The World Famine and the Duty of Canada

John S. Ewart - 1917

This privately published pamphlet was produced by the noted Canadian lawyer John Skirving Ewart. Educated at Upper Canada College and Osgoode Hall, Ewart lived in Winnipeg from 1882 to 1904 before moving to Ottawa to become an outstanding counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (“John Skirving Ewart”). A fierce Canadian nationalist, Ewart notes that a decrease in the European food supply made Canada “the most important factor in the world. She has illimitable areas of choicest lands all ready for the plough. She could add enormously to her exportable surplus in a single year. She could save vast numbers of persons from famine, and thousands from death. She could help materially to preserve a falling world from anarchy and overwhelming ruin. She could do all this—if she tried to do it.” He criticizes Prime Minister Borden’s inaction, while repeating quotations that urge farmers to increase productivity, as important to the war effort as fighting in the trenches.