The proposed food administration is intended, of course, only to meet
a manifest emergency and to continue only while the war lasts. Since
it will be composed for the most part of volunteers, there need be no
fear of the possibility of a permanent bureaucracy arising out of it.
All control of consumption will disappear when the emergency has
passed. It is with that object in view that the Administration
considers it to be of pre-eminent importance that the existing
associations of producers and distributers of foodstuffs should be
mobilized and made use of on a volunteer basis. The successful
conduct of the projected food administration, by such means, will be
the finest possible demonstration of the willingness, the ability and
the efficiency of democracy and of its justified reliance upon the
freedom of individual initiative.
The last thing that any American could contemplate with equanimity
would be the introduction of anything resembling Prussian autocracy
into the food control of this country.
It is of vital interest and importance to every man who produces food
and to every man who takes part in its distribution that these
policies, thus liberally administered, should succeed and succeed
altogether. It is only in that way that we can prove it to be
absolutely unnecessary to resort to the rigorous and drastic measures
which have proved to be necessary in some of the European countries.