Eighty Years Ago This Week

  The British government presented a stark picture of the future for the public in a debate on food supply. They would have to make further sacrifices on top of accepting the savage food rationing to which they were still subject. Wheat was in particularly short supply. The scale of sacrifice rather depended on the massive loan from the US which was still being arranged. Inevitably the problem was exaggerated for US consumption. The despatch of a whaling fleet to the Antarctic held some prospect of increasing the edible oil supply.  Rationing remained strict for several years; indeed it was tightened; bread, which had been freely available  during the war,  was put on ration.  Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the "white rajah" abdicated as the third rajah of Sarawak which had been in his family's hands since 1841, a relic of the free-booting days of the British empire. As a young man he had fought in two military campaigns; in one of these, one fifth of the Dyaks under...