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Rh of Food at the end of 1918, comparing the estimated consumption per head of certain essential foods in the United Kingdom, Germany and Holland before and during the war. Another striking contrast emerges in the report of a committee appointed at the Ministry of Food at the end of 1917 to prepare a comprehensive scale of rations covering meat, cereals, fats and

sugar. The committee based their scale on estimates of the minimum numbers of calories per day required by various classes of persons, according to age and occupation, and of the proportion that, having regard to other foods available, should be provided by these essential foods. Comparing their scale with the actual rations in force during 1917 in Hamburg (taken as typical of German industrial conditions), the committee found that the latter scale represented in respect of these essential foods and potatoes not more than ⅔ of the minimum requirements, while the shortage of less essential foods was probably even greater. The German ration of fat was reduced still further as from Jan. 1 1918, making the Hamburg rations per week for ordinary adults as follows:—Bread 4⅜ lbs.; Meat 9 oz.; Fats 2½ oz.; Sugar ⅓ lb.; Potatoes 7⅛ lbs. Men engaged in physical labour received a supplementary ration of 1¾ lbs. of bread (per week), and those engaged in exceptionally hard physical labour received altogether 7⅜ lbs. of bread, ¾ lb. of meat, 4½ oz. of fats, ⅓ lb. of sugar and 9⅜ lbs. of potatoes. These men would be few in number.

The weekly rations in Vienna by the end of 1918 were even lower:—Bread 2½ lbs. (with an additional 2 lbs. for heavy workers); Meat 4½ oz.; Fat 1½ oz.; Sugar nil, and Potatoes 1⅛ lbs.

The Austrian figures represent a breakdown of supplies and society. The German rations are those on which the civilian population of Germany sustained the war and made munitions during 1917 and 1918. They show a power in the human body to endure over months and years, at whatever cost in permanent loss of health and vigour, a scale of nutrition far below the minimum prescribed by scientific authority. They indicate at the same time the intensity of the strain to which the rationing regulations of the enemy countries were subjected.

The advantage to the British food controller in obtaining so large a part of his supplies from overseas was equally decisive. Imports were all brought automatically and completely under public control; nothing remained save distribution and the fixing of prices. The German and Austrian food controllers had to rely almost exclusively on home-grown supplies; they were faced by and failed to solve the problem of obtaining from the home producers a fair proportion of their produce for distribution under the rationing system. To a small extent this fact must be taken as a correction of the previous statement of rations as showing the actual consumption; an appreciable part of the total supplies escaping public control altogether was sold as contraband (Schleichhandel) to the urban consumers. The actual consumption in each family was the ration plus a varying proportion of contraband. The contraband trade, however, in Germany at least cannot have benefited more than a small proportion of the industrial population and was mainly an advantage to the well-to-do and to the hotels. It had a disastrous reaction on the general respect paid to the rationing regulations, and deprived them of that support of public opinion which was so marked in Great Britain.

The third great advantage of the British food controllers was that, by securing adequate tonnage for cereals, they were able to avoid the rationing of bread stuffs, and the elaborate and contentious system of graduated rations for different classes of workers which would otherwise have been inevitable. So long as rationing is confined to articles other than bread, a flat scale of rations for all adults, whether engaged in sedentary or in severe physical work, is possible; the larger amount of calories which the latter classes must have, in order to perform their work, can be obtained by increasing their consumption of bread. If bread as well as meat, fats and sugar are rationed this individual adjustment of consumption, according to the physical energy required, becomes impossible. The rationing system itself must provide differentiated rations for men doing varying kinds of physical labour or doing little or no physical work at all.

All the continental countries which rationed bread-stuffs had accordingly to introduce “supplementary” rations for heavy workers of different grades; the classification of the population for this purpose was one of the most difficult and contentious