ABSTRACT
The approach to the problem of food supply best exemplifies the compartmentalization of military and civilian affairs so characteristic of government policy up to the first World War. It was in the field of agriculture and food supply that Britain was least prepared for the waging of a war for which history offered no precedents and few lessons. The “War Book,” a compendium of measures drawn up by the Committee on Imperial Defense for dealing with the problems that were expected to confront the Government in the event of hostilities, barely touched on the food problem. Even the Royal Commission on the Supply of Food and Raw Material in Time of War had failed to recognize, in its report of 1905, the full seriousness of the problem. It has been suggested that its Report “became the Bible and textbook” of the Government on the whole subject of food in time of war; 1 but, more properly put, the Report was merely an exegesis on the very well known and universally accepted text of the unquestioned superiority of British sea power which would, beyond doubt, prevent any interference with the British shipping trade. It is impossible to envisage any practical alternative to the policy of relying on the importation of food. British agriculture had begun its relative decline at the very time that Burke was lamenting that the age of chivalry was to be replaced by that of economists and calculators. 2 Unless all economic calculations were to be thrown overboard and Britain become a second-rate power, it could not restore its agricultural position. The Great Depression, beginning in 1873, had accentuated the recession, but decline was inherent in the revolution in transportation which brought the low cost food supplies of the Americas, Australia, and Russia within the reach of the British consumer. A manufacturing nation had prayed, “God speed the plough on every soil but our own,” and under the drive of economic forces had boldly taken up the cry, “Down Corn, Up Horn.” 3
