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>For the Allies, the prospect of wartime hunger, always potential but never too imminent, had grown much more real last week. Though France could always find food for herself (but not for 5,000,000 refugees), she lacked farm hands, was far behind both in plowing and sowing. England could always import hers so long as she had the $1,610,000,000 to meet the annual bill. Last week the Londoner still had his bacon & eggs, the Parisian his pain beune. But Englishmen were at last beginning to see that Master-Farmer David Lloyd George was right: they must plow their pasturage and "dig for victory." Seeking also to cut home consumption not only of food but of nonessential articles, the Board of Trade restricted by two-thirds the supply of 600 such items as brassieres, suspenders, pajamas, floral waters and pomades; hoped thereby to release factories and labor (see p. jj) for war production. At the same time, London's posh Savoy Grill served its last supper, shut up shop "for economic reasons." Only bright news to a nation sternly taking in its belt: this year's strawberry crop is "the best since William the Conqueror."
>With funds and fleet bigger than ever since The Netherlands and Belgium had joined them, the Allies were not to be starved so long as the Nazis would let them trade overseas. Canadian bins held enough wheat to feed the Allies for a year. Experts reckoned the U. S. would have 346,000,000 bu. of wheat, 266,352,000 Ib. of lard, 692,000,000 bu. of fodder corn in its storehouses this autumn. Last week Hoover's Committee, the Aldrich Committee, the Red Cross and Friends Service Committee were all gathering funds to feed war refugees now in France. For, whether they got paid for their help or not, whether they were in the war or out, Americans are very unlikely to let anybody in Great Britain and France go short of food. As to the other side, hunger was plainly Foe No. 2.