winter wheat was not classed higher than 64, a very poor crop is indicated by this year's probable index 56.2

Needless to say an increase in the supply of foodstuffs means finally an increase of the tonnage available for imports in France. For France thus, from the point of view of American coöperation, the supply of tonnage stands out as the vital issue.

THE FOOD PROBLEM OF GREAT BRITAIN; THE SHIPPING PROBLEM OF THE WORLD

BY ARTHUR POLLEN, ESQ.,

London, England.

I can only direct your attention to one or two salient and really rather startling facts. Before the war we used to import 13,000,000 tons of food, a shade more than one-quarter of our total imports measured by weight. We grew at home about one-fifth of the wheat we required and about one-half the country's consumption of beef, mutton, bacon, etc. Within the past six months great efforts have been made for an organized reduction in the consumption of food and an organized increase in its production. The results are unexpectedly satisfactory. Our consumption of bread is reduced by 25 per cent on the average, and by more in some districts. Further economies undoubtedly can be made. The

"The decrease of the 1917 crops compared to the 1916 ones is noticeable for all cereals. Reports based on unpublished official estimates give the following figures for 1917:

meat reduction is greater and we have more than doubled our production of cereals. We used to grow enough for ten weeks. This supply would now last us thirteen or fourteen weeks. We have nearly doubled the old supply which gives us six months' wheat grown in the country. But we are growing other things which should progressively take the place of wheat, and in the last year we have greatly increased our stocks. It looks, therefore, as if the food supply of Great Britain could be assured to the end of 1918 and that no anxiety on this score need be felt.

The food problem of the world is governed not only by the demand for food in one country and by the total supply of available food in others, but by the problem of shipping the food from one country to another. This problem has been made infinitely grave, not only for the period during which the war lasted, but quite obviously for a considerable period after it. It has been made grave by the enemy's having adopted a method in sea war to which there was no precedent in civilized times.

It is fortunate for the world that the pirates' progress of Germany has been a development and did not open in 1914 at the full tide of its present heartless villainy. The captains of the Emden and Karlsruhe, and of the armed cruisers that took between fifty and sixty British ships in the opening months of the war, never injured a British seaman or hurt a passenger. Müller of the Emden was a model of courteous deportment in this respect. The captain of the Eitel Fritz was, I think, the first to break with the civilized tradition. The rule of international law, as you all know, is that normally all prizes must be taken into port. The captor has no final right in them until a court of law has found them to be legal prize. In very exceptional cases they may be destroyed at sea. The Germans had to make the exception the rule. When they took a prize, therefore, the problem presented itself how were the crews and passengers to be disposed of. Von Müller put the crews and passengers taken from separate prizes into one ship, which he kept with him until it was full, and would then send that ship to a British port. He may have strained the law in sinking ships without legal procedure, but his treatment of his prisoners was exemplary. The captain of the Eitel Fritz took them aboard his own ship and kept them confined below decks, and there they remained prisoners until he surrendered himself to internment at an

American harbor. His captives, therefore, were exposed day after day to the risk of death, for had he met a British cruiser, he must have been engaged and destroyed.

When the submarine war began and the indiscriminate sowing of mines, all considerations of humanity were thrown to one side. But here too there was a development in brutality. Where the submarine was not risked, crews and passengers were originally given a chance to get into the boats. But it was found that too many ships escaped under this proceeding, and it was quite clearly realized that, the only way of making war on trade effective, was to sink always at sight. This could not be done without declaring war on all the world. And after some years of it, all the world now seems to be declaring war on Germany. But I am less concerned at this moment to expatiate on German villainy than to direct your attention to an economic result which must flow from it. The submarine campaign has very gravely diminished the world's supply of ships. Now when the war ends it is precisely ships that will be more wanted than anything else. The homes, the railroads, the factories, the bridges and the roads of a great deal of Europe will have to be entirely rebuilt, reëquipped, remade. It is work that must be done at the highest possible speed. If the manufacture and agriculture of Europe are to be restored, raw material, lubricants and fertilizers must be imported in vast amounts. Over the greater part of Europe the soil is exhausted, and without fertilizers the crops must continue very small after the war is over. For some years, then, the European demand for imported food will be just as great as the demand for steel, cement, tools and raw material. None of these things can be taken from the countries where the supply exists, North, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China and Japan, without shipping. The demand for shipping, therefore, may be nearly twice what it was before the war, and that demand will have to be met by a very gravely depleted supply. The depletion has been brought about by methods of war not only illegitimate but indescribably barbarous and horrible. The country that has invented and practiced these methods has a considerable shipping unemployed today in its own harbors. The German merchants and importers will be candidates for cargoes of all sorts, and especially for cargoes of food, which they will want to carry in their own bottoms when the war is over.

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this learned society. Dismiss y vindictive thought, abandon natural and murderous innova..the old chivalry of the sea, but ...ies of direct and active punish

se that you will forget who have Es? And if you do not forget, if the when the readjustments come after e restored, surely then Germany will e the last that will be met.

t. Whether the war ends this year urope is faced by a five years' shortage ean five years' famine. It is a situation

nay, impossible to meet by the individwhich governed the world commerce onal necessities of every country have overnmental control of the supply and

aw material and food. This will have to var is over unless grave injustice is to be conomic principles we profess, we are here a problem which nothing but national ernational concerted action, can deal with. at it should be a first principle in this action ought about the present chaos, who are the as destruction that has taken place, who were de overwhelming wants Europe will feel when the direct creators of the main difficulties in .. people should be the last to be served. of the war, this is a matter which it will be in e settle.

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SOME ESSENTIALS TO A SAFE DIET

By E. V. MCCOLLUM,

School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.

In my association during the summer in Washington with the various women in the field of home economics who were working in association with the food administration, I saw a great many charts and illustrations regarding comparative food values, and I was struck particularly with one type of product which came from various sources. I refer to such charts as illustrate the cost of a hundred calories of energy or the cost of a pound of digestable protein. In such charts we find invariably that for a dollar one can purchase the greatest amount of energy in the form of one of the cereal grains or their milled products, depending upon the market price at the particular time. The cheapest energy foods are those that are derived from the cereal grains

Now what effect will the distribution of such illustrative matter broadcast over the land have upon the dietary habits of the people of the United States at the present time? I think the answer is clear. Never before has the cost of foodstuffs risen to the present point. It is taxing very seriously the budget of numerous households to meet the food requirements of the family. I feel that there is an element of danger in giving the housewife this information without supplementing it with further advice to enable her to make a wise selection of food so that her list of purchases will provide a safe diet.

I am told that the recent rise in the price of milk in some of the large cities has already reduced the consumption of milk by the people. Under the stress of poverty the list of foods purchased becomes restricted and more and more the tendency is to use principally wheat bread, corn bread, oatmeal, rice, peas and beans, or dishes prepared from these, so that the diet becomes derived almost wholly from the seeds of plants. The charts of food values to which I have referred encourage women who are alert and anxious to study the food problems, to buy just such a list of foods as that just enumerated. Milk and green vegetables do not appear to the average