Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens—and Mr. Prothero will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.
We have not enough food to last till the harvest—why not go out and catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?
We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical weeks—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers may not thirst.
We must not eat more than our share, on our honour—but the man across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.
We must eat less and eat slowly—so that brewers may waste more and waste quickly.
We must keep back famine—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?
Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread, says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day for beer, says the Government.
God speed the plough and the woman who drives it—yes, and God help the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry for bread.
Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf, says the Food Controller—but not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.
Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific Committee. “Then let us grow only half as many,” said Mr. Prothero.