94 THE ROYAL SOCIETY. OF CANADA 
of Berlin. This Commission made an exhaustive study of the question.1 
Here is the concluding paragraph of the first chapter: 
“How can Germany manage without the food at present imported 
from abroad and without the imported materials which are used in 
the production of food? The problem is not only of theoretical in- 
terest, but of the very greatest practical importance, for it concerns 
nothing less than the outcome of the war. The efficiency of our army, 
our transport service, and our finances has been brilliantly proved. 
If we wish to win, the organization of food supplies must not be 
lacking.”’ 
Britain also has her food problems, involving not only herself, 
but her Allies, France, Belgium, and Italy, and to some extent also 
Switzerland. She has had not only to find the food but also to see it 
safely delivered. Food from overseas has been even more important 
than munitions from overseas. In this regard Canada has played a 
most important part—in fact, the first call that came to Canada was not 
for men, as these had been offered in advance, but for food, and for 
wheat in particular. It will therefore be fitting that some brief state- 
ment be placed on record, and be made readily available, of the great 
wheat crop of 1915, as it properly forms an interesting, and to some 
extent, an important factor in the story of the second year of the War. 
Even if the War should extend so long that this crop should have to be 
passed over lightly in the record of the great War, the importance of it 
to Canada will still remain and it will appear again in other records, 
for it will some day be realized that it played a most important part in 
saving Canada west of the Lakes from a most serious financial situa- 
tion. Furthermore, it was, as to both quality and quantity, the great- 
est wheat crop that any country has ever gathered from twelve million 
acres of land. Historical students find interest in recalling “The 
Hungry Year” of Upper Canada in 1788,? when the crops failed, and 
the settlers shared with one another the scanty supply of potatoes 
and passed to their neighbours the beef bones with the hope of ex- 
tracting the last trace of nourishment. At some future time historical 
students will be able to estimate more fully the national value of the 
great crops of 1915; but it may not be untimely or uninteresting to 
gather together now a few facts that will help the student in his sur- 
vey of Canada during the period of the war. 

*“Germany’s Food, Can it Last? The German case as presented by German 
experts.” University of London Press, 1915, p. 232. See also criticism of 
this Report by Prof. W. J. Ashley in The Quarterly Review, October, 1915; also article 
dealing with these two and other reports, ‘‘Statistics of the Food Supply in Germany,” 
by Dr. Robert Morse Woodbury, of Cornell University in Quarterly Publication of 
the American Statistical Association, Boston, March, 1916. 
2 See The Setilement of Upper Canada, by Dr. Wm. Canniff, pp. 196, et seq. 
