Guardian supports war effort
Extensive coverage to promote food production
During the first week of September 1917, The Guardian gave extensive coverage and editorial support to a new Dominion Government campaign to promote improved food production and reduce wastage of foodstuffs and other vital commodities in Canadian households.
A meeting of prominent Island citizens at the legislature with a visiting representative of this initiative, Dr. J.W. Robertson, was followed by a public rally at Prince of Wales College. Robertson’s message to this gathering, as reported in the Sept. 6 Guardian, was a stern one: “While there is no occasion for alarm or panic there are very small reserves of food and in the event of such a failure of crops in 1918 as there was in 1916 the world might be faced with actual famine conditions … .” By Sept. 17, The Guardian was carrying advertisements from C.H.B. Longworth, newlyappointed chairman of a provincial Food Control Committee, notifying, “Red Cross, Womens Patriotic, and all other womens societies,” of, “a most important work to carried out, with their cooperation, within the next few weeks.”
By this time, The Guardian, eager, as always, for any opportunity to support the war effort, had already commenced a solicitous series of editorials on food conservation. On Sept. 4, for example, practically a full column was given over to advice on canning and bottling “surplus vegetables” grown by public-spirited gardeners; editorials on Sept. 20 and 21 fretted at “Our Waste of Apples” and “Wasted Bread”.
Fittingly – or, perhaps, ironically – this drive for “practical economy”, especially in foodstuffs, came amid preparations for the most important annual celebration of Island agriculture, the Provincial Exhibition, which was held in Charlottetown in the last week of September. As in previous years, The Guardian proclaimed the 1917 Exhibition the most successful yet, reporting 8,500 visitors on Sept. 26 alone. Praise was lavished on all aspects of the event, notably the food and livestock displays, which were held up as indicative of the general excellence of Island farms. But a note of caution was struck even here: opening the Exhibition on Sept. 25, Premier A.E. Arsenault commented that, “that without food conservation the county might possibly be on the verge of starvation”.
As if to underscore such stern warnings, the dignitaries at the exhibition opening were joined onstage by a number of returned veterans, whose ranks were, by now, growing slowly but steadily. These would almost all have been men who had been granted an extended medical furlough – or even a full discharge – due to serious injury or illness, since ordinary leave entitlements for Canadian Expeditionary Force would not allow a journey home.
On Sept. 11, The Guardian reported that eight Island soldiers had just landed in Halifax and that the “returning heroes” would be home within days. On Sept. 17, The Guardian devoted a large part of its front page to a laudatory profile of Lieut. Heber Large of Charlottetown, who had returned home to a “royal welcome” the previous day. One of the “original six” Island signalmen who were the first to leave for overseas duty in the earliest days of the war, Large had later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and was badly injured when his plane was shot down in aerial combat with a Zeppelin raider over England in July 1917. In recognition of his long service and serious injuries, he was granted the unusual indulgence of a threemonth furlough.
In an editorial praising a meeting planned for that day to organize a War Veterans Association on the Island, The Guardian of Sept. 27 remarked, “there are now over 120 returned soldiers in this province; there are some thousands yet to return”. Indeed, the war’s insatiable appetite was such that fresh contingents of soldiers were still leaving the Island: on Sept. 5, The Guardian had reported on a “splendid sendoff” for a 50-strong draft of railway troops recruited on the Island over the summer and that had departed Charlottetown the previous day.