CORN PRODUCTION BILL.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOIL.'9 SIR,—In your issue of April 28th you comment on Mr. Runciman's criticisms on the Government's Bill on this subject, and point out that " he proposed to meet the shortage of cereals by establishing granaries and .storing wheat to lire on during the blockade." And you add':— "We are -not surprised at the comment of a Member who promptly asked: Why didn't you do it?' Mr. Runciman's proposal is simply astonishing in vieiv of his action, or rather inaction, as President of the Board of Agriculture in 1915. when this policy was pressed on him and his colleagues by the Spectator-end -entirely neglected."
I ask why did you not give Mr. Runciman's answer to the Member's question as reported in the Times of April 25th (p. 8, col. 5) as follows:— " The report of the Eoyal Commission en Food Production, which advocated the .storing of wheat, was presented to the Unionist Government and rejected. On the other hand, the late Liberal Government raised the -margin of safety of wheat in this country to the highest point it had ever reached for a whole generation. They filled all the granaries and farmers' silos with wheat. There was mot a single building used by the great grain trade that was not full at the time that Lord Selborne left the office of President of the Board of Agriculture. Lord Selborne carried on the policy which the Liberal Government had initiated with as much enthusiasm as any one could desire."
We expect candour from the Spectator. Did we get it here? Whatever argument you may raise on the subject, let us at least get the facts in an answer given as promptly as the question was [We much regret that we should hare done Mr. Runciman an injustice by relying on a report of the debate which did not give his answer to the charge of inaction. We find it somewhat hard to reconcile Mr. Runciman's statement of the food policy of the late Liberal Government with the circumstantial account, given by Mr. Hay Thorburn in Thursday's Morning Post, of his repeated refusals to entertain or grant an interview on the subject of the extensive self-supporting grain storage scheme submitted to the Government by business men, Canadians and others, in February, 1915. But we were in error in criticizing his policy as President of the Board of Agriculture in 1915, as his tenure of that office ended in August, 1911.—En. Spectator.]
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