342 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
swarms can be suppressed before they have had a chance to spread 
elsewhere. The new policy of locust control aims, therefore, at pre- 
venting the outbreaks instead of allowing them to develop into in- 
vasions and then trying to devise desperate defense measures. 
This policy of prevention of locust outbreaks is clearly more 
rational than the old defensive policy. It is also more economical, 
requiring a regular annual expenditure of only a small fraction of 
the average annual cost of the defensive measures, apart from eliminat- 
ing the losses due to invasions. 
By the year 1938, the international investigations had advanced 
so well that it was possible to formulate practical plans for dealing 
with the three main locust species affecting Africa and the Middle 
East. At the Fifth International Locust Conference held at Brussels 
in 1938, definite schemes were elaborated for establishing permanent 
organizations for the control of the desert, migratory, and red locusts. 
These plans, naturally, required further discussions of administrative 
and financial details, and these extended into 1939, when the out- 
break of the war made the locust problem appear insignificant. 
Very soon, however, it became apparent that the war would demand 
a maximum production of foodstuffs and that crops must be safe- 
guarded from locusts. Unfortunately, most of the outbreak areas of 
the desert locust were near, or very close to, the war zone, and the out- 
break areas of the migratory. locust became inaccessible to outside 
experts after the fall of France. There remained only the red locust, 
and the scheme for its control, supported by the British colonies and 
protectorates in East Africa, by Southern Rhodesia and the Belgian 
Congo, was launched in 1940. Recently, it became known that an 
organization for preventive control of the migratory locust has been 
established by French authorities without waiting for international 
support, which must be given as soon as possible. Thus, in spite of 
the war, the foundation stone of permanent international locust con- 
trol was laid. 
LOCUSTS AND THE WAR 
It was a most unfortunate coincidence that, after a quiet interval 
of several years, the desert locust exhibited signs of renewed swarm- 
ing just as the war broke out and the first swarms had a chance to 
escape observation and destruction. By the time the areas in ques- 
tion had become more accessible, the swarms were not numerous, but 
sufficiently widespread to necessitate an urgent campaign for the 
protection of crops throughout the Middle East and East Africa. 
From the point of view of organization, war conditions proved to 
be, paradoxically, more favorable for an anti-locust campaign than 
normal times. The importance of safeguarding vital food supplies, 
both for the troops and the population, became a powerful factor in 
