Ireland, but exempting north-east Ulster for five years, and providing for delegations representing both areas, with power to unify Irish legislation. If this plan was not satisfactory, he suggested that a convention of Irishmen of all parties should be assembled in Ireland in order to produce a scheme of their own to submit to the British Parliament. Neither the Nation- alists nor the southern Unionists would accept Mr. Lloyd George's specific plan; but all parties except Sinn Fein accepted the idea of an Irish convention. Representative men, many of them non-political, were chosen to take part in the assembly; and, in order to produce an atmosphere of harmony, the Govern- ment released without reservations all the political prisoners in confinement for connexion with the Dublin rebellion. One of these was Mr. De Valera, who refused to have anything to do with the convention, and who was almost immediately elected M.P. for East Clare by an enormous majority. In spite of this ominous event, which showed that popular favour in southern Ireland was deserting the Nationalists for Sinn Fein, the Conven- tion duly met on July 25, at Regent House, Trinity College, Dublin, and unanimously appointed Sir Horace Plunkett as their chairman. The Convention sat for many months, but, though there was an unexpected amount of agreement in some respects, it failed to arrive at anything approaching a unanimous report. The spread of the Sinn Fein movement in Sinn Fein Ireland, the death from hunger strike of a Sinn Fein Coasp r- prisoner, and the illness and death of John Redmond, the Nationalist leader and a leading member of the conference, contributed to this untoward result. It was in April 1918 that the report was issued; and Sir Horace Plunkett claimed, in a letter to the Prime Minister, that " the Conven- tion has laid the foundation of Irish agreement unprecedented in history." The Government, with no definite guidance from the Convention, proceeded to draft their own proposals; but these were not submitted to Parliament, as Lord French and Mr. Shortt, newly appointed Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secre- tary, discovered in May a further treasonable conspiracy between the Sinn Fein leaders and Germany, by which the Ger- mans were to supply munitions for a rebellion to follow a suc- cessful German offensive in France. The Sinn Fein headquarters were raided by the police and 150 Sinn Fein leaders were ar- rested under the Defence of the Realm Act. In view of the disturbed state of Ireland, ministers, though they were harassed by the Nationalists in Parliament for their inaction, determined to postpone legislation.
Lord Rhondda, at the outset of his Ministry, obtained a much larger control and wider scope than had been possessed by his predecessor as Food Controller. He took over the Oils Lord and Fats Department from the Ministry of Muni-
'as Food' ti ns an d was given by Order in Council the same Controller, powers as the Admiralty, Army Council, and Minis- try of Munitions already possessed, for requisitioning and controlling prices. The new crop of potatoes enabled him to abolish potatoless days; but it was to prices, which had risen enormously owing not merely to speculation and profi- teering, but to deficient harvests, shortage through submarine depredations, and the depreciaton of currency caused by the vast issues of paper money all over the world, that he mainly directed his attention. He explained his policy, in the House of Lords on July 26 1917, as being one of determining prices at every stage from the producer to the retailer, on the principle of allow- ing a reasonable pre-war profit. Existing agencies were to be used for the purposes of distribution under licence and control and under the supervision of local food controllers to be appointed by the local authority. He took over all the flour mills, and at heavy cost to the Exchequer reduced the price of flour so as to enable bread to be sold at gd. per quartern loaf instead of the existing price of is. He fixed a sliding scale for prices of live cattle, but left the fixing of retail prices for joints to the local food committees. The appointment of local committees and fixing of prices went on regularly during the autumn of 1917 till hardly any kind of food was left at market price; and a vigorous economy campaign was organized under the direction of Sir
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Arthur Yapp, of the Y.M.C.A., as Director-General of Food Economy. Sugar cards were issued in October. The sale or use of cream, save for children and invalids, was pro- hibited during the winter months. A new scale of New Scale voluntary rations, not applying to children, was issued aryRa-' in November. The bread ration varied from 8 Ib. per tioniag. week for men on the heaviest manual labour to 3 Ib. 8 oz. for women on sedentary work. For other foods the weekly ration was to be: cereals other than bread, 12 oz.; meat, 2 Ib.; but- ter, margarine, oilsand fats, 10 oz.; sugar, 8 oz. In December there were sporadic shortages of food of all kinds, and food queues at butchers', grocers' and bakers' shops became longer and more frequent, creating great dissatisfaction among all classes, especi- ally the working-classes. To meet the difficulty in part Lord Rhondda gave powers to local committees to transfer stocks of margarine from retailers who were well supplied to those who were deficient; -he also set up a Consumers' Council to advise the Ministry of Food; and he gave permission to the Birming- ham Food Control Committee to try an experiment with a scheme whereby each household should be supplied with a card entitling them to prescribed rations of tea, butter and margarine to be procured from a particular registered retailer. As the year drew to a close, it was obvious, and Lord Rhondda admitted it himself, that compulsory rationing would have to come.
It should be noted that Government control was extended during 1917 over other staple industries besides those dealing with food. In July the cotton trade was brought under a board of control consisting of spinners, manufactur- Genera/ ers, importers, distributors and workmen, together with representatives of the Board of Trade. In Septem- ber a similar board was set up by the Army Council to regu- late the woollen and worsted trade. Railways, the liquor trade, shipping, and mines had already passed successively under ministerial direction; as the strain of war grew more severe, the tendency inevitably was for each trade to set up a representa- tive body to direct its functions and activities, through consulta- tion with the Government. It may be added that, though it was no part of ministerial intention to discourage amusement and recreation, it was found necessary to suspend racing in May 1917.
Mr. Lloyd George followed Mr. Asquith closely in his state- ments during the year of the war aims pursued by the Allies, and in his repudiation of an inconclusive peace. At Glasgow in July he said that " we should continue Leading to fight for the great goal of international right and n" Ai ms . international justice, so that never again can brute force sit on the throne of justice, nor barbaric strength wield the sceptre of right." Mr. Asquith at Liverpool in October said that the worst that could happen to the world would be a patched-up peace; Gen. Smuts, who made several speeches while he remained in England as a member of the War Cabinet, said at Cardiff in the same month that the present struggle was deciding upon what basis the future would be built, whether on freedom, or on the will to power and the will to force. An entirely different note was struck by Lord Lansdowne, advocating in November, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (which The Times had previously declined to publish), a negotiated peace. He received no support, save from professed pacifists; and Mr. Lloyd George took occasion to warn people against the man who thought there was a half-way house bet ween defeat and victory. He admitted that it was a bad moment for A B ^ eal la the Allies in the war, because Russia had stopped and the \y ar . America was only preparing to come in. Certainly the course of the war in the autumn was unsatisfactory. Italy had been invaded in October and her armies driven back to the Piave, the fruits of Sir Julian Byng's brilliant victory, by the first use of tanks at Cambrai in November, had been largely neutralized by a German counterstroke, and in December a regular armistice was concluded between Germany and Russia, to be finally turned in the beginning of March 1918 into the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia went out of the war; but Great Britain had a gleam of success in the end of the year through the capture of Jerusalem by Sir Edmund Allenby.
