British Food Journal Volume 16 Issue 8 1914

In the present European crisis every intelligent individual of British birth must feel that a tremendous debt of gratitude is due to the British Navy, which, by keeping open the lines of traffic across the seas, has ensured the supply of daily food to the country. Although this journal does not concern itself with political matters, it does concern itself with the question of the maintenance of an efficient food supply in this country at all times, and the one question is indissolubly bound up with the other. Few people probably have any idea of the enormous extent to which they are dependent for the very food which nourishes them upon the ships that enter London and other ports of the English coast. Every day in the year nearly three‐quarters of a million pounds' worth of provisions are imported into this country, in addition to what we actually produce ourselves, and last year no less than two and a quarter million tons of grain, 360,000 tons of chilled and frozen beef and mutton, 170,000 tons of tea, 250,000 tons of sugar, and many other foods in proportion, were landed in the port of London alone. These figures, in view of the present crisis, completely shatter the absurd position of the “Little Navy” nincompoops.