THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS iii 



be obtained from foreign sources, hunger was sure to 

 visit practically every European nation. The shutting 

 off of commerce by German piracy has meant star- 

 vation, literal starvation, to multitudes of innocent 

 persons. 



The restoration of commerce means that all these 

 starving nations will send their ships to America for 

 food, food, and still more food. The number of these 

 innocent neutral victims of German savagery is put 

 by the United States Food Administration at 180,000,- 

 000 persons! Russia, too, is disorganized and starving, 

 and her population numbers 160,000,000! 



If figures never lie, the burden we must carry in time 

 of peace, as indicated by statistics, is truly appal- 

 ling. When the war began we were feeding our own 

 100,000,000 people and sending abroad a relatively 

 small and constantly decreasing surplus. To our 100,- 

 000,000 we had to add the 120,000,000 people of the 

 Entente allied nations. Speedily we found that our 

 claim that America was "the granary of the world" 

 was an empty boast. Merely to provide food sufficient 

 to enable our allies to eke out their own stores taxed 

 us to the utmost. Only through decreased consump- 

 tion, by having recourse to wheatless and meatless days, 

 by lessening our use of butter, milk, sugar, and other 

 exportable foods could we send enough to keep our 

 allies from actual starvation. 



During the three years preceding the war, our ex- 

 ports of meat were just short of an average of 500,- 

 000,000 pounds a year. In 1917 we shipped abroad 



