chapters cover (1) general administrative policy, (2) agricultural production, (3) control of supplies and distribution, (4) rationing and priorities, and (5) food price policy. The concluding chapter drives home the nutritional phases of food control, in respect to both war and post-war implications.

A FUNDAMENTAL difference between the British food situation and ours is of course the British dependence on imported foods. A very large proportion of Britain's food is normally imported. Consequently, a tremendous effort has been made to raise production at home, and with considerable success. Pricing, subsidies, education, and compulsion have all been used. Land under the plow has increased 50 percent. Many vegetable crops have increased 25 to 50 percent. Milk production has been maintained in the face of difficulties. Measures have been taken to increase efficiency in the use of production resources and to encourage the use of fertilizer and good seeds. By the end of 1941 there were more than 100,000 tractors as compared with 45,000 just before the war. Farm labor has been tied to the farm. A Women's Land Army, soldiers on leave, and school children have been mobilized for harvest labor. When livestock feeds have been rationed they have been allotted on the basis of efficiency of conversion to human food. The quantity of grain for each dairyman is allotted in proportion to the quantity of milk sold.

Analysis of British experience in the control of supplies and distribution has a significant bearing on our problem now. The conclusion reached is that control can be

applied more easily and effectively before shortages develop. Furthermore, control of "basic" foods is not enough. Actual British procedure was much like our own in taking one item at a time, but this led to ill feeling between income groups, as high-income groups were not restricted in their choices of nonrationed foods. There was greater difficulty in controlling profiteering and black markets and delays made the final application of controls far more difficult.

British ingenuity and imagination used in developing rationing methods has been considerable. Four general types of rationing are used by the civilian population. These are (1) ordinary rationing of a fixed quantity in a fixed period, like our sugar rationing, (2) rationing of a fixed quantity in any proportion of a group of foods, (3) rationing of a group of foods under a points system, and (4) rationing by means of a registration system which permits the distribution of an announced minimum quantity per customer. The last method, a very flexible one, might have noteworthy application in the United States.

The thoroughness with which subsidies have been applied to a considerable group of basic foods is rather startling to ears accustomed to hearing subsidy and disaster on the same wave length. For many commodities the whole supply is purchased and resold to the trade at a loss in order to maintain retail price ceilings.

Giving preference to dairy cows in the distribution of feeds, the utilization of milk has been shifted so that more is consumed as fluid milk and less as manufactured products. Under the "liquid milk scheme" in

which children and nursing mothers are supplied free or cheap milk, more of the milk goes to those who need it most.

The average nutritional level in Britain is probably higher today than before the war. Knowledge of nutrition has been used to better the condition of the people and make them more efficient war workers. With

freedom from want as one of the great principles for which all free peoples are fighting, it is not probable that the peace will terminate these important wartime developments in practical nutrition. "The wartime advance may be small compared to the size of the task to be accomplished, but it is a beginning that will open the way to greater things."

COMPLEXITY of relationships between the things necessary to achieve soil conservation and the benefits to be derived from it, has been one reason for the confused economic outlook upon conservation work. Dr. Bunce's book discusses the economic ramifications of changed land use and conservation practices in relation to the farm operator, the community, and the Nation.

In sharpening the economic concepts with respect to soil conservation, the author draws a distinction between exploitation, conservation, and improvement. He further classifies exploitation as of two kinds-depletion and deterioration. He realizes that the two often occur concurrently and cannot adequately be separated. Depletion is defined as the removal of organic matter and plant nutrients or the impairment of the soil structure by cropping and leaching which does not result in the loss of the soil itself. It is assumed that these properties can be restored later by soil amendments and crop

ping practices. Deterioration involves both fertility losses and soil erosion, and results in a permanent impairment of physical properties.

Conditions under which conservation is economic for the individual farm operator are set forth with many examples that show the effect of such factors as price trends, price relationships of specific products, cost fluctuations, interest rates, and presence of large stores of virgin fertility.

Widespread lack of conservation in areas where it theoretically is economic for the individual is due in large measure to the rigidities of farm size, population movement, and institutional factors of taxation and conditions of tenure, in addition to the lack of pertinent information and training of the farm operator. These factors are closely linked in many situations where conservation is economically desirable from the social viewpoint but is not economic for the individual.

According to Professor Bunce, social and individual interests in con

servation are seldom, if ever, identical in our present economic and social order. Some of the social costs resulting from erosion-flood damage to highways and cities, the silting of rivers and reservoirs, and the costs of relief or resettlement of stranded populations in areas where the land can no longer maintain its present population-do not bear directly upon the individual farmer and he cannot be expected to include them in his individual economic considerations.

JUSTIFICATION for social action to eliminate the causes of uneconomic exploitation is easily establisted in many situations but the author makes a plea for a better analysis of basic causes of exploitation in specific areas, so that more effective methods of attacking the problem can be devised. Public programs must be sufficiently flexible to meet the variable nature of the problem in different areas and to avoid conflict with the attainment of other desirable goals.

WORLD EVENTS are moving rapidly but the chapter "War and Conservation" has direct application to present problems. Some aspects of conservation policy in war time depend upon the length of the war.

If the period is expected to be only a year or two, production may be maximized by temporarily depleting fertility. Through a longer period, maximum production would come through by maintaining or even increasing fertility. The effect of war

on the acreage of erosion-inducing crops mixed. Increased war needs for soybeans and corn accentuate the erosion hazard whereas the increased need for milk and other dairy products is associated with increased pasture, roughages, and conservation.

In considering the need for increases in erosion-inducing or depleting crops in the war and post-war periods, conservation plans "should delineate the areas where increases may take place with the least capital loss. Similarly, increases in hay and pasture should be encouraged in areas where most needed for conservation". In addition to adjusted guaranteed prices for specified products gefore the beginning of the growing season, incentive payments might be made for specific practices to increase production.

Dr. Bunce classifies important fields of endeavor for economic research with respect to soil conservation. By answering problems in these fields, research can become effective in laying the foundations for a progressive formulation of social policy. The value of the economic study of soil conservation problems is not so much in obtaining yes or no answers as in determining the best alternative means of conservation and the best choices of public policy. Information of where, how, and to whom conservation is most economic must be the basis of these choices. Changing circumstances change the incidence of conservation problems, but in peace or war, in times of scarcity or abundance, the conservation of soil and water remains of prime interest to farmers and the Nation.

This year the authorities are encouraging holidays for factory workers, and shorter hours. A farmer having horses would know that he could not overwork them for long, but that men and women have limits to their strength has, it seems, to be relearnt by experience again and again. This is very foolish as there is ample evidence from careful studies made and from the published reports that it does not pay from any point of view to drive workers beyond their strength.

An order recently fixed prices for clothing of many kinds. Clothing, etc. is classed as utility and non-utility goods. The former are goods made after new standard patterns. As the manufacture of non-utility goods is becoming more and more restricted by the withdrawal of labour and the taking over of factory space for war work, gradually the standard types will be all that can be got.

Price fixing is a complicated business. For instance, my partner, Roger Powell, raised a great many cucumber plants and eventually had for sale a quantity of cucumbers. The retail price was fixed, he says, below the cost of production. He sells his supplies privately as he is allowed to do and so there are none in the shops. By selling to neighbors he gets the full controlled price, whereas if he sold to shops he would of course get considerably less. Big growers must deal with the wholesalers.

The salvage campaign involves some trouble. But, although it is compulsory, no compulsion is needed to enforce the order. It is an offence to destroy clean

waste paper or card, rags, string, or rubber in any form. All worn-out metal articles must be preserved for the salvage collectors. Bones are wanted, and all dry food waste serves as pig food.

At the corners of many of our roads are metal dustbins marked "Dry Pig Food" into which housewives are invited to empty food refuse. This rather smelly material is collected from the bins to make, in a month, after it has been processed in some way, about 5 tons of what is said to be wholesome and nutritious food for pigs.

Notice was given that all unnecessary iron railings, bollards, gates, and posts would be collected. Many of the iron railings have been removed from the London parks and squares and the appearance of the streets has been thereby much improved.

Various special drives, some more or less unofficial, are started from time to time. For instance, someone said that empty cotton reels were wanted and our school children were asked to make a houseto-house collection. Through faulty organization, for a day or two Letchworth housewives were driven distracted by the almost incessant ringing of the front door bells by relays of children demanding cotton reels. The children found this fun, but not so the harassed housewives who had given all the reels they had to the first callers.

Enemy raids have been on a small scale lately, but after our continuous and heavy bombing of Germany and the occupied countries, it would be foolish not to be prepared for reprisals in kind. Stringent "black-out" for all buildings, city and country, public, industrial, and private, will be necessary for as long as the war lasts.