Thus, from the beginning of the war, and all through its long course, food supply and food control were of the most vital importance. If our epigrammatic slogan, "Food Will Win the War," was, like most epigrams, not literally true, it was, nevertheless, literally true that there was always possible to either side the loss of the war through lack of food, and it is literally true that the food victory of the Allies was a great element in the final war victory. Germany's military defeat was partly due to food defeat, and if a military decision had not been reached in the fall of 1918, Germany would have lost the war in the spring of 1919 anyway from lack of food and raw materials.
ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY
The great struggle for food supply and food control involved so many and such complex undertakings that it is hopeless to attempt a detailed account of it in any space short of a huge volume. Yet the very limitations of the present discussion may have its advantages in compelling us to concentrate our attention on the most important aspects of the struggle and to try to sum up the most important results of it. Some of these at least should not be forgotten, for they have a bearing on the peace-time food problem as well as the war-time one. Fortunately the war-time food situation has developed in us a national and an individual food consciousness that will certainly not disappear in this generation at least.
The first important lesson that has been learned is that it is of great value to a nation to be able to provide in its own land its own necessary food supply. For although in times of peace and usual harvests international food exchanges enable a country, such as England or Belgium, highly industrialized and of large population in proportion to area, to make up without much difficulty its deficit as between production and consumption, the moment the great emergency arrives there is the utmost danger for its people. The history of the "relief of Belgium" during the war will illustrate this.
$600,000,000 WORTH OF FOOD SUPPLIED
This little country, famous through all past history as a battleground and now famous for all future time for its heroic and pathetic rôle in the World War, found itself at the very beginning of the war faced with a food problem that seemed at first insoluble, and which, if not solved, meant starvation for its people. It is a country highly industrialized, and with an agriculture which, though more highly developed as to method than that of almost any other country, was yet capable of providing but little more than a third of the food necessary to its people. It depended for its very life on a steady inflow of food from outside sources. But with its invasion and occupation by the Germans this inflow was immediately and completely shut off. Belgium was enclosed in a ring of steel. What food it possessed inside this ring disappeared rapidly.
The terrible situation was met in a way of which Americans may be proud. For the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, which was the agency that solved Belgium's great problem, was an American organization with a staff composed chiefly of young Americans, most of them from American colleges and universities, headed by an American, Herbert Hoover, of great organizing and diplomatic genius, and with the large heart of a world philanthropist. In the four and a half years from November 1, 1914, to May 1, 1919, which was the period of activity of the Commission, Belgium depended upon it for the supplying of three-fourths of the food of its people, over seven million in number. This amounted to about one million tons a year. In addition, the Commission supplied the food through practically all this period for the maintenance of the nearly two million unfortunate people in the German-occupied area of France. This amounted to a total of about one million tons. The total value of the food supplied to Belgium and occupied France was about six hundred million dollars, which was provided by the Governments of Belgium, France, England, and America, and the private charity of the world.
THE FOOD PRODUCTION OF GERMANY
For another impressive war-time food problem—which did not have the same solution as Belgium's—let us take that of Germany. In peace times the Germans produce about 80 percent. of the total food annually consumed by them. But their tremendous military effort necessarily entailed some reduction in their capacity for food production, although they also made a tremendous effort to stimulate and direct into most effective channels the native production of food.
Although it is true, as already stated, that Germany normally produces about 80 percent. of her food needs, making it seem possible for the nation to meet the blockade emergency by repressing consumption by 10 per cent. and increasing production by 10 per cent. this does not mean that they normally produce 80 per cent. of each kind of food consumed by them. As a matter of fact, they produce more than their total needs of certain kinds of food, as sugar, for example, and less than 80 per cent. of certain other kinds. And while there is a possibility of substituting, within certain limits, one kind of food for another, so that a shortage of wheat might be made up by an abundance of rye, or a shortage of bread-grains in general be made up, in some degree, by increasing the ration of potatoes, if they are available, this substitution cannot go to the extent of substituting pure carbo-hydrate or starchy foods like potatoes, which simply produce heat or energy for the body, for the protein foods like meat, fish, eggs and dairy products which produce not only energy but new tissues. A child must have protein food in order to grow; an adult must have it in order to replace the tissues worn out by daily work. Also, there are certain peculiar and so far little understood elements, called vitamines, found only in certain kinds of food, notably fats, milk and the green vegetables, which are essential to the proper metabolism of the body.