When peace comes you may be sure
that England will have a reckoning.
This scarcity of food, coupled with the incessant sinking of supply
ships by enemy submarines, the rigid censorship of imports, and all
those other factors that bring about the high cost of war, has made the
Englishman sit up and take notice of his agricultural plight.
"We must grow more of our food," is the new determination. To achieve it
plans for collective marketing, for intensive farming, for co-operative
land-credit banks, are being made. The gentleman farmer will become a
working farmer.
England's gospel of self-sufficiency has a significance for us that
extends far beyond her growing independence in foodstuffs and raw
materials. It is fashioning a weapon aimed straight at the heart of our
overseas industrial development.
Most people who read the newspapers know that many articles of American
make, ranging from bathtubs to motor cars, have been excluded from
England. The reasons for this--which are all logical--are the necessity
for cutting down imports to protect the trade balance and keep the gold
at home; the need of ship tonnage for food and war supplies; and the
campaign to curtail luxury.
Admirable as are these reasons, there is a growing feeling among
Americans doing business in England that this wartime prohibition, which
is part of the programme of military necessity, is the prelude to a more
permanent, if less drastic, exclusion when peace comes.
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