tons, to bring over from countries thousands of miles away our January to June supply of wheat for 1894, and the last half of the year, being the harvest half, is much heavier, of

course.

Unfortunately, I have not available statistics of the imports of wheat and butter for the latter half of 1894.

It will be seen, then, that, valuable as are our imports of other food, they are insignificant as compared with our imported loaf. It would be very unpleasant to have no foreign butter or sugar, but it would not mean starvation, and if we were not at war with France and Germany they would come in all right.

I am not a pessimist, I have the most absolute confidence in the power and will of our people to hold their own against the world if necessary. I believe in our women. If you want to know the real strength and lasting power of a people look at their women, and where will you match ours? For mothers, wives, daughters, what nation can match ours? And as long as that is so we need have no fear when the sons of our

British mothers go out on sea or land to uphold the honour and the glory of the British race.

But the question of fighting seems to me to be quite a secondary one; we know we shall do that, we may even look calmly on the possibility of some improbable disasters to our arms in our next great war. But what fills

me with dread is that no war fleet we could ever send from our shores could compel the nations which now feed us to do so against their will; and if that is true, how can we expect our millions will quietly die of starvation ? Our home army, regulars, militia, volunteers, and police would be utterly swamped in the cry for bread; they would join in the cry, and then our Government would be face to face with the greatest question any Government ever had before it, viz. whether they could feed the nation or not! If not, then it would be simply a question of how far we should have to sink in the scale of nations, to what terms we should have to submit, and who can say what they would be?

And yet it seems to me that if we had

only one year's supply of bread in this country, we could laugh at anything men of other nations could threaten us with. The genius of our people for war, proven any time these last thousand years nearly, would awaken again. As Campbell sang:

"Ye Mariners of England! that guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again to match another foe!

And sweep through the deep, while the stormy winds do blow;

While the battle rages loud and long, and the stormy winds do blow.

*

*

*

"The spirits of your fathers shall start from every wave."

CHAPTER VII.

HOW WE KEEP FROM THREE TO FOUR YEARS' SUPPLY OF CORN AT MALTA.

IN the course of a conversation I had last year with Sir Edward Birkbeck on the question of our food supply-the importance of which he said it was impossible to exaggerate he asked me, as I had referred, in the Nineteenth Century, to our provisioning Gibraltar for two years, if I had ever seen the great corn stores we keep at Malta. I have not done so, and it occurred to me it would be very interesting to have some information about them for this book; so I wrote to a correspondent at Malta, Mr. John Critien, who very kindly gave me the following account of the "silos," and the accompanying illustrations, with permission to publish them.

I wish to make it quite clear, however,

that in the plan for forming a reserve of corn in this country, which I advocate, I do not propose that it should be stored for more than one year. To do that would upset the whole plan I suggest, which is

The gradual collection of an amount equal to one year's import, and its automatic renewal by exchanging it for the new corn as it arrives at the different ports.

It is, nevertheless, both interesting and useful to know that even in a small sea-girt island like Malta, corn can be kept, and, as a matter of fact, is kept good, for as long a time as four years, and is circumstantial evidence of the truth of the Biblical statement that Joseph, in the dry climate of Egypt, fed the people with corn stored for seven years.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CORN SILOS AT MALTA.

"Malta, May 14, 1896. "To R. B. Marston, Esq., London.

"DEAR SIR,

"Agreeable to my promise I have great "pleasure now in giving you the information "regarding the Malta corn stores, or, as they are