Feeding our enemies pays dividends, to them and us

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on July 5, 1941.

Like all prairie-bred people, I have a deep reverence for a field of wheat. There is something elemental, symbolic, and prophetic in it.

Wheat is an indestructible article of food — the bread of life, the symbol of nourishment; the cold, hard imperishable wheat, defying the years. A field of wheat rippling in the sun has in it something of the beauty and promise of a rainbow.

Agriculture is the basis of all civilization. When the cultivation of the soil is neglected, the state degenerates. The farm is an anchor and the best home of the family.

Canada ranks fifth in the wheat-producing countries. The first wheat grown in Canada was in a little French settlement in Nova Scotia, Port Royal (now Annapolis). The first shipment of wheat from the West was made in 1876 and was sent to Ontario for seed. The first wheat to be shipped overseas by an all-Canadian route, direct to Great Britain, was in 1884.

High-grade Canadian wheats are recognized all over the world as the strongest wheat in international commerce. In normal times, Canada exports 73 per cent of her wheat.

In the good days of peace, there lived in Europe 400 million solvent customers who were free to buy from anyone they wished, and Canada received her share of trade and so prospered and bought machinery and cars and fur coats and went to California for the winter, and believed that prosperity was a stable condition.

But now the scene has changed. Our customers are robbed, beaten, starving. Some are dead, some are in prison; all are in trouble, and all are broke. And we do not know what to do with our wheat.

At the end of this month we will have a surplus of 575 million bushels, and the government, alarmed at this mounting surplus proposed to cut down the acreage one-third and pay the farmers $4 an acre to summerfallow, and $2 an acre if they sow coarse grains instead of wheat.

No one can blame the government for getting a bit panicky about this mounting pile of wheat. But something rises in us when we think of any curtailment of food in a starving world. It might be economically expedient, but it is ethically wrong. We think of the American outcry against overproduction some years ago, and the plowing under of grain and potatoes, and we think, too, of the swift and terrible reply for the dustfilled sky. Overproduction ceased to be a problem! It should never be a problem in a starving world.

Our wheat can be made a great war weapon. Anthony Eden in his broadcast promised the people of Europe that we, the democracies, would feed them if and when they overthrow their dictators. Prof. Gilbert Jackson of the University of Toronto has followed this lead in words of piercing eloquence. “Let us,” he says, “follow the injunction of St. Paul. ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him!’ Let us feed our enemies and clothe them, as soon as the war is over. We should announce this now as our irrevocable policy.”

This should be sounded forth in every language to the people of Europe. We in Canada will be willing to contribute our part. We are raiding our savings in the bank now to buy weapons to destroy our enemies, not because we like to kill people, but because there is at the moment no other way of stopping them from killing us.

But with the warfare, let us combine this good news of food — wheat, bacon, fats, material for clothing. The radio pierces the Nazi walls. No one can entirely control the radio. The German and Italian people do listen; and hungry people are more interested in food than they are in so-called racial superiorities, or ancient wrongs.

No, they can’t pay for it — we are going to give it. It will be the greatest gift in history. But it will not be as costly as one year of war, or half a year.

There is something exciting and thrilling about this plan. Here is propaganda in the best sense of the word. I hope the radio talks will be given by people who can make the listeners hear the bacon frying in the pan, and the bread crackling as it comes out of the oven. Someone who can describe food as Charles Dickens described the Cratchetts’ Christmas dinner.

The German people are finding out that war is not all loot and glory. When France fell and the soldiers came home on leave with chocolate, perfumes and silk stockings and Paris dresses for their families, the Germans believed that was a “glorious adventure” — but now, there are grumblings and mutterings over the food shortage, clothes shortage, prospects of another cold winter, with bombs falling through the hideous nights, and no amount of Goebbels boastings can make them forget their hunger and their fears.

Now is our time to use food as a weapon. We should tell over the air about the storehouses we are building to hold the butter and bacon and jam.

Years ago, when we had our first great surplus of wheat, and the price began to go down, there were many voices raised in favour of sending gifts of wheat to China for the famine was sore in many provinces. But it was not done, and that is a matter of deep regret to this day. We could have helped these brave people, and strengthened them to meet what has come to them. And we could have helped ourselves to by helping our neighbours.

Let us not be dull this time. Let us learn that “he that seeketh to save his life shall lose it,” and the corollary of that, “he that loseth his life shall find it.” In other words, we have more profit from the things we give away than from the things we keep for ourselves.

Just now I have been listening to a food expert from Britain telling of the plight of the Belgians. They are on one-quarter rations, and do not always get that. They are not able to get wheat from Russia, for the industrial products with which they paid for this wheat in other years are in German hands.

The Jersey Islands have had to let their beautiful cattle go to feed the German army, but the Jersey cattle-breeders of the United States are ready to stock the islands again when the thieves are deposed. The United States is going to inaugurate the voluntary creamless day, so that the output to Britain can be helped. That rather shames us in Canada who have not offered any such sacrifice.

But we are ready for sacrifices. If I know the Canadian people, we will gladly do without butter on our bread, and forgo our morning coffee if it is going to help Britain, or going to get the idea over to the starving people of Europe that we are their friends, and we are saving our food for them.

Indeed, I think it would do us good to be using burnt wheat and barley instead of coffee now. There would be more men joining the army if we were actually sacrificing here at home. Sacrifice is contagious, even as sloth and indifference are contagious.

I hope Jackson’s excellent idea of agricultural surpluses being allowed to gather until the war is over and the oppressors overthrown and then given freely to the starving people of Europe, will be taken seriously. Let the word go out on the air in every language! Let samples of food fall from the skies!

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

And that tide is rising now. It is the black and bitter tide of hatred and hunger, which the robbers of Europe have left behind them everywhere and have even created in their own countries. We can by hard work and the grace of God strengthen the failing hearts of these hungry people with the hope of better days to come. And some day, the dam will break and sweep away Hitler and all his evil device and a new world will begin.

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.