I want them to
see the need of concentrating upon the food problem: insisting that it
shall be solved. The other things can follow."
"There was an old Egyptian chap," he said, "a governor of one of their
provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of.
They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: 'In
my time no man went hungry.' I'd rather have that carved upon my
gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of
history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and
famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would
grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest
supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of
transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against
attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months' journey. Yet
he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: 'In my time no man
went hungry.' And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways,
with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our
population lives on the border line of want.
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