difficulties of tonnage and exchange led to a slight reduction, which down to the end of that year never became serious. The rise in price, however, was considerable, being over 200 per cent., from the ante-bellum price of 2d. to 5 d. per lb. in December 1916, of which 1d. is accounted for by additional taxation. By November 1916 the Commission had expended 81,000,000l. in the purchase of sugar. Though the article has practically been made into a State monopoly, the Commissioners have added to its cost price only d. per lb. in order to cover insurance and working expenses, and to provide a reserve fund large enough to maintain uniformity in price and to meet any possible reduction in prices at the close of the war.

To return to the activities of the Government during the first autumn of the war. In October 1914 the import of sugar through ordinary trade channels was prohibited, in order to prevent enemy sugar from reaching England through neutrals; and a Committee on Grain Supplies was formed, composed of representatives of various Government Departments, on the ground that it was 'too risky to leave the bread supply of the country and its armed forces entirely to private enterprise.' Its scope was limited to the piling up of a grain reserve; and, during the next four months, it purchased 31 million quarters of wheat, besides large quantities of flour from the United States and India. Large purchases of frozen meat were made by the Government from the River Plate and elsewhere, but only for army purposes, the balance remaining over for civilian consumption being insignificant.

In October and November a disquieting feature began to show itself. Shipping freights rose sharply. The Admiralty at once met the difficulty, so far as merchant vessels requisitioned in its service were concerned, by making an agreement with the owners for fixed rates (the so-called Blue Book' rates) on all cargoes. But in the open market, from November 1914 to March 1915, the rise in freights was steep and continuous; e.g. the rate on corn cargoes rose from the ante-bellum figure of 128. per ton to 142s. The causes were obvious. The Admiralty had already requisitioned a large number of our merchant vessels and was always requisitioning more;

some seventy to eighty British vessels were interned in German harbours, and a hundred more locked up in neutral ports in the Baltic; nearly a hundred big steamers were transferred from the British to neutral flags before the practice was forbidden about the end of the year; and 3 millions of enemy tonnage, shut up in British, American, and other harbours, were unable to trade. Moreover, an appreciable number of our vessels had been sunk by the enemy cruisers. The Battle of the Falkland Islands and other successes cleared the seas of these surface raiders, but drove the enemy to adopt a far more dangerous engine in the submarine.

By the end of the year, food prices had risen by 17 per cent. In January 1915 prices continued to rise; and the Labour Party began to agitate for more State interference, demanding State purchase and ownership of all stocks of wheat and its sale at fixed prices. But, beyond the Board of Trade's taking over the control of the Australian meat import under ordinary commercial conditions, and the appointment of a Cabinet Committee to consider the rise of prices, little was done. The results of the Committee's deliberations were presumably given in Mr Asquith's comforting speech in the House of Commons in the middle of February. He pointed out that, though food prices had risen by 20-24 per cent., the prices of five of the necessaries of life-wheat, flour, meat, sugar, and coal-had not yet reached the level of the time after the Franco-Prussian War; he attributed the higher price of wheat to the failure of the Australian crop, the embargo on Indian export, the delay of the Argentine export owing to bad weather, the closing of the Dardanelles against Russian wheat, the loss of the crops in Belgium and northern France, and the competitive purchases of France, Italy and Holland; and he explained that the advance in meat prices was caused by the enormous consumption of the new armies. Maximum prices he roundly condemned as discredited, not only theoretically, but by their ill success in Germany. But, except for a brief reference to the steps taken to secure the surplus of Indian wheat, Mr Asquith made no reference to the measures which the Government had already taken to meet the various difficulties of the situation. How little strength there was at this time

behind the Labour Agitation is plain from the fact that the Labour Resolution, after severe criticism from Mr Runciman, Mr Bonar Law and Mr Chamberlain, was allowed to be talked out.

At this time, however, a cloud was rising on the horizon of the food situation which at the present timethree years later--has darkened the whole scene. On Jan. 26, 1915, the German Government announced its control over all food-stuffs, including imports from over. seas. Our Government countered the stroke by proclaiming all food cargoes for German and even for neutral ports, if their ultimate destination for Germany was evident, to be contraband of war. On Feb. 4 Ger

many replied by announcing that, as from Feb. 18, British or neutral merchant vessels in British waters would be sunk by submarines without notice and without provision for the safety of crew or passengers. In 1914 only three British merchantmen had been sunk by submarines. Between Jan. 1 and March 31, 1915, the number was thirty. Our Government left the task of coping with the new danger to the Navy, and in the sphere of food supplies limited its activities to forming an Indian Wheat Committee to cooperate with the Indian Government in securing the Indian surplus-it was, to the amount of 24 million quarters, safely shipped to the United Kingdom-and to revising, in consultation with shipowners, the so-called Blue Book rates for freight on all requisitioned shipping, which had in October 1914 been fixed considerably below market level. The new rates came into force on March 1, and it was agreed that no further change should be made during the war. At the end of 1916 they still held good.

For some months, although a small group of agricul turists in both Houses of Parliament continued to urge the increase of home production, both the nation and the Government were more occupied with the pressing problems of recruiting, munitions and finance than with the gradually rising prices of food-stuffs. At last, in June 1915, the question of increased home production was definitely raised, but only as a side issue, as part of an economy campaign started by the Government in view of the enormous War Budget and of the subscription to the Second War Loan. As yet there was no general

fear of shortage; and the only economies preached were the cutting down of luxuries and the avoidance of waste, in order that more money might be forthcoming for the loan. The Coalition Ministry came into office on May 25; and almost the first act of the new President of the Board of Agriculture, Lord Selborne, was the appointment on June 17 of a small committee of experts under the chairmanship of Lord Milner, with instructions

'to consider and report what steps should be taken by legislation or otherwise for the sole purpose of maintaining and, if possible, of increasing the present production of food in England and Wales, on the assumption that the war may be prolonged beyond the autumn of 1916.'

Similar committees were appointed for Scotland and Ireland. In July Lord Milner's Committee presented an Interim Report, recommending, among other things, that farmers should be encouraged to grow more wheat by a State guarantee of a minimum price of 45s. per quarter for 1916 and the four following years, and that local War Agricultural Committees should be set up by County Councils to act as intermediaries between the Board of Agriculture and the farmers. The Scottish Committee would have nothing to do with a guaranteed minimum price. At the end of August Lord Selborne announced that the Government also rejected the first recommendation, but would at once proceed to the appointment of the proposed local committees. His statement clearly reveals the attitude of the Government towards the food problem at this time. Was it wise, he asked, to burden the nation with a heavy guarantee at a time of serious financial strain, or to encourage farmers to embark on large schemes of additional cultivation, when, as it was, the military authorities were not leaving them enough labour properly to cultivate the fields already tilled? At the moment 500,000 more acres were under wheat than in the previous year-an increase of 30 per cent. The harvests of Canada and Australia were super-abundant, and the Navy (we were told) had the submarine menace well in hand.

Six or seven weeks later things changed for the worse. There was a serious fall in imports, due, we must suppose, to shortage of tonnage-a shortage due

in its turn not so much to increased submarine depredations, as to the requisitioning of more ships to supply the Allied Armies sent to Salonika after the declaration of war against Bulgaria. In October an important Committee of the Cabinet met to review the whole question of shipping. While with certain reservations it decided against the artificial regulation of rates, not wishing to drive away neutral vessels, which were rendering valuable but expensive services both to ourselves and to our Allies, it recommended a very considerable advance towards the State control of British shipping. The results of its labours were soon seen. On Nov. 10, 1915, an Order in Council was published, appointing three Committees under the Board of Trade to deal with three different aspects of the shipping problem. These were (1) the Licensing Committee, (2) the Requisitioning or Carriage of Food-stuffs Committee, and (3) the Port and Transit Committee.

The function of the Licensing Committee was to prevent any British steamship of over 500 tons from carrying cargo between foreign ports without its licence -a provision extended on Feb. 15, 1916, to all voyages whatsoever. Its chief object, therefore, was to keep as many ships as possible for our own trade; only to established liners did it grant general licences-revocable at any moment-in order to maintain a skeleton outline of our normal trade activities. All other vessels it dealt with voyage by voyage. It was also its duty to stop sailings to congested ports, and to prevent, so far as possible, sailings in ballast.

The Requisition Committee was charged with the duty of providing tonnage, either by requisition or by direction of sailing, for the import of wheat and flour in quantities prescribed monthly by the Cabinet Committee on Food Supplies. After a conference with the leading ship-owners it requisitioned for this purpose 50 per cent. of the cargo space on all liners and 75 per cent. on a certain number of tramp steamers. Though it requisitioned the ships, it did not fix the rates of freight, but practically controlled them through its power of directing an adequate number of vessels to sail to the necessary ports, with the result that, e.g., North American rates fell in six months from 18s. to 12s. per ton. By