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The Government Press, naturally, professed to see in the inactivity of the Cabinet a proof that they had the matter well in hand. Avoidance of panic, restriction by voluntary effort of all unnecessary consumption of food, and the postponement of inquiries likely to interfere with the wise projects of the Premier: these formed the stock of their leading articles.

The gutter organ of the Opposition retorted by publishing the complete menu of the Premier’s dinner on the previous day, which it had obtained from some waiter in the hotel at which he was staying; and it accompanied this item of news by interspersed extracts from the Government organs in which appeals had been made for a less luxurious form of living.

It must be remembered that this stage of the sequence of events occupied only a brief period. If I am not wrong, it was within ten days of the outbreak of the Blight that we got the first American cables announcing the appearance of the epidemic among the great wheat areas of the Middle West. Almost immediately after came similar news from Canada.