12 THE POLICY OF THE PLOUGH 



a climate which is friendly, measured by European 

 standards. Yet we produce but half of the food we 

 consume, reckoned by value, and less than half if we 

 judge it by its capacity for maintaining industrial 

 energy. As for the primary food of mankind, wheat, 

 we were producing before the war — and that at a time 

 when the prices of agricultural produce were rising — 

 only a fifth part of what we consumed. 



This is a very dangerous situation for a country which 

 depends upon the safe arrival of its ships to avoid 

 starvation. Can any man say with the faintest con- 

 viction that in another war submarines would not be 

 able — at least for a period long enough to be disastrous 

 — to keep from us our food supplies ? In this war, 

 though submarines have been put to the test for the 

 first time, they have caused us much anxiety and 

 indeed have threatened to reduce our margin of safety 

 to the danger-point. Neutral ships as well as our own 

 have been freely sunk. We should be mad not to 

 prepare for the future. 



Granted that we had a Navy beyond the dreams of 

 avarice for size, we still could not guard all the trade 

 routes from submarines. Yet the demand for ever 

 more naval protection would continue. A vastly 

 increased production of wheat at home should therefore 

 appeal with peculiar force to those who are unwilling 

 to spend enormous sums upon the Navy. 



Nor is that the only reason for a great agricultural 

 policy judged solely from the standpoint of national 

 security. In war the exchange tends to alter to our 

 disadvantage at every disbursement of money for sup- 

 plies bought abroad. Money spent at home in war 



