Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1918-01-06

MG administration urges that each
MSSt&SXof us cut down the amount
of sugar he is using in his tea and coffee
and in candies and cake, so that we may
have greater supply to send to our allies
in Europe. There is sugar famine in
France, England and Italy, and the ration
now given to the French soldiers in the
trenches is not more than small lump per
day. Many Of the people of France have
no sugar at all, and Mr.. Hoover has prom
ised to ship them 100000 tons as soon as
the stuff can be sent over the ocean. The
amount the English are using now aver
ages only about one ounce every "a hours
and the Italians have still shorter supply.
1t is strange to think of sugar as a war
asset but it has been found to be vital
necessity to the men in the trenches, and to
the soldiers engaged in all sorts Of labor.
1t is one of the most easily digested of
foods and the rapdity with which it goes
into the system enables it to ward off fat
igue. This is one Of the reasons why sugar
is SO much reished by children and by men
doing muscular work. The farmers eat
great deal of sweets and the same is true
OF all those who work hard in the open
air. Not long ago studies in the winter
camps of the Maine woods showed that
the lumbermen eat enormous quantities of
cakes, molasses and sugar, and that 10 per
cent of their energy comes from that diet.
Sugar is also valuable to keep out the cold
Of the trenches. 1t is great heat pro-
Queer and is always taken as part of the
outfit of polar expeditions 1t is used also
by mountain climbers and especially the
guides of the Swiss Alps.
The value of sugar to the soldier in the
field is we'll known to the Germans Long
before the war began they made expert
ments which showed that the men could do
more work and stand more hardship if they
had a liberal allowance of sugar. On the
long marches it was found that it appeased
hunger and mitigated thirst, and that while
the men without sugar dropped on the way
none of those supplied with it were over
come by exhaustion. The sugar users
were found to have better pulse rate and
their breathing was less affected by over
exertion.
1t was on the basis of these experiments
that the German surgeons recommended
that the sugar ration for the army be in
creased, and that it be given the men in
their coffee and in preserves or honey or
in sweetened food. At the beginning of
the war the Germans tried to reduce the
size OF their sugar crop in order to use more
OF the ground for potatoes and cereals The
result was a shortage of sugar, which af-
fected the army. The second year they
planted more beets and they have now re-
sumed the old sugar rations.
Indeed, the beet sugar industry was
started owing to the sugar needs of an
army. 1t was when Napoleon Bonaparte
was at war with England and the ports
OF France were so blockaded that there
was no sugar for the French soldiers. Some
years previous to that a scientist named
Margraf had discovered that beets con-
tanned sugar. and later on a pupil OF his
named Achard established the first beet
sugar factory. He announced the success
OF his experiments to the Scientific Insti-
tute of France in 1799 and little later Ma
poleon tried,to sWeeten his army with beets
At any rate he offered a prize of 100000
francs, or $4,000. to any one who would
make success of extracting sugar from
beets, and the result was a number of factor
les. During the next decade the Germans
began to experiment along the same lines,
and their government offered bounties of
so much per pound on all beet sugar made
in their country These movements formed
the foundation of the beet sugar industry OF