Food/Volume 1/Preface

 This study is not intended to be an encyclopedia of food control; it does not contain comprehensive statistics, assembled for their own sake, or a catalogue of every administrative order issued by the Ministry of Food. It does not set out to describe, even superficially, each and every commodity control, or recount every change in the amount of war-time rations. Such details would hinder rather than assist what has been the writer’s aim throughout, to present food policy and administration as a whole. While not neglecting its nutritional, technical and political implications, he has regarded it primarily as a successful attempt to solve a problem in the economics of war. The solution of that problem may be conveniently treated under two heads. The first of these, which form the main theme of the present volume, is that of the evolution of food policy in the face of circumstance; it is concerned with ends. The second, with which the next volume will deal in some detail, comprises the means by which these ends could be carried into effect. The lines of demarcation cannot, of course, be sharply drawn; there is much of tactics in Volume I, and there will be something of strategy in Volume II. But it is hoped that each will be intelligible, though not complete, without the other. The history of food production will form a separate study by another author.

The rubric facing the title-page of this book indicates the conditions under which it was written; the problems facing the contributors to the series of Civil Histories, and the spirit in which they have been tackled, have been set out in the Preface to the introductory volume. The account there given, however, leaves some margin for comment by the writer on his own experience. His work has been largely shaped by the discovery that, even when one is dealing with the main issues of policy, there is no escape from the task of examining an immense mass of departmental material. It might be supposed that the civil service practice of referring problems upwards in writing according to their importance would make it possible to establish the main lines of an authentic history on the evidence of ‘high level’ papers alone. For the matters with which the writer has been concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. In the first place, official skill in detecting, particularly in its infancy, a major issue of policy is great but by no means infallible. Secondly, and more  important, the statements embodied in those documents must undergo historical examination before they can be accepted in evidence.

But—it may be objected—did not the blow for blow of inter-departmental debate, together with the probing of such central planning organisations as the Economic Section of the War Cabinet Offices, enable agreed facts to be established on which decisions could be based? The answer is that valuable though such contemporary activity was, it addressed itself mainly to current, or occasionally to past, departmental arguments and could not go behind them to departmental files. Again and again the last word—at any rate on technical questions that reason and common sense alone could not decide—was with those who had a virtual monopoly of detailed knowledge; and this was true also within the Ministry of Food itself.

The historian, merely in the interests of intelligibility, thus finds himself forced to think out many problems afresh. It will not suffice to set out, however fully, the arguments used on any occasion; they must be reconciled with what was thought and said previously. Contemporaries can be inconsistent from choice or inadvertence; the historian is obliged to bring the whole of his allotted study to the test of critical analysis, without which, indeed, the story of food control at any rate would emerge with little meaning or usefulness.

Critical analysis calls for critical method. The writer’s principle has been to treat food strategy and tactics broadly as if he were writing military history. In particular, he has sought to avoid judging them merely by the fact of success or failure, but has tried to indicate the reasons why success or failure might be expected. He has not, except rarely, used military terminology; but good and bad general-ship or staff work, ‘soldiers’ battles’, strokes of good or bad fortune, well and ill coordinated operations, will all find their civilian counterparts in his pages. No attempt has been made to conceal the element of personal judgement that must enter in to any such analysis; but an effort has been made to base that judgement on evidence and on secure reasoning, and to express it without equivocation.

The writer’s tasks would have been all but impossible had he not received ready help and cooperation from officials at all stages. A full list of those to whom he is indebted—whether for the supply of material or for help in elucidating it—would occupy several columns of type. One debt, however, demands personal acknowledgement; to C. H. Blagburn, now of the University of Reading, without whose almost daily counsel during the first years of the task the writer might never have found his feet. Thanks are also due to the Statistics and Intelligence Division, Ministry of Food, for preparing the tables and charts, and to Constance Felvus for help in seeing the volume through the press.

R. J. HAMMOND January 1951