BR / “SAVE EUROPE NOW” TO THE TIMES, 4 JUNE 1946
BRACERS 68594. TL(CAR) (Draft). McMaster. B&R F46.02
Proofread by K. Blackwell

“Save Europe Now”,
14, Henrietta Street, W.C.2.

To the Editor of The Times

Sir,

Mr. John Strachey’s fine speech in the recent debate on food was widely taken to indicate that bread rationing was imminent. But there are now indications that this may not be the case and that the question is being approached in a wholly wrong spirit.

For instance, it is stated in the Press that “the Government will take this step only as a last resort.… Bread rationing will be introduced only if there is a real threat to supplies.… If the amounts promised [from the United States] are shipped, they will see the country through the difficult period between now and the middle of September when the first millings of the coming home harvest are available.”

This can only mean that bread will be rationed if orderly distribution in this country, and therefore the maintenance of our present standards, demands it, but not for the purpose of further alleviating distress abroad. Such a policy would, in our view, be indefensible. As we write, the report of the Combined Nutrition Committee, which surveyed conditions in the western zone of Germany last month, is issued. It presents, says The Manchester Guardian, “a dark picture of a people just managing to keep alive in a kind of grey borderland between the lassitude of hunger and actual starvation.” The competence and objectivity of this Commission, which was led on the British side by Sir Jack Drummond, until recently Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Food, cannot be questioned. How, then, could it conceivably be right to ration bread for the purpose of maintaining our 2,850 calories, but not for the purpose of alleviating in some small degree the utter misery abroad?

We notice suggestions that little, if any, wheat would in fact be saved by rationing. If that is so, it seems curious that Mr. Strachey should have spoken as he did: and as famine conditions have now existed in Europe for many months the Government has surely had time to make up its mind on the question. Our own information is that, according to the highest expert opinion, a scheme which would not involve the smallest threat of malnutrition to anyone would save over half a million tons of wheat a year. If that is so, bread should be rationed without a moment’s delay, and the wheat to be saved should be sent abroad month by month, a beginning being made immediately from our stocks. If, as is unlikely, the result were a reduction in our average daily consumption of food by 100 calories or so, surely that should be no cause for hesitation. During 1945 — the last year for which official comparative figures are available — our daily consumption per head was only 10 per cent. less than in the most favoured country of all, the United States of America: and according to the April White Paper on the world food shortage our daily consumption per head is only 5 per cent. less than before the war.

Yours, etc.,
George Cicestr:; Lindsay; Gilbert Murray;
Russell (Sponsors); Victor Gollancz (Chairman); Henry Carter (Hon.
Treasurer); Michael Foot; Eva Hubback; R.R. Stokes; Roy Walker.