World Wars of the Twentieth Century 343
The British, too, resorted increasingly to compulsory regulation,
e.g., in rationing food and other consumer goods. But more of a
voluntaristic element survived in Great Britain than on the Continent.
Compulsion, introduced for military service in 1916, was never ex
tended to the civilian work force as it was in Germany, though many
persons in Britain advocated doing so. Similarly, when shipping
shortages threatened the food supply, the government reacted by
launching a high-pressure campaign to increase agricultural produc
tion and succeeded in bringing some seven and a half million acres of
grassland under crops by letting local committees decide whose land
should be plowed up by state-owned tractors, grouped into machine
tractor stations like those the Russians later used in their collectiviza
tion drive of the 1930s. In 1918 this combination of compulsion and
voluntarism raised Britain’s wheat and potato crop no less than 40
percent above prewar averages and reduced food imports by more
than a third.^62
If one compares the British and French war effort with that of
Germany, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Allies managed
somewhat better than their enemy. Britain, in particular, by its policy
of limiting profits and through the efficiency of its rationing system,^63
apportioned costs of the war more equably than was true on the
Continent or in the United States. A part of this difference rested on
political traditions in Britain going back to the eighteenth century,
whereby men of property and wealth had become accustomed to
paying heavy taxes in wartime. But another factor was the relative ease
of controlling an economy in which export and import played so large
a role. Goods passing across a dock were hard to conceal from public
authorities, whereas in a more nearly self-contained economy, such as
that of Germany, no such obvious and easy check point existed. Accu
rate statistics and equable distribution of scarce goods were much
more difficult to achieve in landlocked countries. German shortcom
ings in the food and agricultural sector were perhaps largely due to
this difference between their situation and that confronting British
and French administrators.^64
The war ended before planned integration of the war economies of
the great Allied powers went very far. To be sure, two million Ameri
- Hardach, The First World War, pp. 123–31. The high priority accorded to ag
riculture in Great Britain contrasted sharply with German (and French) policy. No
doubt Britain’s obvious vulnerability to starvation explained the difference.
- William Beveridge, British Food Control (London, 1928), pp. 217–32.
- French inattention to agriculture equalled or exceeded German neglect. Cf.
Clémentel, La France et la politique économique interalliée, p. 233. The United States sent
