Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm
away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night
the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but
the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day
by day to the destroyer.
But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the
hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.
_Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you_, by—not by stopping the
destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably
helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who
volunteered for National Service, and last month he received
instructions _to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery_.
_Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens_—and Mr. Prothero
will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.
_We have not enough food to last till the harvest_—why not go out and
catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?
_We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical
weeks_—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month
from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers
may not thirst.
_We must not eat more than our share, on our honour_—but the man across
the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.
_We must eat less and eat slowly_—so that brewers may waste more and
waste quickly.
_We must keep back famine_—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst:
that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. _But why not
keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?_
_Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread_,
says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day
for beer, says the Government.
_God speed the plough and the woman who drives it_—yes, and God help the
woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry
for bread.
_Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf_, says the Food Controller—but
not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.
Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific
Committee. “_Then let us grow only half as many_,” said Mr. Prothero.
Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of
mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation
that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like
to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the
Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a
year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to
managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while
food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It
does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while
barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the
calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are
working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets;
and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns
us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and
then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may
become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, _to
whitewash the lower part of their windows_.
Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control
Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on
it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed
on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it
is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an
eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving
platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime
Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had
a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” _Are we
better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?_
But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up
food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud
to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away;
with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of
Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the
nation is not mightily impressed.
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