of the Collegiate Section.
July 1, 1918.

PREFACE

The long war has brought hunger to Europe; some of her peoples stand
constantly face to face with starvation.

All agriculture has been seriously interfered with. Food production
has been lessened to the point of danger. Millions of men who had
given all their time and energy to raising food have been killed; more
millions are still fighting; other millions have gone from the farms
into the great war-factories. Women, too, have been drafted from the
fields and home gardens into the factories and to replace the absent
men in a host of occupations. Great stretches of once fertile land
have been temporarily ruined by the scourge of war; some are still
under falling shot and shell. Belgium and France have lost millions of
acres of productive land to the enemy. The fertilizers necessary for
keeping up the production of the land still available are lacking.

All this means that the Allies have to rely on the outside for the
maintenance of their food-supply. But because ships are fewer than
they were, and because many of them must carry troops and munitions
exclusively, these ships cannot be sent on voyages longer than
absolutely necessary to find and bring back the needed food. They
cannot afford to go the long time-consuming way to Australia and back;
but few of them can be let go to India and the Argentine. They must
carry food by the shortest routes. The shortest is from North America
to England and France.

Therefore by far the greater part of the food provided for the Allies
from the outside must come from us. As a matter of fact more than 50
per cent of this outside food for the Allies does now come from North
America. And that is a great deal. It is very much more than we ever
sent them before. Also we are sending more and more food overseas for
our own growing armies in France and our growing fleets in European
waters.

To meet all this great food need in Europe--and meeting it is an
imperative military necessity--we must be very careful and economical
in our food use here at home. We must eat less; we must waste nothing;
we must equalize the distribution of what food we may retain for
ourselves; we must prevent extortion and profiteering which make
prices so high that the poor cannot buy the food they actually need;
and we must try to produce more food by planting more wheat and other
grain, raising more cattle and swine and sheep, and making gardens