Food can make the difference between victory and defeat in war

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on March 8, 1941.

Hunger is a human experience common to all. We have all been hungry, that is, hungry enough to be interested in our next meal; perhaps even hungry to the point of faintness, but of the bitter hunger that causes men to risk their lives for food, how little we know.

Today, hunger stalks through Europe, grim, grey, terrible, lashing the people into fury. We hear that Finland will be starving before the next harvest, that provident little country, which asked nothing from the rest of the world but honourable trade and friendship. All the other overrun countries are suffering the pangs of hunger, not because they were careless or lazy, but because their food was stolen from them by the Germans.

Hitler said he would conquer Europe by war and revolution, but now he finds the revolutions are working against him. The people of Norway, Poland, Holland and Belgium know very well where their food went. They saw it go in German trucks and vans before their eyes. When the refugees from the Low Countries went back to their homes, they found their food stores rifled, their cupboards bare.

By war, Hitler has been able to gain control of most of Europe, but his revolutions have gone into reverse and if he were complete master of Europe tomorrow, he could not create a happy state for its people. What has he done for Germany except make it the most hated country in the world?

Mussolini has done the same for Italy. How often we have heard of the wonderful roads he built in Africa — great Roman roads such as Caesar might have built — and how ironical it is now, and how just, that these roads should carry the mechanized troops of Britain to deliver Italian victims from Italian bondage.

There is a pattern in life, and no man can close the door of mercy on his fellow men and remain free.

It might well be that food will be the real winner of this war. Already we see it is having an influence in Spain, and if Franco continues to hold out against the blandishments of the Axis partners, it will be because of the food that the United States, with the consent of Great Britain, is sending to his sorrowful and hungry people.

One does not need to be much of a student of public affairs to know that any curtailment of the production of food in a starving world is a mistaken policy.

As communications have grown and distance has been annihilated, one fact becomes clear. Mankind is one. What hurts one part of the world hurts all the world. It is hard for people to believe this. There were people in England during the Spanish war who did not know that when bombs fell on Barcelona, other bombs were being prepared for the Guildhall. It was hard for us here in Victoria, B.C., to believe that unprovoked aggression in Manchukuo would one day threaten Beacon Hill Park.

Dr. Wellington Koo, representing China at the League of Nations in 1938, told the assembly in cold words that burned with fire: “Unprovoked aggression is like blood poisoning. If left unchecked it spreads to all parts of the body, and the world is one body. You may not think it matters that there is war in Spain and in China. It is nothing to you? Or is it? Not now perhaps, but it will be.”

I want to get back to the matter of food, which I believe has a great significance in the winning of this war. God intended nations to feed each other. That is why some countries produce wheat and cattle, and other coffee and raisins. Still others silks and spices.

When Henry VII sent out his explorers to find other parts of the world, he gave them a charter, written in beautiful words which began — “Whereas God in His wisdom, greatly providing for mankind, did decree that different parts of the world would produce different fruits, to the end that men might help and know each other, trading amicably one with the other.” That amicable arrangement has unfortunately been utterly destroyed by the abnormal vanity of evil men, and there can be no peace on earth until it is restored.

Just what this dislocation means to the unhappy countries involved in war is most vividly shown in the effect upon the children. I hear Ruth Fry of the Society of Friends, in Geneva, tells about the 400,000 children in Spain who were slowly starving to death. The civil war was still going on.

“They no longer cry,” she said, “they have passed that stage. They just lie still with feverish eyes and their little stomachs distended. We have been able to give them one cup of milk or a cup of cocoa each day in addition to the dried beans and lentils which make up their food. Unless help comes soon, they will die.”

Why am I telling you this? It is not to spoil your enjoyment of your next meal, but to give you a picture of what starvation really means. To most of us in Canada it is merely a harsh, ugly word — a shadowy word, belonging to distant lands and a barbarous past.

Unfortunately, it has to be faced now. Our gallant allies in China are starving in many places of that vast empire. We could have given China a great gift of wheat when we first were faced with a surplus several years ago, but there was no enthusiasm for the movement.

“China,” said the cautious ones, “has no settled government, and so we cannot be sure that we would ever receive payment.”

Famine in China has helped her enemies, and now famine has come again, in addition to all the desolation of war. And here we are in Canada, with elevators full of wheat. Are we now a little wiser than we were then? Surely we know now that China’s war is our war. We can’t afford a weakened China.

I have a little yellow slip here on my desk, which bears the caption “Eggs for Britain,” and I see this project of a gift to Britain is sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Hatcheries. The plan is to ask the Dominion government to send 250,000 cases of eggs to Britain, and have one cent per dozen deducted by all markets to reimburse the government of Canada.

This large order would stabilize the market now that the flow of eggs is increasing, and be a welcome expression of our concern for our people across the sea. We heard Jerry Wilmot, a Victoria boy, by the way, say on the radio from London last week that he had to pay $1 a dozen for eggs, which of course puts them in the luxury class.

We can do so little for the people over there that this seems to be a happy thought that should receive instant support. It is action we need in matters of this kind, and not argument.

To be continued.

Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.