With all the to and fro of argument about the
de-rationing and possible re-rationing of sweets no one seems to know what the real explanation of this unlooked-for rapacity for sweets is. The increase of the ration from twelve ounces a month to sixteen ounces, in the months when it was so increased, seemed to satisfy everyone, and the Minister of Food was to that extent fully justified in assuming that, with well over four ounces a head per week available, all needs would be satisfied. Clearly they are not. An average of five or six ounces apparently does not satisfy them. Who is consuming the sweets ? Obviously some people are eating much more than their full share, for it may be taken for granted that a good many are eating less ; I doubt, for example, whether His Majesty's Judges or the Bench of Bishops draw very heavily on the pool. I doubt also whether children, unless their parents are very imprudently generous, can afford more than four ounces a week. It may be the same principle of compensation for past abstention as animated those couples who, according to the Royal Commission on Population, refrained from having children in the early part of the war but adjusted the balance industriously afterwards. Possibly the civil servants are the consumers. I see there are 459,577 of them. That would explain the meaning of sweets of office.
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