The Spectator at war: Keeping the nation sweet

From The Spectator, 3 October 1914:

ALREADY we are engaged in the exacting task of creating an army during time of war ; and it is possible that to that task we may add the process of creating an industry. Mr. J. W. Robertson-Scott, who has written much on agricultural matters over the signature “Home Counties,” contributes to the current number of the Nineteenth Century a striking examination of the conditions under which he considers it would be possible at the present moment to organize a sugar supply from home-grown beet.

The opportunity for invention, and for intervention, is plain, and the chances are more favourable than the most enthusiastic advocate of beet could have dreamt of a year ago. Whether the war is short or long, the German and Austrian beet sugar industries must be crippled by it. If a new industry is to flourish from the beginning, it could hardly ask for more than that the demand for its supply should be enormous, and that its chief competitors should be put out of action.