We are not on that account much nearer absolute knowledge of the economies effected. We do not know what has been the gain or loss in productive energy, what if any has been the compensating consumption of solid food resulting from the limitation of the beer supply; we do not know whether coarsemilled and diluted flour has benefited or impaired the national stomach, has raised or lowered the national morale.

No estimate is attempted in the report of the gain to be effected by reducing the numbers of live-stock kept and giving preference to those which are most efficient 'converters' of starch into protein and fat. In any case, there is an undoubtedly heavy loss in converting vegetable products into animal food, and it is therefore arguable that in time of dearth no agricultural produce should be grown specially to feed live-stock, and that the food-animals kept should be limited to such a number and kind as could be maintained on the grass crops of land unsuitable for arable cultivation and the offal portions of the table-produce grown. But such a conclusion cannot be accepted without qualification. Almost the only home source of edible oils and fats, items essential to our proper nutriment, is animal food. Moreover, the raising of beef or mutton results not only in food but also in wool, leather, and such by-products as gelatine, etc., all of which are necessary to our economic life; and if we did not raise these things we should have to import them. For these reasons alone, and there are others, it is highly probable that to confine stock-raising within the limits suggested by the conversion' argument would be economically and nutritively disadvantageous.

The reduction of food consumption by the inculcation of better kitchen economy offers a tempting field of effort, for the waste due to ill-chosen and ill-prepared food is incalculable. By far the greater part of this particular kind of waste occurs among the wage-earning section of the population: not because the wage-earner's wife is incompetent or wantonly slipshod, but because her traditional methods of food preparation are not helped out by knowledge of food requirements and food values, and also because she has not the appliances, nor in many cases the time, for economical cookery. Something can be done, and is being done, to remedy the lack of knowledge by instruction through the medium of the press, the leaflet, the lecture, and

the demonstration, but the indifference of generations cannot be repaired in a day or a year. To effect any really substantial reform, one would have to begin with the schoolchildren, and at the same time re-order and re-equip on more leisured and generous lines the wage-earner's home life-and in the meantime the nation has to be fed. The most hopeful line of approach, so far as concerns immediate results, is to be found in the establishment of municipal kitchens to supplement and compete with the 'ready-cooked' shop and the fried-fish bar ; but the scale on which this remedy can be applied is obviously limited.

Whatever is done in this way, the educational propaganda must go on, and perhaps it is not too late to utter a word of criticism as to the tone of the exhortations to food economy which have hitherto been made. The dominant note of these exhortations has been 'Food is going to be scarce: eat less.' Now in the complex of instincts that make up human nature there happens to be one which, at the suggestion of probable scarcity to-morrow, prompts a desire to eat more than one's fill to-day. We are all vastly amused to tell each other of the 'perfectly wolfish appetite' we develop, and have to restrain, when we read the jumpy headlines and solemn admonitions of our breakfast newspapers upon the scarcity of food and the need for going on short commons. Certainly it is comical; but behind the joke is a moral. By our mode of appeal we have done much to generate the inordinate appetites we ask people to curb. There is no need to hide the facts of the food situation, even were the desirability of so doing governed solely by its effect upon consumption, for the appeal to reason and patriotism finds response; but in view of the force of instinct and the power of suggestion, more emphasis might with advantage be laid on the perfectly valid contention : 'You have eaten more than was good for you in the past: ' eat less, and you will fare better.'

The total maximum economy which could be effected in the ways above described can hardly be estimated, but the actual effect of any given diminution of consumption is readily ascertainable, and the figures are more than a little startling. If six million workers would be required to produce the whole of the food we were in the habit of consuming, then it requires no less than 60,000 additional agricultural workers (or their VOL: 226. NO. 461.

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equivalent in zeal, machinery, overtime, spare time, organisation, or direction) to produce at home each additional I per cent. of our customary food requirements; or, contrariwise, every I per cent. reduction in the amount of food we consume saves the labour of 60.000 persons. If we may assume that by judicious eating, the curtailment of waste, and the using of all available foodstuffs to the best nutritive advantage, we can manage on 20 per cent. less food than would otherwise be consumed, we thereby save the labour of 1,200,000 agricultural workers. These are facts worth pondering by all who may be inclined to argue to themselves that a little personal carelessness or indulgence makes no matter, but that a few thousand workers more or less in home agriculture will make all the difference in the world-will make the difference between victory and defeat.

Yet when the last economy compatible with health and energy is made, even though we cut down our consumption by one-third, we should have in our normal home supplies not more than half the food required for our sustenance. The provision of the remaining half rests between the extension of our agricultural output at home and the maintenance of the services that ensure our overseas supplies. In shaping from day to day our food policy, we have to determine, as between these two, the order and degree of precedence which one or the other shall enjoy.

Let it be noted that it is particularly useless here to proceed by the always treacherous argument of ' In the last resort,' or its milder form of ' We must be prepared for every eventuality.' If the curve of the submarine depredations were suddenly to swing upward again and we found ourselves rapidly becoming isolated, not even a miraculous development of home agriculture right up to the level of national self-sufficiency would enable us to continue the war, for other things than food-things that cannot be produced within our own shores-are indispensable to our military efforts; whilst pari passu with the severance of ocean communications would almost certainly come a hold-up of cross-Channel traffic. Sound policy can only be arrived at by a careful weighing of present tendencies and immediate probabilities; and the prospects at the time of writing are that the activities of the submarine will be more and more effectively countered. What we have to anticipate and provide for is,

therefore, a situation in which the volume of shipping at call is still substantial, though much reduced and still sailing at some peril; in which an even larger demand on our own tonnage may be made for military and naval purposes, but in which the breach created by the depredations of the submarine is rapidly being filled by new construction both in the United Kingdom and in America, supplemented by the chartering of the numerous German ships in United States and Brazilian ports.

With these conditions in prospect, and keeping in mind the great scarcity of labour, we have to determine how effort shall be directed in order to yield the maximum amount of food per unit of labour employed. The food-provision services fall into three categories: home production, including agriculture and sea-fishing; shipbuilding to replace tonnage sunk; and transport, including both sea transport and the conveyance of goods from the docks to the consumer. All these services require labour, and a lively competition is all the time going forward between them for men. If men are to be withheld or released from the forces in order to ensure our food supply, or if workers ineligible for military service are being allocated to work of national importance, to which of these services should priority of claim be given to agriculture, to sea-fishing, to shipbuilding, to the docks, or to port-to-city goods transport? The material available for such a calculation is neither very full nor very reliable-whilst here again many of the factors are modified by each turn of events-but it is possible to estimate with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes the main facts of the situation.

The food for human consumption produced in the United Kingdom in the five years immediately preceding the war averaged a little over 12,000,000 tons a year and occupied the labour of about 2,000,000 people. In agriculture one person employed produced, therefore, about six tons of food for human consumption per year.* This figure may usefully be taken as a basis of comparison.

* That is, six tons of food in its final form as bought and eaten by people. The food grown for and eaten by animals is not included, only the meat and dairy produce which they in turn furnish. Allowance has been made for the home-grown oats eaten by horses.

La sea-dshing me person produces sixteen tons of human food a 1 pa-cerit frees the weight produced by the amui veriter Fish s bwin fats and starch as compared with other foodsafs, and the energy value of the fisherman's product is fur that reason my about the same as that of the mculturalist: but is twice as rich in protein, so that a unit of labour empired in isting is six times the protein of a unit applied to Amruture. This is a point of some moment, for the present shortage is greater in the case of bodybuilding foods than in fats and starchy foods. It is pertinent, moreover, at the present juncture to remember that the fisherman's harvest is laid on the quay the next morning, and with proper organisation can be on the table of the consumer within twenty-four bours afterwards. On the other hand, the fishingboat is subject to the submarine peril, and a very heavy call is made by the Nay on fishing-craft and fishermen. It is fully realised in the fisheries that this must be so, and that minesweeping gives even better results by protecting than seafishing by producing food The sources from which trawler crews can be supplemented are more restricted than in the case of workers on the land, but a certain amount of dilution is feasible, and is in fact at present being introduced to excellent purpose. It may be said broadly that labour, capital, and organising ability applied to the extension of sea-fishing at the present juncture would yield six times more food (in terms of nutriment value) than if devoted to agriculture, and would lay its produce on the shop counter not in three or fifteen months' time, but the day after to-morrow.

So much for the home-production services; now what of the services that provide us with our overseas supplies? The shipyards can do with more and yet more men, and are clamouring for them. Is it really nationally advantageous to set men building ships to bring food from abroad, or would their labour result in more food if it were devoted to the cultivation of our home fields? To answer the question a good many assumptions of a very hypothetical nature have to be made. One ought, for instance, to know the expectation of life' of a new ship exposed to the prospective submarine peril, and one ought to know the date of the end of the war. Not to enter into competition with Lloyds and the prophets, let it be assumed that the new ship will have a twelve-months' run after launch