Over the transatlantic telephone Churchill and Roosevelt, like a couple of worried matrons, talked about food. A British major general with a distinguished record for bravery in Italy faced, with obvious trepidation, his new assignment to handle The Netherlands' "potentially perfectly awful" relief problems. Workers in France's nationalized Renault works hijacked a convoy of meat-laden trucks which had been seized by the Food Ministry. French railwaymen blocked gendarmes "who tried to take away ten cattle, threatened to tie up the big Villeneuve-St.-Georges freight yards with a strike. Paris entered its fourth meatless week. Alarmed by reports from the hungry Continent, two British Cabinet Ministers emplaned for Washington, where a seething row over food split the Administration.
Statesmen last week looked over the world's food prospects for 1945-46, realized that most relief food for Europe could come only out of the U.S. civilian supply, and concluded in all seriousness that the fate of democracy in Western Europe depended on U.S. housewives.
Would the U.S. public take further cuts, in addition to recent ones caused by huge military purchases? If so, the U.S. and Britain had a chance to win a prime peace aim—stable, democratic, friendly Governments on the near side of Europe. If not, a European food crisis might produce political chaos and totalitarianism.
Empty bellies sharpen memories. In 1942 official propaganda promised that the U.S. would put aside part of each year's crop to meet Europe's relief needs, pledged enough U.S. food stocks to "win the war and write the peace."
Now the pledge was due, and some 70,000,000 underfed Western Europeans knew it. But there were no such stocks, nor other regions to which Europe could turn for food. Japs still held most of Asia's food exporting areas. Drought held South America, South Africa, Australia (TIME, March 26). The U.S. and Canada, after alltime peaks of food production last year, expected a slight drop this year.
In all the world, only North Americans had a general diet level well above nutritional needs.* In all the world, only North Americans ate more food in wartime than before the war. This last was such an uncomfortably conspicuous fact in world politics that 1) Canada talked of resuming meat rationing although Canadians knew it would not reduce consumption significantly, and 2) one group of U.S. Administration leaders wanted a drastically reduced civilian food supply, although they knew it would raise howls from U.S. consumers who have looked to V-E day for relaxed rationing, not further cuts.
The Causes. Why had liberation and victory brought a crisis in food which the Germans had managed to stave off? There were many reasons. The Germans had managed European agriculture as a whole, introduced some improved methods, distributed food with a harsh, discriminatory—but efficient—hand. Even so, by D-day European food production was already running down for lack of phosphates, tractors, fuel, transport, manpower. After D-day disorganization mounted, European transport disintegrated, the German armies took horses to save fuel, and greatly reduced the working power of European farmers.