Now it has been said, even iterated in this place,
that if British people drank per head nearly as much milk as is con- sumed by the people of the United States or of Scandinavia, then English agriculture would flourish—even beyond the promises of the Green Book. A new vogue and impetus has been given to the whole of this question and its corollaries by the intervention of a Yale Professor of Physiology—and a singularly able professor—Mr. Yandell Henderson, whose letter to The Times has set many people thinking. We drink about half the amount of milk drunk per head in the U.S. ; but the professor tells us that his people do not yet drink nearly enough. The propaganda on behalf of milk, coinciding with a steady improvement in the quality of the product, will, it is hoped, extend the consumption by a third. If this extra third goes to the children it will be expressed in a pro rata improvement in the physique of American children. Medical science is -as good as unanimous on the subject. English experiments, even more emphatically than American, have proved that extra milk (when added to the diet even of well- fed children) has a salient influence on their growth and health. The influence is proved to be much greater than any abstract reasoning would suggest. Pure milk for the young
is an elixir. * * * *
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