16 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 
Slice the Bread Thinner, Harry Lauder Implores 
No Longer Comedian —in Deadly Earnest 
He Appeals to Britons to Save Bread 
(Copyright, 1917, International News Bureau) 
ATHERS, mothers, brothers and sisters of our fighting 
men, listen! I have often played the fool and joked 
for you; | am not joking today. 1 am in earnest. I am 
as earnest as death. 
On this morning, before you eat your breakfast, be- 
fore you, mother or father, take up the big knife to cut 
the bread, I ask you, I implore you, to hear what 'I have 
to say. 
The lives of many brave men, the lives of many 
women and little children may depend on the thickness 
of the slice and the number of slices you cut. Now, today, 
at your breakfast table, you will help to win, or you will 
help to lose, the war. 
a seems absurd! We have known so little of the 
war, we stay-at-homes (though the front is so near to us 
that ne thunder of its guns might almost reach our ears), 
we have known so little of the rigor of the war, that it 
seems absurd that anything we may do or leave undone in 
the privacy of our own homes can make any difference. 
It will make all the difference, For, listen! 
In a State of Siege 
Do you understand? We are in a state of siege! 
That may not be so easy to believe, but it is true, terribly 
true. 
All round the boulders and cliffs of these old islands 
lap the waves. And here away and there away—all round 
our coasts—watches the keen little eye, the periscope of 
the U-boat. 
Our brave merchantmen still put out to sea, our brave 
brothers of the Dominions, our brave American allies, 
still dare the blockade. Very many ships get through. 
Some resist attack successfully, some are sunk. We are 
in a state of siege, 
We are not, we cannot be, so badly off as those deso- 
lated villages of France and Flanders. We shall not see 
our old men and babes ruthlessly slaughtered, and our 
women ravished, our homes destroyed. But we may 
know what it is to starve! 
Now go on with your meal lightheartedly if. you can. 
Eat your fill. There is a large loaf on the table and plenty 
more loaves at the baker’s. But what will it be when the 
baker has no more? 
Must Save a Pound a Week 
I write to you today, not as a Scots comedian, but as 
a simple man of the people. And the thing I have to say 
is very simple, and very terrible. At the present rate of 
consumption the bread supply will give out before the 
next harvest. And after that we may want. 
Naturally I wanted to be certain before | would state 
a thing like that: so, with the help of the authorities, | 
have got at the facts. 
After a careful investigation it appears inevitable that, 
allowing for all our possibile supplies and the probable 
activity of the U-boats, our bread will give out six weeks 
before the new wheat comes to market—unless we econo- 
mize, 
Unless we economize! Are we ready to do that? 
do you know the name we deserve? 
And the econo~vy that means so much is so easy. Fat 
one pound of bread less each week, and the trick is done. 
Just that! Do that, and those dreadful six weeks of fam- 
If 
not, 
ine will never be. Do that, and we may laugh at the 
U-boats. 
larder when our women farm workers sing the next har- 
vest-home. 
Little Thing Means Much 
It is a little thing to ask for us, and it means so much. 
The effort is small on the part of each one of us, but we | 
are million on million strong, 
“Are there many of you?” a British officer was aske | 
by an old peasant woman in a reconquered village. She 
had grown to think the world was full of all-conquering 
Huns, and that this daredevil British patrol must surely be 
driven back. 
“Madam,” replied the officer, saluting, “there are 2,000,- 
ooo of us.” And he might have added, I hope, that behind 
those vast armies are all the solid millons of the British 
race. 
It is the millions of little efforts that count. Say, 
there are 50,000,000 people in these islands! . That wili 
mean a saving of 50,000,000 pounds a week! 
You may remember I wrote in one of my articles 
about a country fellow who put his foot in front of one 
of the sources of the Thames and cried: “See I have 
stopped the Thames! What will they say in London?” 
He was a fool. 
_But suppose that at one moment there were 50,000,- 
ooo of us damming all the tiny sources of the Thames! 
That would make a difference! Put down your foot— 
50,000,000 feet, Save your pound of bread, and dam the 
damned U-boat campaign ! 
“See!” you may cry, as you register your weekly 
economy, “I have balked a U-boat! What will they say in 
Berlin?” 
“Give Us This Day—”’ 
Look well at your loaf before you cut, and think 
what it mean! It means life, or death. 
There is a shortage of potatoes, in fact, the potatoes 
are almost gone. No matter! We feel the loss, but we 
can live without potatoes. We cannot live without bread. 
In peace time we never understood the meaning of our 
prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” 
We thought it necessary sometimes to tell the little 
ones that “ bread” meant also meat and vegetables and 
fruit. It doesn’t. It means just what it says, Jt means 
that without bread we die. 
Suppose, only suppose, that in their billets just be- 
hind the line our boys are ready for their evening meal! 
There are tins of bully beef, there may even be a stew, an 
Irish stew. There is tea in plenty. But there is no bread. 
And they are just getting into the trenches. - 
What will they think of us? What will be thought 
of us who are asked to do so little by them that have done 
so much? — 
A Tale From the Front 
There is a tale from the front I have hesitated to 
tell. I can print it now. At one time a battalion was on 
very short rations. The sergeant in charge of the ration- 
ing party handed out to every man one-tenth of a loaf of 
bread. 
“What do you call this sergeant?” said one, “That’s 
June 15, 1917. 
Do that, and there will still be bread in the: 
“ 
a ie 
