means that you cannot lose, and that you may gain very heavily. If prices soar up, as they very likely will, you will reap the benefit, for there is a shortage all over the world. If, on the other hand, prices go down, you are secured by our promise of a minimum price. In that case, we shall either buy the potatoes straight from you, or, what is more probable, if you show us that the market price is down, say, £3 a ton below what we agreed upon as a minimum price, then you will have only to prove that you have got so many tons of potatoes and you will get a cheque for the difference between the minimum and the market price, and besides your cheque you will have the potatoes to sell." These are the kinds of conditions which quicken supply. Idiotic talk about criminal " profiteering " and cruel exploiters of famine is the safest and surest means of causing starvation.
These, as we have said, are very simple examples. The Government, who have interfered with the natural working of the laws of supply and demand, which under normal conditions provide the most perfect form of victualling conceivable, have got to go much further afield. What is now wanted is that the tillers of the soil, not only here but all over the world, should make extra efforts to supply not only us but the whole Continent of Europe with food. As a rule the inducement would be high prices. But the tillers, or those who deal with the tillers, are for the moment so be- wildered and so depressed by the uncertainty of existing conditions that it is very doubtful whether if left to them- selves they will do anything but wait and see. They will grow what they have been accustomed to grow because they have already embarked on the business, but they will not start making, as one would like them to do, great speculative efforts at food-growing—unless, of course, they are provided with some very strong inducement to do so. It will be the duty of the Government, or of that imaginary person of our thought, the Grand Victualler to the Nation, to give them that inducement. He has got to use his imagination, and supply the stimulus which has been for the time withdrawn. The Grand Victualler to the Nation must look round the habit- able globe and find out and create sources of supply to make good our present losses, and not for this year only, but for 1918, which will probably be low-water mark, and also for 1919 and 1920. He must place through the best agencies discoverable orders for current and for reserve supplies of food for these islands. He must give a sense of security to the growers and transporters of food by means of the credit and good faith, thank Heaven ! still unimpaired, of the British Government. He must send a thrill of speculative hope which will reach at last the man who holds the plough, and make him feel that it is well worth while to bring another ten or twelve acres under cultivation. And the Grand Victualler must not only do this, as we keep on repeating, in Canada and Australia, in the United States and in India ; he must seek out new sources of supply, and of other cereals besides wheat, and not be daunted by the foolish people who say that though a particular food may be perfectly good and healthy, the British people do not like it and will never eat it. It was said of the quarrel between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa that it made black men kill each other on the banks of the Congo, and red men scalp each other by the lakes of America. Our needs must set men toiling to produce food by the Congo, by the Nile, and by the River Plate, as well as on the great prairies of America, the irrigated lands of India, and the ricefields of China and Japan. The Grand Victualler must have the world as his parish. He must ransack the globe for food, and do it at once. Further, he must remember to ransack it in such a way as will not create difficulties against himself, or fill foreign nations with alarm that food now in their countries and necessary for themselves is to be drawn away. Artificially created panics of this kind always tend to prevent the remedies for which one is seeking. To use a metaphor, the Grand Victualler to the British Isles must convince other people (and he can easily do it if he is the right man in the right place) that he is not trying to drag the blanket away from somebody else, but that he is only taking care that other blankets shall be made, so that everybody shall have enough covering.
Take as a specific example what has just happened in the Argentine—the embargo in the River Plate on the export of food supplies. If we had a Grand Victualler to the Nation, it would be his duty at once to open negotiations —not for this year of course, for no one can claim any right to interfere with this decision—but in regard to next year. He would ask the Argentine Government to allow him to make contracts for " futures " in the Argentine, and get an under- standing that if such very profitable orders are placed at once the Argentine Government will guarantee that their citizens will be allowed to complete them. Arrangements of this kind would go on all over the world, and, as we have said before but cannot say too often, must go on for all kinds of food and not merely for particular sorts. At present what we are doing is, we fear, merely discouraging the private trader from going on with his enterprising but necessarily speculative work of victualling the nation, and yet not doing the work ourselves. The Grand Victualler to the Nation— or, if the Government still refuse to give us a man whose one responsibility and preoccupation shall be victualling, the welter of Committees and Commissions who do the work— must remember to keep in touch with every sort of food every- where, with all the existing sources of supply for all forms of food, and with all the mechanism of importation. And further, he must see to it that new sources of supply are created—for nothing less will do—and also new methods and systems of transport to this country. There are dozens of things which we do not eat, but which we could eat, and which could be grown for us to eat, and grown rapidly; and these must be discovered—invented, if you will—and then the supplies must be earmarked, stimulated, and encouraged. The Grand Victualler would have to pass in review every continent, every part of such continent, whether in the British Empire or outside it, and ask of those competent to tell him : " What do your people live upon here, what does your soil produce, what can you supply us with to help us in our need ? " No doubt in most cases at first he would be told gloomily that the place in question could offer no help. But if the Grand Victualler were worth his salt, he would very soon find out that there were things worth having, and for the production of such supplies he would immediately give an order. Remember that one of the great advantages of picking up a dozen or so cargoes here and another dozen there would be that no panie would be created such as we have described above—a panie arising from the fear that the British nation was going to grab food for itself and let other people starve. That we have no intention of doing, nor have we the power to do it if we would. But all risk of the dangers from such a panic would be dispersed if it were obvious that we were only going to take, and take with enormous benefit to the countries themselves, a modicum of supply from every portion of the habitable globe.
Previous page
