Occasions in Sugar has a particularly interesting layout. Babst seems to have taken over three-fourths of his quotations (gathered from conferences, retirement parties, and forgotten award ceremonies) and put them into poetic form by dividing the lines and centering them. Sometimes an entire page is devoted to something especially pointless that the Javanese Sugar Minister said at dinner, or what happens to the sugar markets when war erupts. I am reproducing the line divisions exactly:
"Under pre-war conditions surplus flowed into deficiency as if into a matrix. The war gradually changed all this.
Wide fluctuations in prices
were caused by absence of
visibles and invisibles
sufficient to supply temporary
shortages pending the arrival
of new sugar crops."
(O.S., written in the Journal of Commerce on January 31, 1925)
It is hard to say exactly what sort of antagonism, or what sort of war, will be most beneficial: that is, in stopping the surplus from flowing into a matrix of deficiency. Perhaps a war with someone who ardently believes deficiency flows naturally into a matrix of surplus, that even closed economies cannot fail to produce something new, thus making interest somewhat moot. I believe that, sometimes, but would like more and more proof.