We have seen the price of sugar in the United States jumping up and down in a commercial battle between England and Germany almost before their clash at arms.
Before the war, 80 per cent of the sugar consumed in England was produced in Germany.

England, under her free trade policy, had permitted German beet sugar interests, fattened upon a government bounty, to destroy the refinery interests in the south of England.

The Island gained by the trade because her refineries were turned into sugar canneries.

Jams and marmalades therefrom expanded her foreign trade.

Germany, however, at the outbreak of this war, proposed to cut off, or tax heavily, England's sugar supply.