Snippets of war
Keith Gregson
Cartoon from The Sketch, 13 March 1918
The cartoon which accompanies this month’s snippet comes from the spring of 1918 and shows what the main concern of the public at home was at this time. Most of us associate the Second World War with rationing (especially after seeing repeats of Dad’s Army) but compulsory rationing of certain foods also came into force after a voluntary period towards the end of the First World War. There were a number of reasons behind the enforcement. In the first instance many of those who worked on the land and their work-horses were by now on active service. At the same time the Germans attempted to starve Britain by sinking merchant vessels through Unrestricted Submarine Warfare – a tactic from 1917. My researches into shipping in Sunderland in the Victorian and Edwardian period shows that many old and abandoned ‘tubs’ were called back into action in 1917 and 1918 as a result of the German onslaught – and they too suffered in considerable numbers. Bread, meat and sugar, heavily reliant on imports, were in particularly short supply. By the spring of 1918 voluntary rationing was not working and many items including sugar and meat were rationed alongside margarine, butter and cheese. In the case of butter, rationing continued until 1920. British agriculture was considered vital to the war effort and my wife’s paternal grandfather who was a farm worker at the time was not allowed to join up until the May of 1917 although he had volunteered earlier and was already registered.