§ THE EARL OF MANSFIELD had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the food-production pro- 35 gramme of this country, in the years immediately following the conclusion of hostilities, must be affected by the anticipated conditions of semi-starvation throughout a large part of Europe, as well as by considerations of national security; whether they will bear this in mind when framing their long-term agricultural policy, in order to avoid the premature adoption of schemes that may not be immediately feasible; and to move for Papers.
§ The noble Earl said: My Lords, when some two months ago I put my Motion on the Paper, in common I think with the great majority of those throughout the country who are directly interested in agriculture, I expected that before the Motion was discussed some announcement of Government agricultural policy would be made. This hope has, however, not materialized, and it is unfortunately a fact, whether realized or not by His Majesty's Government, that a feeling of considerable uneasiness is beginning to spread throughout the agricultural community. Although they are in no way relaxing the very great efforts that they have made ever since the war began, and are still making, they do feel an ever growing anxiety as to the future of their industry and of themselves.
§ It is, of course, a truism to say that it is a very difficult matter to frame a satisfactory agricultural policy for this country, even in peace, let alone in war, or for the uneasy years that must follow the cessation of hostilities. We are a small country, with a very dense population, of which only some 7 per cent. are directly engaged in agriculture, and if one takes into account all those who are indirectly engaged, such as auctioneers, veterinary surgeons, manufacturers of agricultural machinery, seedsmen and the like, it does not exceed 10 per cent., and one has to realize that an agricultural policy must receive the support of at least the majority of the urban population if it is to be put into practical effect. Furthermore, in framing such a policy one has to consider not only home politics but also our relationship with our Dominions and Colonies and with other countries overseas, and also the question of balancing exports of manufactured goods by imports of foodstuffs; although in the past there can be no doubt that the last question has been given a consideration quite unduly weighted in favour 36 of the exporting manufacturer. But even when all these considerations are given the attention they deserve it surely cannot be impossible for the Government in power to produce at least an assurance, if not a policy, which will go some way to allay the justifiable anxiety now felt.
§ To come more directly to the terms of my Motion, as I see it the period after the war will have to be divided into three sections. The first of the sections comprises the few years that must elapse when our prime consideration must be to supply foodstuffs and live stock to the devastated countries of Europe in order to prevent wholesale starvation and outbreaks of disease in those countries. This question, although one of vital importance to many countries, has not received publicly by any means the attention that it deserves, and I hope to ask your Lordships to consider this specialized aspect of our agricultural problem at an early date in the new Session. Once that period has come to an end there will begin another period, the duration of which is very difficult to prophesy, during which Europe and the world will alike, we hope, be settling down into some form of political stability. It is during this period that considerations of national security must be weighed along with political and economic factors. It may be said that surely after this war we shall be able to ensure that there will be no further danger of subsequent wars, at least within the lifetime of all now in a position to sit in your Lordships' House, but that perhaps would be taking an unduly optimistic view. Who at the end of the last war could have believed that in considerably less than a generation Germany again would have plunged all mankind into an enormous international conflict? While one must hope that Germany and Japan—I do not think we need worry about Italy—will so be dealt with as to render them permanently impotent for harm, one cannot be certain that this will be the case. We must therefore ensure that the agriculture of this country is kept in such a position that it can be expanded rapidly in case of emergency should the need arise.
§ There is one other possibility on which one can only touch very lightly. The experience of history shows only too clearly that many coalitions of various countries face their greatest difficulties 37 after they have achieved success, and the unity that has characterized their efforts during a conflict does not always last very long alter the end of that conflict. Few people would have thought twenty, or even ten, years ago that we should find ourselves engaged in direct battle with our former Allies Italy and Japan. It is possible, although we must indeed trust that such a thing will not take place, that some of our Allies will not always remain Allies, and until such time as all nations of the world show some definite inclination to beat their tanks into tractors agricultural production in this country must always be considered, partially at least, with a view to its being rapidly expanded if the occasion should ever arise, however much we may pray that it does not.
§ When this second period is ended only then can a really stable agricultural programme come into being, and it would of course at such a distance of time be vain even to sketch the outline of one. All the same, one must hope that whatever Government may then control the destinies of this country will rather tend to encourage production on those lines which have been shown to be the most suited to the natural genius of our agriculturists and the characteristics of our soil and climate. That is to say, we hope there will be a concentration upon the production of live stock, milk, etc., rather than upon crops which have had up to date, for various reasons, to receive artificial support.
§ Now, in framing any policy, there are certain considerations which must be paramount. The first of these is the welfare of those who are engaged in the agricultural industry. Of these let us first consider the agricultural worker. Surely any policy adopted in future must have as its bedrock an intention that the agricultural worker shall enjoy, at all future times, a standard of living no less high as far as real wages are concerned than he has at present. In the past, as everyone knows, the standard of living of the farm worker, consequent upon his meagre wages, has been deplorably low. Although perhaps the hardest working man in the whole country, his remuneration has been at a painfully inadequate level, and very little attention has been paid to the fact outside those organs which take a direct interest in agriculture. Next we have the position 38 of the farmer himself. For generations back, with very few periods of prosperity, the farmer's lot has been one of acute anxiety and great difficulty in making, if not even both ends meet as has sometimes happened, at least a reasonable profit. Any policy which is to be permanent and to do permanent good must ensure that the farmer receives a reasonable profit and a reasonable return for the energy and skill he shows. The third partner in the industry is the landowner. He in the past, and even up to the present time, has been subjected to much ill-considered abuse. He has been represented as a mere blood-sucking parasite living on the rents he derives from his downtrodden tenants. Those of your Lordships who are agricultural landlords know how utterly false is that picture, but it is one that has unfortunately been "put over" on a large section of the electorate for political reasons, and its ill effects have still to be dissipated.
§ Surely to-day is a time when an agreed agricultural policy is probably less difficult of attainment than at any other period, because so many groups and branches of people, often with views extremely diverse in every other direction, have produced brochures and manifestos on agricultural policy which are remarkable more for their similarity than for their differences. There is, in particular, the policy which has been brought forward by a group of Peers who, I think, would be unlikely to agree entirely on many other subjects, but have found such common ground in agriculture that they have produced a policy which, if adopted in general outline by all the political Parties, would take agriculture out of Party politics, which is one of the most beneficent things that could possibly happen. In regard to the future of administration of remedies, it is not my intention to go into these at all to-day. Whether assistance to agriculture be direct in the form of subsidies, or more indirectly in the form of levy subsidies, by quota, or whatever it may be, is not a matter which I am prepared to discuss to-day. For one thing, only the Government have the knowledge and the figures at the present time which would make such a discussion valuable, and as long as the war lasts these figures must be kept secret in the interests of national security. There is one thing that is quite certain, and that is that if 39 agriculture in this country is to prosper the individual enterprise of farmer and landowner alike must not merely continue but be encouraged.
§ Agriculture depends, owing to its extremely diverse nature, so much on individual effort and individual intelligence that no attempt to dragoon it into dull uniformity can meet with anything but disaster. There is little doubt that agriculture in particular is suffering at the present time from a spate of "controls" which are doing a great deal more harm than good. Illustrations of this have appeared in that great mirror of British life and thought, Punch, which very well show up what is happening. May I remind your Lordships of two cartoons that have recently appeared? In one of them there were two officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, and one was saying to the other, rather sadly, "Have you noticed a veiled hostility to the Department on the part of farmers?" at the same time gazing at a scarecrow in a field very accurately got up to portray the said officials. Another and even more biting one showed a farmer in a field in which there were two large haystacks, and one of these, the farmer was saying, was provided by the Ministry. Close investigation showed that the haystack in question was exclusively composed of Ministerial forms. That is a picture which is not very far from the truth, and to-day I read in one of the organs belonging to the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, that an unfortunate farmer has committed suicide simply because he could no longer cope with this appalling torrent of forms which require a lawyer to interpret and a chartered accountant to fill up. If our agriculture is again to be on a really satisfactory basis it has got to be freed to some extent from this dreadful multiplicity of officials, instructions, forms, and the like.
§ If the industry is to receive any form of Governmental assistance, it is an unfortunate corollary that that must mean, to some extent, Governmental control. I am, myself, not unprepared to see the continuance of war agricultural committees, because obviously when public money in one shape or another is to be provided for the assistance of agriculture, some adequate supervision of its distribution and expenditure is required; but these committees should, quite definitely, be as far 40 as possible of an advisory character. If they are to continue to have the power to eject tenants from their farms on the ground of bad farming, and if they are to acquire the added power, as some suggest, of being able to deprive of his property the landlord who is unable or unwilling to keep up that property properly, then it is essential that no such steps should be taken without an appeal to some independent tribunal. There are at the moment two great blots on the Government's escutcheon. One is this, the other is the administration of the notorious I8B Regulation. In both cases the regulations themselves are admirable; it is their administration which is extremely questionable. Those of us who are members of war agricultural committees are informed that we are ourselves really part of the Ministry of Agriculture, or in Scotland of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. An appeal, therefore, to the Minister concerned is really an appeal, not to any independent tribunal, but an appeal from the right hand to the left. If we are to continue to have this control, which may well be necessary, then there has got to be some tribunal where independent judgment can be given. It is no longer going to be enough to have an appeal from Robert to Hudson, or from Pontius to Pilate.
§ At this hour I do not wish to detain your Lordships longer than possible, but I do hope that some consideration will be given to the views which I have put forward to-day. As I have said, anxiety continues to grow and unless some definite statement is made in the near future it may well be that agricultural production will be affected before very long. It must be remembered that from the very beginning of the war onwards the agriculturist has been working at a pressure seldom equalled and certainly not surpassed in the industrial field. He has been compelled to alter his methods, to adopt new ones which in many cases are suitable only for war conditions and are not economically sound. He has been compelled often to spend money which he does not own in buying fresh machinery for the development of ground hitherto under grass, and he has had to borrow money to do it because this counts as a capital expenditure and cannot be done out of profits, all of which over a certain by no means high figure are liable to be taken by the Excess Profits Tax.
41§ At the present time landlord, farmer and farm worker lack definite guidance and it is much to be hoped this anxiety can be relieved by a Government pronouncement at an early date Such a pronouncement is very much needed and it should be upon sound lines. After all, agriculture is our greatest single industry even if it be a group of various industries in some cases competing to a certain extent one with another. If in the future agriculture is made really prosperous, then even if we had industrial depression in various directions our general economy would go on. If, however, agriculture is allowed to sink again into a condition of permanent or semi-permanent depression, then no matter how fair the industrial situation may appear outwardly it is bound to bear within it the seeds of its own and of national decay. For that reason I trust the noble Duke may be able to give me some assurance along the lines I have indicated. I beg to move.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTERMy Lords, I am sure your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Earl for calling attention to the programme of food production in his very interesting and persuasive speech. I wish to underline the importance of the subject from the point of view of the reference in his Motion to the anticipated conditions of semi-starvation throughout large parts of Europe. Your Lordships will have noticed the reference to certain of the conditions made by the British Ambassador to Madrid in his speech reported in the Press this morning. I do not think it is as yet sufficiently realized how grave the food position is, and how grave and much graver it will be for a good while after the war throughout large tracts of Europe.
Take Europe immediately before the war began so as to compare the food situation now. There are always of course differences in food conditions between town dwellers and those living in the country. The only nations which had enough food for their population before the war were Denmark and Germany. No other country could afford a fall in the consumption level. Some other countries would have benefited by a rise in the consumption level, particularly the town populations of France, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia, and in many countries, particularly in Belgium and in 42 countries in Central Europe, a rise in the nutritional standards was, essential. Now if we turn to Europe in its present war-stricken condition what do we find? We find that still Denmark and Germany are sufficiently supplied with food and they are the only countries in that situation. We have to bear in mind the fact that Germany, having long prepared for this war, had reserve stocks before the war of 7,000,000 tons of broad grain, 400,000 tons of vegetable oil and large reserve stores of sugar and soya beans. No doubt those stocks are very considerably depleted if not nearly all gone after four years. We have to remember, too, that one substantial motive behind the occupation of a large part of Europe by the Nazis was Germany's need of food and labour.
I will give your Lordships one or two illustrations because, as the Motion brings the point out so clearly, the matter is relevant. There is roughly a population of 200,000,000 in the occupied countries of Europe. Half of these are in rural territories and half in 1owns. On the whole those dwelling in rural territories are sufficiently near a pre-war level though there are exceptions in certain countries where the position is very serious for all classes. But it is the population in the urban areas which is so very much worse off, the 100,000,000 people living in towns. The well-to-do very often can obtain their food from the black markets. It is the working classes, the vast majority of these 100,000,000, who are very badly affected. But I would give one or two instances. In Poland, which is a country that suffers most hardly and I think may be fairly said to complain least, whether one thinks of incorporate Poland or General Government Poland which contains Warsaw, there is a process of slow starvation. That is not too harsh a phrase to use. In Yugoslavia, apart from the fact that the peasants are no longer co-operating with regard to the stabilization and the maintenance of agriculture because of the occupying forces, in the towns milk and meat are extremely rare and in Belgrade it is mouldy bread that is more often handed to the customer than not. Everybody knows how desperate is the condition in Greece to which assistance has been given by the Canadian Government through the offices of our own Government. The situation there is very bad still. Most people know that the situa- 43 tion in Belgium is grave, especially so far as the children are concerned, with their scurvy and their rickets, their disease and their inadequate nutrition. In the Netherlands the position is also bad for lack of food. I have seen statistics which show that as a result of the lack of food there is a great increase in diphtheria, in poliomyelitis, and in dysentery. The situation is bad, though not as bad as in the other countries mentioned, in Norway particularly, on account of the deficiencies of diet which affect the health of the Norwegians.
I should like to quote, because it is the most crucial instance of the policy of the Nazi Government with regard to occupied territory, an order issued in June, 1941, from Berlin described as "an instruction for directing the economy of newly occupied eastern regions" and I should like to apply it to Russia. This is the text of the instruction:
In accordance with the orders of the Führer it is necessary to take all measures for immediate and full utilization of the occupied regions in the interests of Germany. To obtain for Germany as much food and oil as possible —this is the main economic purpose of the campaign. Along with this German industry must be supplied also with other raw materials from the occupied regions. The first task is to ensure in the shortest possible time the complete supply of the German troops with food at the expense of the occupied regions.That has been ruthlessly enforced in occupied Russia, which is at the present moment, though being gradually liberated, suffering from semi-starvation or starvation.I think that it is a fair inference from the facts that I have given your Lordships —a very hasty summary of a very large field—that every country is much worse off than it was when the war began, except Denmark. Winter is coming and, as is well known, the position by Christmas in these countries will be very serious indeed. If there is, as one hopes there will be, a military invasion with a Second Front, the military conditions will at first at any rate make the situation difficult, though no doubt the supply of concentrated food to stop starvation will begin as soon as is compatible with military safety. When the war is over, and the veil is lifted far more than it can be lifted now,. we shall see the spectre of famine stalking over large areas of Europe. Nobody can praise too highly 44 the resourcefulness, the determination and the triumphal success with which the Minister of Food has organized the distribution of food in this country. The Minister of Economic Warfare and other members of the Government at an earlier stage in the war, and from time to time since, have spoken of the great stocks of food which are held in reserve in some portions of the Allied countries, notably our own country, ready to be rushed in to feed the starving countries as soon as the war is over. I wonder whether these great stocks of food are in existence now in the quantities which will be necessary when the need has to be met. I make no apology for pointing out and emphasizing that there is every indication that the food situation in Europe is going to be very serious indeed. Therefore one cannot emphasize too deliberately or too seriously the urgent need of food supplies from all sources.
That is why I have ventured to intervene to say how warmly I welcome the insistence in the noble Earl's Motion on the way in which our own food production programme ought to be affected by the conditions of semi-starvation over large portions of Europe. We owe it to the land and to those who work upon the land to see to it that our own land produces to the fullest possible capacity. We owe it to our national security, various features of which the noble Earl at the conclusion of his speech quite properly pointed out. We owe it also to our duty to consider the needs of Europe and the necessity of doing what we can do to act on the principle that those nations who are better off and those empires who are better off should help those who are worse off.
§ LORD BEAVERBROOKMy Lords, I was very glad indeed to hear the noble Earl who raised this Motion speak of the necessity for increased production or at any rate for sustained production at the present level. The right reverend Prelate spoke movingly of the need for food supplies in Europe after the war. That is another incentive to the farmer to sustain or increase food production. But there are weaknesses in the situation that should be straightened out in the interests of production, particularly the production of live stock and milk to which the noble Earl referred. The weaknesses are to be found in the very improper price levels 45 which now exist favouring the big man at the expense of the little trader.
The Ministry of Food is really now a Ministry of many margins. It is a Ministry of margins and nothing else. It has three separate milk prices for various classes of milk suppliers. There is first the big man who gets three margins of profit on the milk he buys from the Ministry; the next man in size gets two margins; and then comes the little man with only one margin. As long as that inequitable position exists there must be impediments in the way of production, and very serious impediments. Why not wipe them out? The whole story of the three margins is like the story of the three bears and I hope the noble Duke when he replies for the Government: will give some explanation of these three margins. I hope we shall hear some response from the Ministry before long because the matter has been put before the Government again and again. It is time something was done. It is leading to such dissatisfaction as really to interfere with the production of milk. Distribution is also a subject that is giving cause for the greatest concern. Distribution was cheaper before the Ministry began to interfere—actually cheaper. Mr. Sidney Foster, an authority on the subject, says the cost of distribution before rationalization was 11½d. a gallon. The cost now is 11Üd. when the distribution is less than 750 gallons, rising to 14¼d. to the main supply depots, an average cost of distribution of 12¾d. as against 11½d. It is estimated that distribution since 1939 has cost the country £15,000,000 additional money. That is an abuse that has got to be dealt with.
There is another abuse crying out for the attention of Ministers, the Minister of Agriculture as well as the Minister of Food. It is the abuse in regard to bacon prices, which is directly concerned with the question of live stock raised by the noble Earl. There are also three separate bacon prices. There is one price for the multiple concern with ten shops. Such a concern gets a rebate on the Ministry's prices of 4s. per cwt. But if the undertaking happens to comprise more than ten shops in its multiple system, if there happen to be as many as twenty shops, another 1s. per cwt. is allowed for invoicing to themselves, that is to say for sending out invoices to their own sections. Then there is a third price for multiple 46 concerns of fifty shops and over. In their case the rebate is 9s. per cwt. Now the price of bacon is about 150s., and here we have the three bears again. They are called on this occasion: "First and second buyers," but there are really first and second buyers, and then third buyers who are not given a name as yet. These last are really the mugs; they are paying 150s., say, for bacon of a type which the firm of Sainsbury is buying at 142s. That is a difference of about 1d. a pound.
I think that is enough for to-day. I will speak again on another occasion about butchers and margarine manufacturers, and I hope that noblemen who are interested in meat and margarine will come down to this House to help in the defence of their price scales, which are also in favour of the big concerns and damaging to the little man.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE DUKE OF NORFOLK)My Lords, I have at the outset of my reply to tell the noble Earl who moved this Motion that I took the terms of the Motion to be much more in conformity with the lines of the speech of the right reverend Prelate than with those of his own speech or with those of the speech which has just been made by my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook. I will, therefore, if I may, give an answer to, or rather explain my reason for not answering, Lord Beaverbrook before I come to deal specifically with the Motion. It would not, I think, be unreasonable for me to suggest to Lord Beaverbrook that in view of the terms of the Motion on the Paper he really could not expect an answer dealing with the situation regarding prices charged for various commodities which he has mentioned to-day.
Taking the Motion as it stands I have no quarrel at all with the noble Earl for he has only asked that when the appropriate time comes we should consider what the situation regarding the food shortage in Europe, and particularly in the occupied countries, will be, and that we should consider it when we formulate our long-term policy. I can at this moment give the assurance that these matters are not being overlooked. In fact, the records show that my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture was already thinking several 47 months ago of the help that would have to be given to these countries, help which will be gladly given by the United Nations to the peoples living on the Continent of Europe. In May of this year, when addressing a meeting at the Caxton Hall, the Minister used these words:
Even the end of the war will not mean the end of our farming effort, for starving Europe will have to be fed.A few weeks later he made the same point to that representative body known as the Council of Agriculture for England.The European peoples to-day are very seriously underfed, there is no doubt about that; and in some countries the position is certainly worse than in others. That means that as these countries are liberated so they will have to be fed, and we shall have to assist not only in producing food but also in restoring the production of the soil of those countries, countries which to a large extent are still agriculturally inclined. That will not help merely to put them on their feet again. The quicker we can make these countries produce some of the food which they will need the more we shall assist in saving shipping, which may quite easily be much needed for wars which may still be continuing in other parts of the world. To-day, as the result of the occupation by the Germans of these countries, many European lands have lost a large number of their draught animals; they have lost or have not been able to replace a large amount of their machinery. Their seeds, too, are likely to be inadequate. They have been short of fertilizers for some time past, and now their supplies of phosphates from North Africa have been lost to them in this last year.
All these matters are under active consideration at this moment by the United Nations. The problem before us is to help in supplying Europe's essential needs in the matter of food and production requirements whilst at the same time maintaining in this country our agricultural resources and our output of food at home. How is this to be done? I think that the answer to that question has really been given in the Minister's reference at the Caxton Hall to starving Europe. Following upon that statement, he went on to say that he was trying at that time to work out a four-year cropping plan for agriculture, which would 48 include the harvest of 1947. This programme has since been given greater definition. Its essence is that we shall continue to take the plough round the farms of this country; we shall extend the ley farming, and we shall consider the improvement of live-stock husbandry through better breeding and other means. The aim of these measures is the provision of the maximum crops possible for both human and animal consumption.
Here I may say that one of the most remarkable features of this season is the extraordinary production which we are getting from the young grazing leys established on land which has been reseeded after some three or four white straw crops. This reseeding, using special mixtures of grasses and clovers, and where necessary phosphates, is a new technique to many of the fanners, but they are practising it with such success now that the grazings on these new leys far outstrip, both in quality and in quantity, the amount of food produced from the older herbage. On the dairy farms the criterion is milk yield, and the cows are certainly milking well on these young pastures. Under the four-year cropping plan, it is hoped that we shall extend these pastures, which automatically are now feeding a greater head of live stock than before, and that we shall put the plough into the whole of the pastures, so that they may produce, from the fertility stored in them, the great crops of wheat and potatoes which will be needed in the years about which I have been talking.
This policy is one which also accords with the recommendations of the Hot Springs Conference, the members of which obviously foresaw the period of critical shortage of food in the aftermath of war. It is also considered that this policy is the best way in which we can help our European Allies, whose needs were not forgotten at that Conference. I will, with your Lordships' permission, quote Resolution XII (3) from the Final Act of that Conference:
That, pursuant to the above purpose, countries which have been producing more than normal output because of freedom from enemy action should—49 This policy which I have outlined is undeniably consonant with the maintenance of our national security. Finally, I suggest that the four-year plan is the best preparation for the long-term agricultural policy that must be devised at the appropriate time in the interests both of the safety and welfare of this country and of co-operation with the world overseas.
- (a) In the short run maintain such production;
- (b) Whenever possible, increase production further, provided transport and the means of production, etc., are available, to assist in meeting abnormal demands."
THE EARL OF MANSFIELDMy Lords, while thanking the noble Duke for his reply, which I recognize is satisfactory as far as it goes, I should like to say that there are still a good many more detailed aspects of this problem on which he has not touched, and which I think do require further elucidation. I shall therefore be compelled at a later date to request the noble Duke to enter into these considerations more fully. I should like to thank the right reverend Prelate for the support that he has given to me. Admittedly his speech was considerably more relevant to the Motion than was my own, but I departed from the terms of the Motion largely because this is going to be the only opportunity available for the next few weeks for expressing the grave anxieties felt by the agricultural community that nothing more than the four-year cropping plan has up to date been produced. Four years is only a small part of the average lease, only a small part of the normal tenure of a farm, and indeed of a rotation; and, if confidence is to be really restored, something of a more long-term nature will have to be produced at a fairly early date. The phrase "appropriate time," used by the noble Duke, while itself unexceptionable, is still capable of being extended to such a remote period that it would hardly suffice to subdue all the anxieties at present felt.
I fear that I cannot criticize or enter into a discussion of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, as I have not his intimate knowledge of the matters concerned; but his remarks will doubtless receive the attention of His Majesty's Government. Meanwhile, I assure the noble Duke that I am satisfied with his reply as far as it goes, and I therefore beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.