The situation in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler caused many people in the latter part of the 1930s to fear a second major war. In the event of war, British agriculture and food supply would again be vital. Had the AES ignored this, it would have been indefensible. Rightly, then, a paper on ‘Agriculture and national defence’ was delivered at the Society’s conference in July 1938 and duly published in the next issue of the Journal.