million quarters, as
against 19.8 and 19.2 in the two previous years.

"For February the English statistics show an increase in the import
value of unstated import quantity of all grain of 50 per cent., as
against February, 1916. This gives, taking the distribution among the
various sorts of grain as similar to that of January, and reckoning
with the rise in prices since, about the same import quantity as in
the previous year. But in view of the great decrease in American grain
shipments and the small quantity which can have come from India and
Australia the statement is hardly credible. We may take it that March
has brought a further decline, and that to-day, when we are nearing
the time of the three-week stocks, the English supplies are lower than
in the previous years.

"The English themselves acknowledge this. Lloyd George stated in
February that the English grain supplies were lower than ever within
the memory of man. A high official in the English Ministry of
Agriculture, Sir Ailwyn Fellowes, speaking in April at an agricultural
congress, added that owing to the submarine warfare, which was an
extremely serious peril to England, the state of affairs had grown far
worse even than then.

"Captain Bathurst, of the British Food Controller's Department
(_Kriegsernaehrungsamt_), stated briefly on April 19 that the then
consumption of breadstuffs was 50 per cent. in excess of the present
_and prospective_ supplies. It would be necessary to reduce the
consumption of bread by fully a third in order to make ends meet.

"Shortly before, Mr. Wallhead, a delegate from Manchester, at a
conference of the Independent Labour Party in Leeds had stated that,
according to his information, England would in six to eight weeks be
in a complete state of famine.

"The crisis in which England is placed--and we can fairly call it a
crisis now--is further aggravated by the fact that the supplies of
other important foodstuffs have likewise taken an unfavourable turn.

"The import of meat in February, 1917, shows the lowest figures for
many years, with the single exception of September, 1914.

"The marked falling off in the butter imports--February, 1917, showing
only half as much as in the previous year--is not nearly
counterbalanced by the margarine which England is making every effort
to introduce.

"The import of lard also, most of which comes from the United States,
shows a decline, owing to the poor American crops of fodder-st