We need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us
all we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for
the sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer’s yeast, and
we can do without distiller’s yeast as well by setting up a thousandth
part of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we
must have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United
Kingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year _we have
given enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast
for a year_. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on
its ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers’ vats, and for rum
for 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people’s bread. It is
a monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain
this food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in
order to make bread.
It cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in
earnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers’ paper, with no
axe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the
war, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army,
her Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in
order to enter the war at full strength.
Let the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible
citizen of the United Kingdom read this—it is from the most influential
flour-milling paper in the world, the “North Western Miller,” published
in Minneapolis:
“=Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on
behalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the
stewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily
America would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are
now asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.=
“=Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the
manufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world’s food supply was
obviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their
accustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can
continue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then
Britain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the
drink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all
the Allies depends.=
“=The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local
proposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply
concerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called
upon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.=”
What is the Government’s answer to this? “We owe a very considerable
debt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective
assistance they are rendering us,” says the Prime Minister. _Is this the
way we pay them back?_ It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have
to raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to
smash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the
Government can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain
on our history in the face of all these questionings.
There is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is
the Government going to do with the soldiers of America’s Prohibition
Army, and the sailors of America’s Prohibition Navy, when they come over
here? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and
degraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the
enemy that traps them before they reach the war?
They are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be
answered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade
that helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling
price the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.
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