THE FISH FAMINE.
It is only proper that an agitation should be on foot to compel the Government to take measures to prevent a further rise in the cost of bread, the food of the people.
But what is the Government prepared to do to remedy the present deplorable dearth in the food of the people's thinkers—fish?
Scientists, statisticians, fishmongers and other authorities tell us that for the development of the human brain there is nothing to compare with fish. Indeed, one has only to glance at the throng assembled in any popular fish-bar of a night to realise that the people of our country are alive to their need in this respect.
Consider what this shortage of fish must mean in the development of the intellectual life of the people of this country. How can we expect our parcels to be delivered intelligently, our gas-fittings to be adjusted properly, our bulbs to be planted effectively, if our carmen, our plumbers, our jobbing gardeners, and so forth, are deprived of their daily bloater or bloaters, as the case may be?
How can we hope that Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett or even Lord Kitchener himself will continue to guide the nation effectively with the fish course obliterated from the menu?
What is the use of the Poet Laureate to the country if Billingsgate is inactive? And without Billingsgate how can our half-penny morning papers adjust their differences, or illuminating discussion among intellectuals be maintained?
How much longer will The Spectator and The Church Times be worth reading if the present scarcity of fish continues? Is a Hampstead thinkable without halibut?
A marked deterioration has already been noted in the quality of the discourses of the senior curate at one of our suburban churches. We may be capturing trade, and the position of our banks may be wonderfully sound; but against that must be recorded the lamentable fact that in a certain town in the Home Counties last week only twenty-two people attended a widely announced debate on the subject, "Have Cinema Pictures a more refining influence upon the Poor than Classical Poetry?"