A SYNOPSIS 383 



Britain's Dependence upon Foreign Countkies for 



iiEu Food 



Not the least of the many evils arising from a destroyed 

 agriculture is the fact that 75 per cent of our wheat and ilour 

 comes from foreign countries. Tliis means, in a nutshell, that, 

 even in times of peace, the British people are entirely at the 

 mercy of a group of " smart operators " in wheat, who might at 

 any moment " corner" the world's wheat supply and send prices 

 up to starvation point. If we were at war with a foreign 

 power — Germany, for example — 44 millions of people would 

 starve in a month, for it is absolutely certain that Germany 

 would first strike at our most vulnerable point — our weakness 

 in self-sustenance. Once Germany decides on fighting us, she 

 herself, through her secret agents, would commence by '" corner- 

 \ ing " wheat in all the great markets of the world months before 

 she declared tvar, so that at the psychological moment she would 

 be able to hurl her forces against a people enfeebled ])y short 

 supplies, and discouraged by the hopelessness of their insular 

 position and their utter dependence upon outside supplies that 

 no longer came to satisfy their daily needs. 



Now that German invasion is not merely a nightmare but a 

 tangible, ponderable quantity, this state of affairs may, and 

 assuredly will, happen once war breaks out with that country. 



The British people are therefore right in demanding from 

 Free-traders, and the Manchester School of politicians, what 

 justification they can plead for thrusting upon the country an 

 economic system which will as surely bring about the defeat of 

 a great people and the destruction of their world Empiie — soon 

 or late — as the deadly virus of leprosy, once absorbed in the 

 corporal body, destroys in time its entire structure. 



Those who are responsible for the destruction of Britain's 

 self-sustaining powers in the matter of food supplies must 

 answer this question — for they only can answer it. 



The Fallacies of Economic Science 



No man, who would maintain a reputable sanity of demeanour, 

 would be fool enough to carp and cavil at science and rail 

 against its application to human affairs, but no man should 

 jeopardise his sanity by obstinately insisting that every item 

 in the domestic economy of the great human family should be 

 ■governed, regulated, and dominated by her cold, inflexible, and 

 arbitrary Laws, because such a position is really indefensible. 



