It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can order as much extra beer as it likes.
It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet the other week.
It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes shipping on bringing brewers’ vats from America and taking gin to Africa.
It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky as late as May this year.
It is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a scapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is not mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking how long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is asking already why she should go short of bread in order that England may drink more beer.
A Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it has put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men in the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out a case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?
1. We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour for bread.
All over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those simple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain questions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we have 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether we mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it? It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case. This talk of five per cent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of this malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the straits to which the Food Controller’s Defense Department is reduced.
2. We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation only ten days’ bread.
It would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern loaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking still a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate appeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs when he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of over 1,000 tons of grain a day.