Sir Ben's Battle

Britons thought things were getting a little better. Taxis stood on the streets waiting for customers. Bomb-damaged houses were being repaired. Only a month ago pudgy Food Minister Sir Ben Smith told housewives that this year food conditions would improve; Sir Ben even let them have little Christmas extras as an earnest of better days to come.

Then, out of London's grey February sky, the blows fell. Sir Ben did not "know where to lay my hands on" the $100 million needed for dried-egg imports. Then publicity-shy Sir Ben, a former cabby, meeting the press for the first time in many months, said that the world food crisis (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) had made still further cuts necessary. Because India was exporting fewer ground nuts and Antarctic whaling results were disappointing, the ration of cooking fat was to be reduced to seven ounces a week (former ration: eight ounces). Because imports of fodder were reduced, there would soon be less bacon, less poultry, fewer shell eggs (present average: 2 1/2 eggs per person a month). Bread might again be rationed too. "Not one grain more" of barley would go to the distillers; whiskey would be scarcer than ever, and Sir Ben was "sorry about that."

Seven months after the end of the war, their new rations seemed, to many Britons, worse than war itself. Said one suburbanite, standing in the queue before the butcher's shop: "There's been more moaning over this than over the buzz bombs."

No More Dunkirks. Britain's Labor Government heard the moaning, promptly ordered up Churchillian propaganda guns to drown the noise. Prime Minister Attlee appointed a three-man Cabinet committee to plan the strategy for "the Battle of the Bread." Minister of Agriculture Tom Williams launched a new "Dig for Victory" campaign. Lord Aberconway, president of the Royal Horticultural Society, announced that his members would continue to resist the temptation to reconvert to flowers. Pert Minister of Education Ellen Wilkinson appealed to Britons to carry on in "the Dunkirk spirit."

The slogans did not take. Britons have had Dunkirk. They were tired of battles, tired of digging for victory, tired of their drab, tasteless meals. They understood that Britain had to contribute food to the needy in Europe (1 1/2 million tons since the end of the war), money to UNRRA ($320 millions already given, $320 millions more promised). They did not understand why the Treasury could not have allotted to dried eggs the $80 millions it allowed last year for purchase of Hollywood films. (Angry housewives cried: "We don't want Frank Sinatra. We want food.") Still less did they understand why their Labor Government had been less frank with them than Tory Churchill had been in wartime. Belatedly conscious of the need to take democracy into his confidence, Sir Ben Smith now warned: there was no guarantee that the situation would not get worse.

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