DIG FOR VICTORY "
Sta,—Mr. H. E. Bates' criticism of the early Dig-for-Victory campaign is published in your issue of January 3rd, 1941. The date is significant. Warnings of vegetable surplus are not merely belated, they are already hackneyed. Constructive critics and Government spokesmen themselves were repeating them with double emphasis from the moment the Nazis over-ran France and the Netherlands, cutting off our imports of winter vegetables. It seemed to Mr. Bates —on January 3rd, 194r—that the so-called " surplus " of green vegetables was the logical result of the Dig-for-Victory campaign. If Mr. Bates is honest he will admit that his logic is nothing but wisdom after an event which neither he nor anyone else anticipated. His own gardening results demonstrate the point.
Dig-for-Victory, writes Mr. Bates, was run more by slogans than
imagination. As a matter of fact, the imagination was lacking among the growers of surplus. If Mr. Bates and other non-growers of storable vegetables had heeded the early official injunctions to plan their gardens for a sufficiency of winter produce, the hundreds of thousands of slogan gardeners would not have to tolerate platitudinous reiteration. As for the " surplus " itself, are we really going to pause for a quarrel over nature's bounty? Is it " a very deplorable thing " that green vegetables not required for human consumption should be fed to flocks and herds that are badly needing fodder? Is this the time to present the hobgoblin of a commercial surplus to a beleaguered people? Growers who ignored the Government's early advice now have reason to heed it. The fact that some of them once ignored it provides no reason for a " surplus " owner to assume the cloak of wisdom. It was threadbare months ago.—Yours faithfully, H. BERRY,
Chairman, Allotments and Gardens Committee, Domestic Food Producers' Council. zo Greenholm Road, Eltham, S.E. 9.
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