Chatham began 'Sugar, Mr. Speaker', when he was interrupted by a rude laugh. 'Sugar, Mr. Speaker,' he continued, 'Sugar, Mr. Speaker: who will laugh at sugar now?' That is the spirit the nation would have welcomed in its rulers at this time of deadly crisis when cotton and oils and fats for German ammunition are among the decisive factors of the war.
It was unfortunate and not, I think, creditable that this agitation, begun unwillingly from a sense of public duty, should have been weakened by the words reported[1] to have been used by a scientific expert speaking at the annual meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry at Manchester last July: 'It has been stated in some daily papers that cotton is absolutely necessary for the production of high explosive shells, and you will hardly believe that there is practically no cotton used in the manufacture of high explosives. The whole thing is a great fraud.' Words such as these could only serve to confuse the public mind and encourage the erroneous belief that there was nothing in the effort to prevent cotton reaching Germany. The words would lead all who heard them or read them in the press to lose sight of the vital fact that cotton is absolutely necessary to enable the shell to leave the German gun, and that without cotton the high explosive in the shell could do no harm whatever.
It is now necessary to consider the question of oils and fats, at the present moment far more important than cotton because the Government is still permitting their export in vast quantities. Lord Robert Cecil is reported in The Times of July 27, 1915, to have said: 'I listened with positive amazement to my hon. friend [Major R. Hunt] when he said that we are saying to Germany,
- ↑ Morning Post, July 17, 1915.