of food has been affected by the raising of great
armies--more than twenty million men are in arms in Europe--by the
feeding of armies, for which we must, of necessity, provide food in
excess of what these men would need in civil life. The ability to
get the food has been made difficult for us by the submarine warfare.
Thousands of tons of wheat lie in Australia, but we cannot afford
ships to bring it. Tea has been very short in England, though again
there are thousands of tons waiting in India. The most urgent need of
the Allies is for ships and more ships. There has been great loss of
tonnage and the needs of the Army and Navy absorb the service of vast
numbers of the available ships. We have moved 13,000,000 men since
war broke out, and the supplies and munitions they have needed, to our
many fronts. Ceaselessly we move the wounded. We have to bring into
Britain half our food. That we have done this, has been due to the
British Navy and the Reserves--the patrols and the mine sweepers--the
Fringes of the Fleet--and not least, the merchant seaman. About
6,000 merchantmen have been killed by the enemy, some with diabolical
cruelty. These men are torpedoed and come into port, and go for
another ship at once. On the ship on which I crossed there were seamen
who had been torpedoed three times In its submarine warfare the enemy
has broken every international and human law--has used "frightfulness"
to its fullest extent, and the answer of our merchant seamen is to go
to sea again as soon as the ship is ready, and the older men, who had
retired, return to sea. The seaman of our country know the enemy. It
was our Seamen's Union that refused to carry the Peace Delegates to
Stockholm, and it is they and our fishermen who, in the Reserves, man
the patrols and mine sweepers, and who, on our little drifters and
trawlers, have fought the enemy's big destroyers--fought till they
went down, refusing to surrender.

It is not strange that the best-liked poster in our Food Crusade,
and the one people want everywhere, is a simple drawing of a merchant
seaman, and under it the words, "We risk our lives to bring you food.
It is up to you not to waste it."

The countries that can succeed best in solving the food question are
the countries that will win, and the food problem will not cease, any
more than many others, when peace is declared.

Very early in the war, existing organizations, such as the National
Food Reform Association, and ne