Take, for example, the case of the sugar supply for England and France. England is accustomed to use about 2,000,000 tons of sugar a year but she does not produce, at home, a single ton. She had relied before the war chiefly on importations from Germany and Austria with some little from Belgium and France. But with the outbreak of the war, she could get none from the Central Empires, and none from Belgium, while France, instead of being able to export sugar, suddenly found herself with her principal sugar-producing region invaded by the Germans and able to produce hardly a third of her former output. In fact, France herself was suddenly placed in the position of needing to import nearly two-thirds of the supply needed for her own consumption. So England and France had to turn to Cuba, the nearest great sugar-producing country, and ask for large quantities of her output. But the United States has always depended on Cuba for a large part of its own needs. Consequently there was a sugar problem for our own country as well as for England and France long before we entered the war. The situation was serious; the demands on Cuba were much larger than she could meet, although she was able under this stimulation of demand to increase materially her sugar crop in the years following the first of the war. One way of meeting this problem, which was promptly resorted to, was to cut down the consumption of sugar in the countries involved. In England and France sugar was strictly rationed; and in America the people were called on to limit their use of sugar by voluntary agreement. England cut her sugar allowance per capita from about seven and a half pounds a month to two, and France from nearly four to one. In America we reduced our per capita consumption by legally restricting the making of soft drinks and candy and by the voluntary restriction of the home use of sugar by about one-half. All this lessened the demand on Cuba, and also the demand on shipping. NATIONAL TASTES IN FOOD In this discussion of the war-time sugar problem one may be struck by the fact, as noted, that the people of France were normally accustomed to eat much less sugar than the people of England, indeed only about one-half as much. This introduces a subject of importance in any general discussion of the world food problem. It is that of the varying food habits of different peoples, even peoples living under very similar climatic and general physical conditions. For example, the people of Germany are accustomed to eat twice as many potatoes as the people of England, who in turn use more than three times as many as the people of Italy. On the other hand, England uses twice as much sugar as Germany, although she produces no sugar and Germany produces much sugar. The Italians eat only a third as much meat as the English and the French only half as much. But the English eat only two-thirds as much bread as the French.