The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1918-01-08
Our Problem

IBy Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur. Pres Stanford University
It is surprising how few of our Americans
have grasped the significance of the fact that in
Australia, a country that has contributed mate
rally to this war; there is as the result of at least
two harvests, piled up very large quantity OF
cheap and practically aforementioned wheat,
much of it in the open air. where it can not be
adequately protected from various kinds Of dam
age. Yet we have had an unprecedented call up
on our wheat supply in this country and in Can
ada resulting in great increase in prices, due TO
the fact that the European nations absolutely re-
quired wheat for the sustenance of their people.
The answer to this apparent anomaly is that 1t
takes three times as long for ship to go to Aus
tralia for food as it does to go to Canada or the
United States, and the world has not the shipping
available for the long haus because of the subma-
rine menace and the exigencies of war.
Oil and other food stocks are also piled upon
the Asiatic and African coasts awaiting shipment,
while we are using food fats in our soap because
we can not get at these stores.
The most pressing problem before the United
States and the nations engaged with it in the war
against the Hohenzolern dynasty is to supply
food and ships and thus defeat the German sub
marine attack upon the left flank of the western
front.
The western front simply must be maintained
and must eventually be pushed forward by Amer
leans or there will be no final conclusion to the
great catastrophe.
MANY of our people do not seem to realize that
we have entered into the great struggle of auto
cracy versus democracy, and that President VIII
son has said that we can not conclude peace
with any but constituted representative of the
German people. That means that we must de-
feat, and absolutely defeat, the most powerful
war lord in all history, who has at his command
the most wonderful war machine that has ever
been devised. We can not defeat him with a
pounding of drums or waving OF flags or with any
form of national hysteria. We can only do it by
concerted action in food saving, shipbuilding, mu-
ntions making, and soldier training. The soon
er we settle down to this terrible task the sooner
it will be over. Every day that we delay in our
grasp of responsibilities means the loss OF so
many hundred or so many thousand OF our own
boys who will have to go to the trenches for that
much longer period of time. If we can resolutely
and successfully meet this problem in the next IL
months, it is probable than we can by that time
see what it's conclusion is likely to be.
At the present time man can say what will
be the outcome. Germany now occupies the po-
siton of a victor. We dare not let her remain
so. Every ounce of energy that we can put into
the fight we must use, whether it be in the pro-
duction of food, in the suppression of German
propaganda, in the building of airships, in sus-
tanning our embargo or in carrying on our pro-
ductive forms of industrial and agricultural life
in the best way possible. Until we began as
people to individually take personal interest in
every phase of this war, and until the most in