No white flour is sold or used in Britain.  The mills are all controlled by the Government and all flour is now war grade, which means it is made of about 70 per cent white flour and other grains, rye, corn (which we call maize), barley, rice-flour, etc., are added.  We expect to mill potato flour this year.  Oatmeal has a fixed price, 9 cents a pound, in Scotland, 10 cents in England.  No fancy pastries, no icing on cakes and no fancy bread may be made.  Only two shapes of loaf are allowed—­the tin loaf and the Coburg.  Cakes must only have 15 per cent sugar and 30 per cent war grade flour.  Buns and scones and biscuits have regulations as to making, also.

Butter is very scarce and margarine supplies not always big enough, and we have tea and sugar and margerine queues in our big towns—­women standing in long rows waiting.  It is an intolerable waste of time—­and yet it seems difficult to get it managed otherwise.

The woman in the home in our country with high prices, want of supplies, and her desire to economise has had a busy and full time, but our people are quite well fed.  Naturally enough, considering the hard work we are all doing, our people are really using more, not less food, but waste is being fought very well.

Waste is a punishable offence and if you throw away bread or any good food, you will be proceeded against, as many have been, and fined 40/- to L100.  No bread must be sold that is not twelve hours baked.  New bread is extravagant in cutting and people eat more.  It is interesting to note that in one period of the Napoleonic wars we did the same thing and ate no new bread.

Food hoarding is an offence and the food is commandeered and the hoarder punished.  Several people have been fined L50 and upwards.

The work of the Army in economizing food has been a great work.  Rations have been cut down and much more carefully dealt with.  The use of waste products has become a science.  All the fats are saved—­even the fats in water used in washing dishes are trapped and saved.  The fats are used to make glycerine, and last year the Army saved enough waste fat to make glycerine for 18,000,000 shells.  Fats and scraps for pigs, and bones, etc., are all sold and one-third of the money goes back to the men’s messing funds to buy additional foods and every camp tries to beat the other in its care and efficiency and the women cooks are doing admirably in this work.

Officers of the Navy and Army are only permitted to spend a certain amount on meals in restaurants and hotels—­3/6 for lunch and 5/6 for dinner and 1/6 for tea.

The other side of the Food Campaign is the propaganda and educative work.  Lord Rhondda has two women Co-Directors with him—­Mrs. C.S.  Peel and Mrs. M. Pember Reeves—­in the Ministry of Food, and they help in the whole work and very specially with the educational and propaganda work, and with the work of communal feeding.