SUPPLEMENTARY RATIONS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIlf,—Last week saw the promulgation of a remarkable scientific discovery. In a statement dealing with supplementary rations, the Ministry of Food made the following declaration :-
" No supplementary ration is being given to brain-workers, because scientific opinion is unanimous to the effect that a man does not need any more food because he works with his brain. than he would need if he were not working."
We have learnt from Germany that Governments have no diffi- culty in getting the professors to endorse with unanimity any policy they may deem necessary for the time being, but the state- ment that working one's brain makes no more demand on the vital powers than lying iu bed, or twiddling one's thumbs on the sofa all day, is so staggering as to suggest the idea that the scientific men who propounded it may themselves be suffering from under-nourishment of the brain due to the Government rations. So the brain-worker head of the household has now to step down from his pedestal, and admit that his cook, his gardener, the tradesman's boy, and the mechanic who does repairs about the house, all earn their dinner better than he. No doubt the Government will now proceed to correct the anomaly that while the services of these are remunerated at so many shillings a week, his income perhaps runs to thousands of pounds a year.
This latest discovery of the scientists will meet with ready acceptance from the man in the street, who can count, and appre- ciate, the number of bricks which the bricklayer lays in a day. but cannot see the use of the fellow who, after sitting over a writing-pad the whole morning, has only a few figures to show ; but it will compel us to revise some received opinions on matters of eugenics. It is en indisputable fact that the great works of the intellect, whether in science, literature, or art, -have been produced by the comfortable classes. The great wits, the great novelists. the great artists, the great pleaders, were always well fed; in fact, many of them we know to have been bons viveurs. At other times, scientists have told us that several generations of comfortable living are required to produce a Darwin. But we made a mistake in connecting the good feeding with the intellectual achievement. It now appears that the brain, unlike the muscles, does not require liberal nourishment. Originality, versatility, sustained reasoning. impassioned appeal, it can produce without stimulus. It is the doing of the same simple physical operation over and over again in the field or factory that really taxes the vital powers. The claim made by the intellectual and governing classes to a more liberal diet than the manual worker was mere greediness on their part. It is to be hoped that after the war, when the classes resume their normal relations, this idea will not come home to roost.
The Government will, of course, wish to make the fullest use or their discovery. There are some men in the Army itself who are not doing physical work. Will the Government in future kindly see that the Commander-in-Chief, the officers who form the eyes and ears of the Army, and those experts who, we are told, spend their whole time in thinking out means of countering the sub- marine menace, have a smaller ration than the man who throws the bomb ? For these are mere intellectual workers, who take no more out of themselves than if they did nothing at all.
This pronouncement will, however, bring us a little consolation in one direction. It shows that we have wasted our sympathy on the schoolchildren, who, we are told, could not apply themselves to their studies because their stomachs were empty. If they had been required to exercise in the playground all day they would have deserved our pity, but school lessons are a mere exercise of the brain, making no demand on the vital forces.
To come to plain language. Some of us brain-workers, in which term we do not include mere clerical workers, can disprove this dogma from our own experience. • We do not grudge the manual workers their increased rations. We recognize that when the work in hand is to kill Germans, and to forge weapons for that purpose, the services of the intellectual portion of the nation are not much required. But we are not prepared to surrender our common- sense, to grovel to the physical worker, or to admit that physical work is equal to mental. We shall continue to believe that the brain, as the highest organ of the body, deserves, and requires, the best nourishment. Even now it might be worth while for the Government to keep some brains well nourished to deal with the problems of reconstruction which await us after the war.—I am.
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