Page:Science and the Great War.djvu/32

26 the farmer, the geologist, and even the experienced housekeeper'. In Eltzbacher's work is revealed more clearly than in any other publication accessible to us the spirit we have to encounter, a spirit which official neglect of science has rendered us so unfitted to overcome. And it is not only a revelation of spirit but an inventory of food in which nothing is neglected.

A few examples will suffice.

Starching means that human foods 'are being used to make our clothes less comfortable, though in the opinion of many people more beautiful' (p. 91). Those who are interested will find set down the precise number of fruit trees—apple, pear, plum, and cherry—counted in Germany in 1900, together with an estimate of their probable number on January 1, 1913 (pp. 45, 46). The available resources of meat are estimated not only from 2,000,000 tons of pig but also from 100 tons of dog (p. 57).

The revelation of German resources is in fact so complete that I believe the work was considered dangerous and has now been suppressed. This, however, is too late, for an excellent English translation has already appeared.

It has always seemed to an Englishman that the life of the German people was State regulated to an intolerable degree, but now says Eltzbacher, 'Our economic life is subject to State regulations to an extent hitherto unheard of. . . . Patriotic feeling has, however, accepted this far-reaching State regulation as absolutely justified. Nowadays everyone is a Socialist, so to speak' (pp. 9, 10).

It is well that we in the British Islands should realize