th a
little patience all would be well. But already there was a marked rise
in the death-rate, especially among children, who suffered from want of
milk, the cattle being slaughtered for food. There was serious rioting
in the Lanarkshire coalfields and in the Midlands, together with a
Socialistic upheaval in the East of London, which had assumed the
proportions of a civil war. Already there were responsible papers which
declared that England was in an impossible position, and that an
immediate peace was necessary to prevent one of the greatest tragedies in
history. It was my task now to prove to them that they were right.

It was May 2nd when I found myself back at the Maplin Sands to the north
of the estuary of the Thames. The _Beta_ was sent on to the Solent to
block it and take the place of the lamented _Kappa_. And now I was
throttling Britain indeed--London, Southampton, the Bristol Channel,
Liverpool, the North Channel, the Glasgow approaches, each was guarded by
my boats. Great liners were, as we learned afterwards, pouring their
supplies into Galway and the West of Ireland, where provisions were
cheaper than has ever been known. Tens of thousands were embarking from
Britain for Ireland in order to save themselves from starvation. But you
cannot transplant a whole dense population. The main body of the people,
by the middle of May, were actually starving. At that date wheat was at
a hundred, maize and barley at eighty. Even the most obstinate had begun
to see that the situation could not possibly continue.

In the great towns starving crowds clamoured for bread before the
municipal offices, and public officials everywhere were attacked and
often murdered by frantic mobs, composed largely of desperate women who
had seen their infants perish before their eyes. In the country, roots,
bark, and weeds of every sort were used as food. In London the private
mansions of Ministers were guarded by strong pickets of soldiers, while a
battalion of Guards was camped permanently round the Houses of
Parliament. The lives of the Prime Minister and of the Foreign Secretary
were continually threatened and occasionally attempted. Yet the
Government had entered upon the war with the full assent of every party
in the State. The true culprits were those, be they politicians or
journalists, who had not the foresight to understand that unless Britain
grew her own supplies, or unless by means of a tunnel she had some way