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FARMING AND WAR.

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FARMING AND WAR. WAST; OF GBA!N FUR INTOXICANTS. Sir Alfred Mond, speaking in the House tf Commons on Thursday in the resumed iebate on the question of the national food supply, said: The President of the Board of Trade, made a very important speech yesterday and made an announce- ment of very far-reaching importance. At last the Government, who hitherto felt rnwilling and reluctant, have been forced to fm," the problem the urgency of which lias been pressed upon them in thi House for a year and a half, and as to which the Press has been occupied now fox very many months. It is difficult to under- Aand-the right hon. gentleman did not ixplain it yesterday—to what is due the wmewhat sudden c-onversion he has ox- perience between the debate in the House oil the 15th October and the debate which, took place yesterday. In his speech of the i5th October the right hon. gentleman absolutely set his face against restriction uid against action. It is extraordinary -hat he could not deal with a matter of inch importance as the question of the food supply of the population, and he tnded his remarkable speech in the fol- lowing words: The policy of the Government is to pVovide plenty, to see that we have in this country an abundance, to see that it is brought here and on the terms which will allow no one to exploit or to become unduly rich at the expense of the oonsumer. That was spoken on the 15th October. Yesterday, a row weeks afterwards, the right hon. gentleman announced the ap- pointment of a Food Dictator; there is to be restriction, there is to be a census of stocks to be taken, an inquiry into milk regulations which we have not yet been allowed to see, and that is one of the diffi- julties of discussing this matter—and in the course of a few weeks there has been a revolution in this matter. The unwil- j lingnesB and the reluctance of the Gov- eminent, who have failed during over two years to face the elementary question of the food supply for the people and whp, have relied upon insufficient voluntary effort, propose to take the measures de- scribed yesterday. Not before, but when prices have risen. I would like someone an the Front Bench to explain to the Houae and the country why this position of the Government has been adopted. The Government consists, as we all know, of men of great ability. We know that they have got sufficient power in the Cabinet. They have at their disposal the best intelligence and information in the coun- try. Things are going to happen, and what is to happen must be known to the Government better than to any of us. A Committee was appointed, and the Com- mittee have made their rpport. But nothing has been done. Until we see that what was found impossible yesterday becomes suddenly a grand policy to-day. Not many weeks ago it was suggested that wheat might be brought from Australia. 1 he Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Irade ridiculed the suggestion, and declared that no one engaged in shipping would propose anything so foolish as to bring wheat all the. way from Australia, which would occupy a very much longer time than bringing wheat from the North American Continent. As if anybody did not know that. You apparently did not know that there was no wheat you could bring from North America. Yet a few weeks afterwards the Board of Trade adopts the very policy which had thus been ridiculed in this House, and we are informed that chips are going to be sent to Åustralia. What is the meaning of this Mg-zag course—of this absolute want of consistency week tli-s absolutc? walt of coiisi(?tenc' v -iveek I af?er week illontli after iu(,Ltlt, a,?id ?-far The right hon. gentleman must have known as well as other people that in a war of this kind the food supply would be t. most important subject. The Govern- ment appointed an emment committee under Lord Milner. That coinn, ittet,, made recommendations. Those recom- mondatioas, of course, the committee i having been appointed, are not follov,-ed i out. Why, we have never been told. I There is no doubt that if at the begin- ning of the war a consistent food policy— an intel^ligent^ food policy—had been fol- I lowed in this country there would have been no question now of panic legisla- tion, or of the regulations of which m-e. have heard. Every other country besides ours has been treated by almost every Government in a systematic and more or less drastic way. So at the beginning of the war they adopted a system of supplying machinery to the agricultural interest throughout the country. They did not exempt ploughmen and carters. They substituted for them motor ploughs and motor lorries, and that enabled them to dispense with a Rjreat number of ploughmen and carters on the land. The French Government have been operating on exactly the same lines, but in this country nothing of the kind has been done. The Board of Trade has not done anything. It might have had a system of providing the local authority, the parish council, it may be, with a motor plough, and other meehani- cal arrangements, so that the land could be properly cultivated, and at the same time a great many men released. There is no reason why that should not have been done, except that it was nobody's job to organise it. There is another point I should like to ¿. w attention to. Take the question of potatoes. It seems absurd. when we are short of potatoes in this country, and especially in Ireland, where the crop has suffered from blight, that no steps were taken to provide against such a state of thing prevailing. Everybody knows that potatoes properly sprayed do not get the blight, and if out potatoes had boon sprayed we might have been in a fai better position. It would have cost the country very little even to pay for the spraying. In the Highlands, ?aay m ftould, potato spraying is done for the farmer. After all, such steps as thœo would have been taken if the department had been dealing with the Army or with the Navy. The Government spent £20.006,000 in building huts for the Army. They spent many millions in putting up Sactories for the provision of munitions. ae moltBY was poured out with a favish tend for these purposes. But our agri- culture and our food supply, which iT so important, has never had a^ £ 10 note spent on it by the Government in order to en- able it to provide, more food during th# war. That is my complaint. I can never understand why all thece things, which must be so well known to the Board of Agriculture, have been ne- glected, and why no action has, been taken. Let me take another point. No steps hare been taken, 60 far as I am aware, to Idy down in any way any prin- ciple Qs to what land should be ploughed up foi wheat. No survey has been made. There has been no allotment of the various areas. No one has been consulted, and no one has been told that his land must be ploughed up. You have com- mandeered 4.000 businesses. Why ndt commandeer the land in t'he same way? Mr. Prmgle: How can the State do it? ,Sir A. Mond: Surely the State "ail take over a farm. They have taken er land for munition factories, and they could quite as easily take over 4.000 farms as they have taken over 4.000 in that indue- try. They have simply to give their in- etructions and it would be done. If I had the power, I would do it myself in Why not have national farms? The in?a syst?natic way. These problem6 i may be dimcult. but they are not impo&- I sible of solution. You have put up all {i o,??r the cotmtry national ?hcll factories, i  factories tad 'to be i r4tioiJ s?pU factories had Ito be?l- equipped. The national farms are already to your hand. arable land has been the fact that they have felt—I think wrongly-that as soon as the war stops there will be a great slump in wheat prices, and they would have turned a lot of their land into use- less production. If the Government had given a guarantee for a certain number of years, it would not have cost them any- thing. I am certain wheat will remain dear for some years after the war. The farmer, of course, is not in a position to judge these things, and he does not like to take the risk. 1 say that if the Government gave a guarantee now they would add greatly to the wheat supply of this country. There is another point I want to come to. and one which I think has not been mentioned at all during these debates. I wonder whether the House, or the country, realises the enormous waste of food material, land and labour which is going on in this coun- try owing to the destructive distillation of grain for the purpoe of making alcohol for drink. I am not normally a temper- ance fanatic or a prohibitionist. I would not advocate anything exceptional in the way of restricting the moderate enjoyment of alcohol if the people like to take it, but we are not in normal time; we are in an abnormal time. We are in a time when every ounce of our strength is re- quired to win a great war. Neither beer nor whisky is required to win a great war, though alcohol so far as it is wanted for munition purposes must, of course, be had. Anyone who lives to look into the figures will see that we have in this coun- try an enormous area which is utilised for the production of barley and hops for the purpose of brewing beer. A considerable amount of this land whch is available for growing barley would I think be suitable for wheat, while the hop land at the proper season could be used for growing very fimi crops of potatoes, or any other crop of that kind. Then you have a large amo ut L.bour emoloyed in this, and though it would not tic order in tins ueoate to deal with the question of man power, and I do not; pr <>•_>•«*- to do so, when you think of the area of land in the United Kingdom under barley alone in 1914 lor brewing and dIs- "I!; was estimated by the Board of Agriculture to be 871,000 u.r96, 1 :1 which is now arable, not which wants breaking up, but which is arable and therefore can be used tor arable crops, which got the labour and is being tilled-when think of this I say the reduction f¡},c Govern- ment has made in the e-ving f. -ilities is infinitely too small, and if they will not adopt a drastic policy of entire pro- hibition. ? hope the new Food l)'-otai.- r will seriously consider the question with a new at any rate of cutting it down very considerably. There are no greater beer drinkers than in Germany, yet in Bavaria they have reduced brewing by 50 per cent. The Austrians have abolished it alto- gether, and in Russia the distillation of alcohol Las been entirely prohibited. I am urging this as a war measure, and I have a very good precedent for it. I do not know how far members of the House are aware that this very step was taken during the Napoleonic wars by Ph:t. It is nothing new to learn on this question. You really only have to 50 t ack on our own history of our statesmen up tier simi- lar circumstances in order to lincl the remedies for our difficulties. The Act of '35 prohibited' for a limited time the making of low wine or spirits from wheat;, barley, meal, or any other sort or kind of meal, flour, or bran, or I permitting home made spirits deposited in warehouses for export to be taken out for home consumption. This was in June, 1795. and it went on for a number of years after the war, because they found the result so beneficial.. That war measure was adopted for the purpose of conserving the food supply of the people. I advocate it now with no ulterior motive, but for exactly the same reason. 1 say it is perfectly scandalous that your children and women cannot obtain sufficient nourishment when you are em- ploying large masses of land and a large amount of labour in producing what is after all, at best, a pleasurable, but an en- tirely useless commodity. I therefore hope the Government and the Food Dictator will do something. I hope the Food Dic- tator will really be allowed to do some dictating, and not merely make memo- randa and recommendations for Govern- ment Departments, to be then referred to another conference, and then to another Board, something like the Man-Ilowel; Board which we have at the present time. I hope that this will be taken seriously in hand. In the debate yester- day I think a great deal too much street, was laid by some speakers on the sub- marine menace. We were assured, ii almost lugubrious tones, that the sub- marines were a menace. I think it is de- plorable to give the Germans the kind of testimonial that they wanted. think in his mind that he might dig up grass land, but he would say, Here i, the lease," and he thinks perhaps he had better not. If an announcement had been made that these leases should be set aside for this purpose, then I think a great many more questions would have been asked and a great deal more would have been done. The right hon. gentleman knows as well as I do that the farmer is conservative and slow moving. There is one thing I may say in his defence. He has been asked to break up old pasture, and the landlord has, perhaps, been able to con- sent, but the breaking up of old pasture is a serious thing. You cannot immedi- ately grow a wheat crop. If the farmer is to be induced to do that, it must be shown to him that it would be a profit- able transaction. For some period there ought to be a fixed sum guaranteed to him under such conditions. You cannot ask the farmers to do this immediately out of sheer love for their fellow men. If the Government at the beginning of the war had guaranteed to the farmers 45s. a quarter for three years—those three years are getting on—and wheat being I above 45s. a quarter, the Government would not have lost a farthing over the transaction, but what they would have done if they had adopted the recommend- ation is that they would have had a good deal more wheat land under cultivation in this country. Anybody who has been in touch with English farmers knows per- fectly well that one of the reasons that has mads them chary of turning up Again, I do not see why they cannot take over the wheat crop of this country. We have taken over the wheat crop of other countries. The farmer, like other people, is naturally watching and waiting for the best prices, and as prices go up, he becomes a more un wiIling seller. Nobody likes to sell when prices are on the up grade. That is the time when you want your maxi- mum other-wise you are going to have your wheat held up. That is the thing you have to avoid, even if you commandeer the whole wheat supply at a reasonable price. It is a thing which can be done. Other productions have been commandeered. Then with regard to our meat supply. We can supply a very large amount of our own meat, and I do not see why we should not regulate our own meat supply, even if we cannot regulate the South American sup- ply. The Government have not planted any potatoes. -In Hyde Park they have planted flowers. An example of that kind was not likely to induce other people to realise that there was something serious on. Not only that, but the right hon. gentle- man, the other day, in answer to a ques- tion, said regarding prohibitions and leasee, that any question of a breach of these covenants was to be brought before the Board of Agriculture. Why should they be brought before the Board of Agri- culture? The farmer has his lease, and he knows that he is liable to a heavy fine if he breaks up grass land without per- mission. The farmer probably might It would be of interest to know what has been done, because a very great amount of delay, a great deal more delay than ought to have occurred, has occurred in the com- pletion of the ships that were on the stocks. Of course, this debate might have been more useful if we had known the regulations intended to be issued and we had had some statement of the action to be taken to improve the position. I, at any rate, am very pleased that even at the; eleventh hour our Government has begun to do aoiiiething. May I ask my right hon. friend not to waste too many months in getting in returns. So far as I can see, i-no? people in this country are occupied not in producing anything, but in filling in I ■ pieces of paper, and I do not want my right hon. friend and his staff devoting!1 most of their time to filling up endless forms only to find them accumulating. c-specially at a time like this. I understand we are to get some of these returns which may take months to fill up. i and months to put together and tabulate. and in the meantime the people of this country want more food and cheaper, and the people are entitled to have it. We are not in a state of famine, we are not in a state of serious shortage; we are in a con- dition of relatively small shortage and of consequently relatively high prices. It ought to be a question of relatively small and not enormous regulations to retrieve the balance, and this would do very much to remove what industrial unrest exists in the country. (Cheers.)

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