Damning Decision

Savants and Statesmen sometimes learn from Swine. As a result of such learning the Federal Council of the German States issued an order, last week, banning from importation into Germany all U. S. barley, except that grown in the states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas.

Barley from other U. S. states is now tainted with gibberella sanbinetti, ruled the Federal Council, and based this damning decision upon the reports of German savants, who have been learning from German swine.

Learning progressed as follows. First 20,000 tons of U. S. barley, the first batch of a 500,000-ton order, was received and test samples were offered to the swine. After sniffing and tasting the U. S. barley the German swine turned up their snouts, refused to eat.

The German savants, patient, waited several days until the hogs grew so ravenous that they ate the U. S. barley. That night German swine who had partaken of barley from states other than Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas suffered the pangs of colic.

Last week the German Federal Council made a full and specific explanation to German farmers over the radio, warning them against U. S. barley. The hogs developed the colic, it was explained, because the grain was tainted with a poisonous fungus, known to scientists as gibberella sanbinetti and to the U. S. farmers as "wheat scab."