"Girls! I think I needn't tell you that we're fighting in the most terrible war the world has ever seen. We're matched against a foe whose force and cunning will need every atom of strength of which we're capable. They are not only shooting our soldiers at the front, and bombing our towns, but by their submarine warfare they are deliberately trying to reduce us by starvation. There is already a food crisis in our country. There is a serious shortage of wheat, of potatoes, of sugar, and of other food-stuffs. Perhaps you think that so long as you have money you will be able to buy food. That is not so. As long as there is plenty of food, money is a convenience to buy it with, but no more. Money is not value. If the food is not there, money will not make it, and money becomes useless. Food gives money its value. We can do without money; but we cannot do without food. People see the bakers' shops full of bread, the butchers' shops full of meat, the grocers' shops full of provisions, and they believe there is plenty of food. This is merely food on the surface. The stock of food from which the shops draw the food is low, seriously low, already. Unless we ration ourselves at once, and carefully, there will come days when there may be no bread at all at the baker's. There is a shortage of wheat all over the world, not only in Europe, but also in North and South America. Millions of the men who grew the wheat we eat are fighting, hundreds of thousands of them will never go back to the fields they ploughed. If the present waste of bread and wheat flour continues, there will be hardly enough to go round till next harvest time. Great Britain only produces one-fifth of the bread it eats. Four-fifths of the wheat comes from abroad. Hundreds of the ships that brought it are now engaged in other work. They are carrying food and munitions to France, Italy, and Russia. The ships that brought us food are fewer by those hundreds.