"On the last date for which stocks were noted, January 13, 1917, England's visible stocks of wheat amounted to 5.3 million quarters, as against 6.3 and 5.9 million quarters in the two previous years. From January to May and June there is, as a rule, a marked decline in the stocks, and even in normal years the imports during these months do not cover the consumption. In June, 1914 and 1915, the visible stocks amounted only to about 2 million quarters, representing the requirements for scarcely three weeks. "We have no reason to believe that matters have developed more favourably during the present year. This is borne out by the import figures for January--as published. The imports of bread-corn and fodder-grain--I take them altogether, as in the English regulations for eking out supplies--amounted only to 12.6 million quarters, as against 19.8 and 19.2 in the two previous years. "For February the English statistics show an increase in the import value of unstated import quantity of all grain of 50 per cent., as against February, 1916. This gives, taking the distribution among the various sorts of grain as similar to that of January, and reckoning with the rise in prices since, about the same import quantity as in the previous year. But in view of the great decrease in American grain shipments and the small quantity which can have come from India and Australia the statement is hardly credible. We may take it that March has brought a further decline, and that to-day, when we are nearing the time of the three-week stocks, the English supplies are lower than in the previous years. "The English themselves acknowledge this. Lloyd George stated in February that the English grain supplies were lower than ever within the memory of man. A high official in the English Ministry of Agriculture, Sir Ailwyn Fellowes, speaking in April at an agricultural congress, added that owing to the submarine warfare, which was an extremely serious peril to England, the state of affairs had grown far worse even than then. "Captain Bathurst, of the British Food Controller's Department (_Kriegsernaehrungsamt_), stated briefly on April 19 that the then consumption of breadstuffs was 50 per cent. in excess of the present _and prospective_ supplies. It would be necessary to reduce the consumption of bread by fully a third in order to make ends meet. "Shortly before, Mr. Wallhead, a delegate from Manchester, at a conference of the Independent Labour Party in Leeds had stated that, according to his information, England would in six to eight weeks be in a complete state of famine. "The crisis in which England is placed--and we can fairly call it a crisis now--is further aggravated by the fact that the supplies of other important foodstuffs have likewise taken an unfavourable turn. "The import of meat in February, 1917, shows the lowest figures for many years, with the single exception of September, 1914.