Nibblers & Grumblers

Colonel Deneys Reitz, onetime enemy of Britain during the Boer War, arrived in England last week as South Africa's new High Commissioner. It was a great joke in Britain when, full of friendship and good will, he breezed into a London hotel and told the waiter: "I am an easy man to please; just bring me some bacon and two eggs." Most Britons have not seen two eggs together for many months.

There were other things Colonel Reitz did not know. Food Minister Lord Woolton warned Britain that bread might be rationed if the public did not cooperate and eat more potatoes. Said he: "Idle nibblers of bread are nibbling at [our] very lives." A Food Ministry official estimated that the average Briton wastes three ounces daily--which means a shipload of wheat every twelve days, at a time when Allied shipping is shorter than ever.

Warned the Food Ministry: "It will be a hard, grim year ... of increasing shortages and inconveniences. . . ."

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