itish Coromandel.
Before the war Germany got half of the Egyptian cottonseed and half of
the Philippine copra. That is one of the reasons why German warships
tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
conquer Egypt in 1915.

But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have come into British possession and
now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
peanuts like the Americans.

The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
blue-bottle fly--hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
mischief--was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
eggs by the billion on fish refuse. Within a few days there is a crop of
larvae which, to quote the "Chemische Zentralblatt," yields forty-five
grams per kilogram of a yellow oil. This product, we should hope, is
used for axle-grease and nitroglycerin, although properly purified it
would be as nutritious as any other--to one who has no imagination.
Driven to such straits Germany would have given a good deal for one of
those tropical islands that we are so careless about.

It might have been supposed that since the United States possessed the
best land in the world for the production of cottonseed, coconuts,
peanuts, and corn that it would have led all other countries in the
utilization of vegetable oils for food. That this country has not so
used its advantage is due to the fact that the new products have not
merely had to overcome popular conservatism, ignorance and
prejudice--hard things to fight in any case--but have been deliberately
checked and hampered by the state and national governments in defense of
vested interests. The farmer vote is a power that no politician likes to
defy and the dairy business in every state was thoroughly organized. In
New York the oleomargarin industry that in 1879 was turning out products
valued at more than $5,000,