The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1917-09-27
ONLY RIGID SAVING CAN
PREVENT WORLD FAMINE

the'u usual wasteful practices are con-
tinued, if we here in America live as we
have been lately, ever since the dec
laratlon of war.
All of the powers given him by the
American people through their Con-
gress do not even touch that situation.
No people and no Congress may give
him power to increase the food supply.
That is fixed for this coming winter,
was fixed last summer by those who till
the ground and search the waters for
food. Mr.. Hoover's actual powers
the powers which he, personally or
through his assistance, may exercise
are authorities over distribution. And
when he has achieved 100 per cent.
efficiency in distributing the food supply
equally and fairly to the hungry mouths
of our world there will remain the
terrifying fact that there is less food
available than our world acquires.
l came to the conclusion the other
day that Mr.. Hoover was the most
sombre man in which
means much more than wi be thought,
for he evidently is by nature one of the
cheeriest of men. He is all smooth
curves; head, face and body. There is
not an angle about him, and not a
wrinkle And he has quick twinkling
smile which ran into view and ran
away several times. Again he is all
efficiency. He runs easily on perfect
ball Hearings, with never so much as an
infinitesimal waste of motion. Yet there
is something about his air of the man
misunderstanding of the man look
ing straight into the unthinkable.
1t seemed to me-or at least | i'm
agined-that two things were respon-
sible for this sombreness which back
grounded this gracious, strong, mag
netic personality. One was his con-
slant view of hungry men women and
children across the water, his constant
HGI.
women and children who either were
not sitting down to the table regularly,
or, if so, were arising from it with
gnawing at the stomach hundreds of
them, thousands of them, millions of
them. The other cause | told myself,
was his provision Of verdict of failure
upon his work.
His country had given him all the
powers possible to do an impossible
thing to keep our hundred million
mouths and our Allies additional hun
dreds Of millions of mouths well filed
and his country had not known that the
task assigned to him was impossible,
while he knew it all too well. And he
had taken the protfered powers and had
set himself against the Impossible task
with the purpose Of Iessening the in
evltable suffering in the maximum de-
gree in which it could be lessened, but
with the expectation that his country.
counting upon the impossible achieve
ment, would fail to see the real service
and, possibly, would away with him. "
No one knows so well as Mr.. Hoover
the extent to which the economic
structure Of the world is degeneratiDg.
No one knows so well as he that the
number of men and women who produce
the substance of life is decreasing
while the number of men and women
who consume, without producing, Is in
creasing. No one realizes so clearly as
he what 1t means to take millions of
men from the fields of production and
place them under arms; to take other
millions of men and millions of women
from the fields of production and place
them in industries which fashion i'm
plements Of war for the men at the
front
No one understands so clearly as he
that while the world is reducing with
increasing speed the number of pro-
ducers of food, the necessities OF mod
ern war increase the normal food de-
mands of the millions of men at the
front, and the million of men and wo.
men who build the tools for the men at
the front. No one sees so windy as
he that the world today grows one blade
of grass where two grew before-that
the wastage of the worlds resources
bears ratio TO the whole which well
nigh forecasts economic annihilation.
No one appreciates as he does that he
cannot cure the disease. that he may
merely check its ravages
He has done magnificent thus far in
his job of checking the disease bv pro-
viding an even flow of food between the
producer and the consumer. For ex-
ample, under the wheat prices and dis
tribution system provided by the Food
Administration, the farmer is getting
So more. considered in units of barrels
of flour. while the consumer is paving
50 less. He has cut out Sc that went
into middlemen's pockets on each barrel
of flour. And he has done that while
maintaining price scale which all the
authorities grant will stimulate the
80 to Dlonf