THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 15 



National War Garden Commission; and in response to 

 its energetic campaign toward this end, the people in 

 1917 put to work more than 3,000,000 pieces of such 

 uncultivated territory. In 191 8 they ferreted out addi- 

 tional vast areas. The total number of war gardens for 

 this latter season is conservatively estimated, after a 

 careful survey, at 5,285,000. 



With war's destruction occurring to an undreamed 

 of and terrifying extent, involving the destruction of 

 all kinds of material wealth as well as food, it soon be- 

 came apparent that food shortage was only one of many 

 shortages the world was facing. Conservation of 

 everything became a crying need. The war garden 

 offered an opportunity for conservation along many 

 lines. First came the conservation of food itself. The 

 daily ration of a soldier in our army consists of about 

 four and a quarter pounds of food. A million soldiers 

 would require at least 4,250,000 pounds of tood a day. 

 At this rate a year's supply of food for a million men 

 would weigh 1,551,250,000 pounds — and we were plan- 

 ning to raise an army of four or five million men. To 

 take from the ordinary channels of trade the colossal 

 supplies necessary to feed such an army, with no extra 

 food to replace that thus subtracted, would mean that 

 householders would be forced to pay ruinously high 

 prices for the food that remained. W^ar gardening 

 offered an opportunity to offset, in part, this tremen- 

 dous drain on our commercial supplies, to eke out those 

 supplies and make them go farther — which is really 

 conservation in its truest sense. 



