Description:Many of the documents relating to the food supply in time of war crisis indicate that a central concern was England’s reliance on imported food. One newspaper clipping suggests that Britain would be ‘on the brink of famine’ if war broke out with a major European power. The clipping is taken from a meeting ‘under the auspices of the Imperial Trade Defence Association’ in which J. W. Mahony gave an address entitled ‘Britain’s folly in protecting an empire for the special advantage of her industrial rivals, and with no certain supply of food for her people’. As Mahony puts it, concern arose due to ‘the alarming fact that about three-parts of the food of the people of Great Britain comes from possible enemies and comparatively little from kith and kin throughout the empire.’