en and now lies a long road, a road of suffering for England, and
for all countries dependent upon imports for their food supply.

"Everything points to the likelihood that the universal failure of the
harvest in 1916 will be followed by a like universal failure in 1917.
In the United States the official reports of acreage under crops are
worse than ever, showing 63.4, against 78.3 the previous year. The
winter wheat is estimated at only 430 million bushels, as against 492
million bushels for the previous year and 650 million bushels for
1915.

"The prospects, then, for the next year's harvest are poor indeed, and
offer no hope of salvation to our enemies.

"As to our own outlook, this is well known to those present: short,
but safe--for we can manage by ourselves. And to-day we can say that
the war of starvation, that crime against humanity, has turned against
those who commenced it. We hold the enemy in an iron grip. No one can
save them from their fate. Not even the apostles of humanity across
the great ocean, who are now commencing to protect the smaller nations
by a blockade of our neutral neighbours through prohibition of
exports, and seeking thus to drive them, under the lash of starvation,
into entering into the war against us.

"Our enemies are feeling the grip of the fist that holds them by the
neck. They are trying to force a decision. England, mistress of the
seas, is seeking to attain its end by land, and driving her sons by
hundreds of thousands to death and mutilation. Is this the England
that was to have sat at ease upon its island till we were starved into
submission, that could wait till their big brother across the Atlantic
arrived on the scene with ships and million armies, standing fast in
crushing superiority until the last annihilating battle?

"No, gentlemen, our enemies have no longer time to wait. Time is on
our side now. True, the test imposed upon us by the turn of the
world's history is enormous. What our troops are doing to help, what
our young men in blue are doing, stands far above all comparison. But
they will attain their end. For us at home, too, it is hard; not so
hard by far as for them out there, yet hard enough. Those at home must
do their part as well. If we remain true to ourselves, keeping our own
house in order, maintaining internal unity, then we have won existence
and the future for our Fatherland. Everything is at stake. The German
people is called upon now, in these we