Читать книгу The Fiddlers; Drink in the Witness Box - Arthur Mee - Страница 9

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Strange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm away the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night the prayer of the people rises, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but the heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation’s bread goes day by day to the destroyer.

But all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the hoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.

Defeat the enemy’s attempt to starve you, by—not by stopping the destruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably helping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who volunteered for National Service, and last month he received instructions to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery.

Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens—and Mr. Prothero will see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.

We have not enough food to last till the harvest—why not go out and catch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport—and sit and wait for sparrows?

We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical weeks—not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month from every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers may not thirst.

We must not eat more than our share, on our honour—but the man across the table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else’s too.

We must eat less and eat slowly—so that brewers may waste more and waste quickly.

We must keep back famine—but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst: that would cost three times as much as letting famine come. But why not keep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?

Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread, says the King’s Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day for beer, says the Government.

God speed the plough and the woman who drives it—yes, and God help the woman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry for bread.

Let us fine £5 whoever wastes a loaf, says the Food Controller—but not, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.

Hops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific Committee. “Then let us grow only half as many,” said Mr. Prothero.

Mr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working “in a continuous rattle of mocking laughter and gibes.” Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation that is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like to see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the Drink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a year. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to managers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while food flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It does not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while barrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the calling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are working hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets; and it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns us that it really may become necessary in the national interest—and then, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently—it really may become necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, to whitewash the lower part of their windows.

Oh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control Department; it is a coloured poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on it, and “Waste not, Want not,” printed in big type. It was being printed on the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it is no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an eloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving platitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime Minister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had a Government of which men said its motto was “Wait and See.” Are we better off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?

But there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up food for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud to save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away; with a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of Agriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the nation is not mightily impressed.