That is one of the reasons why German warships
tried to check Dewey at Manila in 1898 and German troops tried to
conquer Egypt in 1915.
But the tide of war set the other way and the German plantations of
palmnuts and peanuts in Africa have come into British possession and
now the British Government is starting an educational campaign to teach
their farmers to feed oil cake like the Germans and their people to eat
peanuts like the Americans.
The Germans shut off from the tropical fats supply were hard up for food
and for soap, for lubricants and for munitions. Every person was given a
fat card that reduced his weekly allowance to the minimum. Millers were
required to remove the germs from their cereals and deliver them to the
war department. Children were set to gathering horse-chestnuts,
elderberries, linden-balls, grape seeds, cherry stones and sunflower
heads, for these contain from six to twenty per cent. of oil. Even the
blue-bottle fly--hitherto an idle creature for whom Beelzebub found
mischief--was conscripted into the national service and set to laying
eggs by the billion on fish refuse.
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