26 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 
of coffee, 144,000,000 pounds of sugar, 288,000,000 
pounds of bacon, 1,104,000,000 pounds of frozen beef, 
and 1,800,000,000 pounds of flour. 
So huge are these figures that to the average person 
they are meaningless, but that these army demands 
constituted a terrific drain on our commercial food 
supplies was evident to everybody. Practically all of 
this food was food diverted from its accustomed chan- 
nels. Not an ounce of it went to the feeding of the 
civilian population which formerly had practically all 
of it. At the same time, if our allies were to be saved 
from utter collapse through hunger, and our own 
country saved from the plight of having to carry on 
the war single-handed and alone, it was essential that 
greater quantities of food be sent to Europe than Amer- 
ica had ever before exported. After the war ended, and 
it became necessary, in some measure, to provide for 
the population of the enemy countries, still larger de- 
mands for food for export were to be expected. The 
very causes that had produced these conditions had, 
as we have seen, so stripped the farms of men that a 
food production commensurate with the needs of the 
situation was an impossibility. 
“Those who cultivated the soil could hardly do 
more than they were doing,” said Luther Burbank, a 
member of the National War Garden Commission, in 
speaking of the matter. “It was becoming evident 
that food, which before had been taken as a matter of 
course, was in reality the foundation of all life, all know- 
ledge, all progress. What could be done? It became 
