BRITAIN'S BREAD

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 698, 26 August 1914, Page 3

BRITAIN'S BREAD

THE WAR DANGER

POVERTY-STRICKEN MILLIONS

KEEPING TRADE ROUTES OPEN

Why are the outposts of the Empire so vigilant, and why, when thera are no possible hostile warships in the Pacific for which the Australian Navy could not account for with ease, are such strenuoaa war preparations being ma'Js?

The secret is that the first aim of a nation at war with Great Britain would be to strike at the food supplies of its opponent drawn from the ends of the world. And one of these long exposed routes is from Australia to Great Britain. The British lion has been likened to a fine beaat living in a cags and fed through the bare. Stop his supplies, and he will starye. The striking simile embodies the fact that the British Isles produce only one-fifth of the food necessary for the population of 45,000,000, and that the remainder has to be obtained from oversea THE DANGER In an article in the Pall Mail Magazine a couple of years ago, T. H. Manners Home pointed out that the course the British Government has taken in the crisis of assuming the responsibility of Lloyd's and indemnifying its ships against aapture wuald be necessary in war tima. He placed England's food supplies in baud as sufficient for four months. "It ifl a popular but mistaken notion," fe« wrote, "that our thousands of eonsrrserce and food ships scattered over a hundred thousand miles of expouad trade routes, would be protected by a large number of cruisers directly war broke out. Nowadays, with our reduced superiority at sea, that would be impossible, j?"or, from the outbreak of hostilities until the hostile fjeets are destroyed. If we v are successful, which may not be for many months, all our cruisers will be required for the fighting fleets as scouts, watchers connecting links, or for work at the naval bases-

"But even if we could spare a margin of cruisers to police the outer seas, they could not possibly prevent the capture and sinking; of some it our corn and raw material ships scattered OV6r such vast distances. And the fate of these would infallibly deter the rest from putting to sea "Consequently it is not the volume of traders captured that woul bring starvation upon us, bu* the read of capture that would Bpread t'f oughout the high seas and drive uur commerce headlong into the nearest harbours of refuge. That such trepidation would be amply justified hy the commercial interests at stake will be immediately apparent from the fact that the valU9 of British ships and cargoes'afloat, on any day of the year, amounts to the very least to. £200,000,000 "Let U9 not forget" that in the American Civil War merely a single ship—ths famous Alabama —was enough to inspire American everwyhere with such terror that it huddled into neutral ports and never dared to venture forth HOW PRICES WILL RISE

With these points to guide us, let us try in imagination to get closer to the conditions which would surround the civilian population of this country after the outbreak of war with a firstclass naval Power "We will suppose we have been for tunate enough to escape a landing by the enemy, such as waa successfully ellected during last year's naval manoeuvres in tbe North Sea. People will have little time to congratulate themselves on this mercy, for an aven darker shadow than invasion is creeping over the land —the shadow of scarcity and want

"Even before the outbreak of hostilitied the price of provisions has taken a serious upward move. The 'pantry power-house,' always the gauge of the Rational well-being, has begun to work at lower and lower pressure. There is already much anxious speculation as to how long this stringency will last, and whether it is likey to grow worse ONLY EIGHT WEEKS' FOOD

Steadily and insidiously for the last hundred years our national position has weakened "When we opposed the great Napoleon We did so with a total population of some 18,000,000; and at that time these islands practically produced enough for all needs. Since then, while our numbers have swollen to much larger proportions, our home' food production has just aa steadily declined. Of course the nation at large has been quite unconscious of this very gradual process. As long as the national stomach was kept sapplied the national brain was not exercised aa to the means of supply "So it has coma to this, that Wo ara in no wise perturbed—even if wi realise the fact—that to-day'a in place of being a community of 18,000,000 with an adequate home food production, we are a crowded nation of 45,000,000 drawing its saztenan.ce from beyond all the leas, and with no more than eight weeks' supplies, if at any time the ocean roads were closed to our food-bear-ing ships NO HOPE FROM OUTSIDE

"Provisions for eight weeks! That is, roughly, the normal amount of food which the country containß at any given time. Moreover, in the event of war, even if we escaped actual invasion, we should have to face the proßpect of waiting six months before we could hope for the renewal of our normal supplies, at something approaching normal prices, from overseas. For that is the time which, it is calculated, must elapse before our fleets could hope to clear the sea of the enemy's privateers

is just as well for us to remember, too, that there are no friendly frontiers acrosß which we draw supplies to make good our deficiency. Advocateß of the Channel

Tunnel have recently suggested that it would enable Prance it send supplies of food into this country in time of need. For in all probability, if we are at war, Prance will also be involved, and food prices will rise in France as in England. She will require al! she can get for her own use, and our small military value as an ally will be still further reduced if she has to feed us and fight at the same time

"Doubtl©3s, in sDite of its being treated by the enemy as contraband of war, food would reach us from America and Canada, but at an enormous price which only the rich could pay. It is the 'price' that would starve the great governing majority MILLIONS ON STARVATION LINE

"These are the precautions which have been taken by the retailers, the wealth, the fairly well-to-do, and the more prudent of the regularly employed working classes earning wages in the neighbourhood of 50s a week. These effor's likewise have had their share in assisting the rise "But there are vast numbers whOße resources did not permit Buch purchase of food in bulk. These—poor gentle folk and the lower-skilled masses of workers with tiny revenues of bstween 18s and 23s par week—who sra placed by harder fortsna on the lower levels of prosperity, wars sstrly overtaken by the tida of rioing prie«ci. Fer from being able to store food, ox econoaaiso en 'luxuries, 'these ara gaboiating on the extreme vdgs »f bars Deoeft&ity

"But wbat of those parpsiaally aare-leden soula wfeo, en a wajgo-earn-ing baeis of less than 18a a wask, wars attaining & bare living, not only for themsalvea, but often for wires and children as well, and that at peace prices? What agiin of those indigent masses—men, women and children —herded in our great centres oE population, whose diet wa3 always a matter of chance: the casual class, the work-shy.fthe loafer and the semi-criminßl? They have never had any actual sufficiency of food. Now they will havß none at all. For the nation is at war. and war-priceß confront our hungry millions. Soon they will become famine prices, and what then? "The Btrangth oC a chain is that of ita weakest link. These poverty stricken millions are our weakest link. How weak. I think few outside the earnest social worker have any conception

MEN WHO WILL LOSE WAGES "About ten years ago the Council of the Trades Unions, in dealing with the question—the people's food in war time—placed it on record that of the congested masses crowded in our great cities to-day .fully 7,000,000 souls, or 30 per cent., are always, living in poverty so dire that they can hardly obtain the barest subsistence evtn with food at peace prices. It may be said that even this awful total of those who are constantly living on the verge of starvation in this country is a low estimate, and that Eome place it at a still higher figure

"However that be, the fact remains that we have in our midst seven million souls who cannot pay war prices for food. Can we fight with any chance of success with these starving millions behind us? "But that is cot the worst, for these ominona multitudes will be swollen every day. "It has been calculated that threequartern oi our mercantile marine will be forced to lie up in the nearest portß for fear of captare. This means that something like threequartera of oar reqoirements in raw material will be held up, and that some three-quarters of our industrial clashes will be deprived of their work and wages "For tbe sake of argument, however, let us suppose that only onequarter of our mercantile marine, plus a proportion of food ships, are confined to harbourß of refuge. Yet this will infallibly mean the shortage of one-quarter of our raw material. Or, to put it in another way, it means that one-quarter of our industrials who are now earning good wages will be thrown out of work. Thus, aome 3,000,000 of our skilled labour class will euddenly find themselves wageless and unable to pay war prices for food THE LOAF AT Is 6d "This vast reinforcement of hungry men, with their wivts and families, must be added to the 7,000,000 already at grips with starvation. We have, then, at a moderate estimate, the alarming total of at least 10,000,000 souls who will be unable to pay for food at the price of the war loaf "Let us not forget that any lack of immediate success on the part of our fleets, entailing the prolonged delay of adequate cruiser operations against th« anesny's commerce destroyers, any large success of the latter's raiding work must rapidly ssell the fam-ine-stricken multitudes in our midst "Food will doubtless be got into the country. But before it can be got into the stomachs of our hungry millions its cost will be prohibitive"