The Ration Shrinks

Although still better fed than Germans, Britons none the less felt last week a sharp, specific pinch. They had been expecting the meat situation to ease somewhat for Minister of Food Lord Woolton declared fortnight ago: "The meat shortage is only temporary." Instead last week Lord Woolton was obliged to admit: "For the first time in 17 months of war we failed last week to meet the meat ration."

Suiting drastic action to these words, Woolton abruptly lowered the British meat ration, which last month stood at 47-c- worth of meat per person per week, to 30-c- (15. 6d.).Two days later the Food Minister felt obliged to cut the meat ration to 23-c- (15. 2d.)--which at war prices means about 1 Ib. beef or 2 lb. mutton. Chickens are not rationed but cost 65-c- a lb. and most people cannot afford them. To most Britons this meant that the German counter-blockade had taken hold in grim earnest, although Lord Woolton offered an explanation: "There were excellent reasons for this [reducing the meat ration twice in a single week], among them the diversion of shipping to Libya. Would you rather have a little less meat . . . would you rather have Bardia?"

Lord Woolton is a Tory and the left-wing press answered the Minister of Food by headlining "WOOLTON MUST GO!" The tabloid Daily Mirror attacked the Government by sending its columnist Cassandra out with a full wallet to gorge himself in London restaurants where rationing does not apply. Wrote replete Cassandra peevishly: "Within five days I have eaten at least seven times my weekly meat ration, five times my butter ration. . . . Not content with this debauch I have swallowed saddle of hare in wine sauce, lobster Thermidor, the inevitable (if you live that way) caviar, Hungarian pork goulash, quails in aspic and goose livers. In addition I have eaten two dozen oysters and a considerable quantity of fish, ranging from smoked salmon via tuna, sardines and anchovies to an enormous Dover sole. This mountain of food was obtained with out loss of a single food coupon. ... I have watched the great as they dine --Morrison, Beaverbrook, Duff Cooper and Eden among them."

Same day Lord Woolton forced London restaurateurs into a gentlemen's agreement that henceforth, while there will still be no official food rationing in British restaurants (such as there has been in German restaurants for the past 15 months), a British restaurant patron can have a dish of fish, meat, poultry, cheese or eggs, but only one of the five at any meal.

Henceforth, according to Lord Woolton, the meat ration will probably be readjusted from time to time, and as another week began he adjusted it up from 23-c- to 28-c-.

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