10 PHYSIOLOGY AND NATIONAL NEEDS 



days the edict went forth from Eome that all the 

 world should be taxed ; to-day it is from Eom e that 

 the world will hear how it is to be fed." But the 

 work of such conferences has not been final : one 

 thing became very clear as time went on, and that 

 is, the imperfection of our present knowledge, and 

 therefore the machinery has been set in action for 

 the future ; various topics about which at present 

 we know very little still are to be investigated by 

 international bureaux of inquiry which are to be 

 set up and (one hopes) subsidised. 



The daily press has during the last few years 

 made the public familiar with some of the prin- 

 ciples of dieting and the way in which the value of 

 foods can be estimated in calories. I do not pro- 

 pose to dwell upon these principles ; they can be 

 culled from any elementary primer on physiology.^ 

 Moreover it is impossible with the space at my 

 disposal even to allude to such aspects of the food 

 question as the daily amount necessary in various 

 industrial occupations, or to the nutritive value of 

 the many different kinds of food which have been 

 investigated in detail. Instead of this I will select 

 one or two definite examples as illustrations of the 

 sort of work which has been carried out, and of 

 which I happen to have some intimate knowledge. 



The first of these topics is bread, and as an 



^ I have jotted down the main elementary principles of dieting in a 

 brief appendix to this article. 



