EUROPE'S CRISIS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 132, 4 June 1919, Page 5

EUROPE'S CRISIS.

"UNREST AND DISCONTENT. IMMENSE FOOD PROBLEMS. Reports from Peace Conference agents in Central Europe and Russia make extraordinary reading, more thrilling and saddening than the great tragedies (wrote .Mr. Keith Murdoch on March 12). Europe is disrupted, chaotic. Intense physical sufferings have been immediately and markedly followed by decline of spiritual forces. Faiths are shattered, minds grope wearily amid uncertainties. You are dismayed that these bodily horrors are possible in western civilisation. You are aghast that they bring rapid, ugly social and moral decay. All are realising to-day how thin and brittle ih the partition between complex organised civilisation and consuming anarchy. These wise men of Europe gathered in Paris think all evil springs from lack of food. It 13 a materialistic doctrine. It strikes at the roots of self-respect. But the Conference is pledged to it. ltd reports ;ire sent to the Food Bureau. Great soldiers may Scan these tales of social uprisings. But action does not lie with them; the General's day is past. Financiers study them; but what can money do? Pastors ami teachers may theorise, but the Conference does not deal in prayers. Xo, off with all these reports to the Food Controller, the great Food Man of Europe, who deals in wheat and meat and ships, and recreates a railway system here or canal traffic there, in order to save the body and stabilise the mind with material substance. He i- the outstanding man to-day, this Food Controller, for Europe lias passed from absorption on war to absorption on transportation and distribution of grain. DISTEMPER IN GERMANY. According to British and American agents, including a distinguished general, Germany is on the very edge of starvation. The well-to-do classes have managed to hold out by combining in little trroups to buy eupplies at exorbitant prices. But thp working people have for some months been getting less than the body requires. One report speaks of thousands of men in an industrial centre being eager, but unable to work. All reports tell of terrible distress among children and high mortality among infants. General Sir Herbert Plumer, who is not the ngent referred to, has telegraphed that thousands of Germans ire dying from starvation, and infections [liseases are running through the population. Masses of people are in rags. Germany is unhinged. The revolutionary sailors holding the Reichstag building asainst Government troops this week in Berlin acreed to surrender in return for soup. Tllev pulled down their iliinr. handed over their rifles, drank their =oup, and melted into the crowds, comforted. The famous Guards Division lias become frankly mercenary, and fisrhts this street clear, or captures that building from Spartacists for set payments in cash and food. Berlin riots along. The Jazz dance has become a. craze, operas and theatres arefllled with peonle in evening while bullets whistle juteide. The jewellers ransom their shops for so many thousand marks; at Mannheim the whole eitv suddenly eoes RoUhevik : at Duesscldorf a dapper little mnjor-jreneral with 1.500 men. drives thousands of insurgents away, and then stands a siege. POLITICAL DISEASES. Some people rush along a Berlin street with handbills, declaring that if the great General Ludendorff could be brought back his wonderful brain would settle Germany's diflicultics, and therefore all £ood Bcrliners will seek his return. Immediately other handbills appear exhorting the public to chiise the great General LudendorfT with a rope or send a file of soldiers after him. P>eports of flaring depravity in Berlin come from too man) quarters to be ignored. These proud people lie and rob to get food, and their lowered moral is shown in flagrant profligacy. "'Bread and circus gamee," those two things which at their empire's end the Roman populace demanded as a cure for all their ills, are the chief demands also of the once Imperial Berlin. The niassee are apathetic, turning this way and that at the persuasion of the stronger mind. Had Ludendorff's throw brought them victory, how they would have strutted about and shouted for the Emperor. But those who a year ago worshipped the Kaiser now rush frenzied toward the extremes of communistic rule. Government troops, officers' corps, and the old General Staff win their bloody victories over the ill-trained and unkempt molis of proletarian enthusiast? who have taken to liquid fire, bombs, and asphyxiating gases to destroy society. But they cannot quieten the surging discontent of the people. Spartacus movements come and go, but the distemper grows steadily. An intense radical insurgenev is abroad, and great changes will occur in Germany, as in Russia, before stability comes asain. Through all Europe it is true that this is the testing time of political ideas and the moment of history most pregnant with politicnl chanfre. The failure of the old system now looks complete. Starvation and disorder have followed upon unparalleled human (daughter and destruction. What will supervene? Certainly not the old form of society in its entirety. AUSTRIA'S AGONY GREAT. Glance through Central Europe. Austria takes pride in tte steadiness. "We are not like those boastful Prussian organisers, whose organisation collapses under less strain than we suffer." But Austria's physical agony ie worec than that of Germany. The Conference's reports describe the Viennese dying in the streets, women fainting as they work, children crying all day. Two thin meals a clay in Vienna is the utmost the Government can manage. Black, puddeny, ill-smelling bread, and watery soup. Better food conditions rule in Hungary, but here insurgency is 6trong, and the tide of rebellion and fighting rolls up and down. Karolyi is urgently breaking up estates. It is not enough, say the Hungarians; we also ehall have a proletarian dictature. Just to the north, the Poles are living through a political tempest, though I am informed by General Carton de Wiart, head of the British section of the Polish Commission, that Paderewski, with his great charm of manner and deep sincerity, has a wonderful hold over his people. At Lemberg, de Wiart dined well. TTc had money. H,,t outside he saw thousands of emaciated folk who were getting but one poor meal of soun a day, whose children were dying and whose clothes were s o thin that the winter s blasts brought ravaging illnesses Pans is flooded with ~deWates convinced that their country's fate is'worse than anything seen since heathendom Rumanians are dying from starvation literacy in hundreds every day The Ger nans left them only u?"n locomotives and these move with difficulty The country was stripped bare. The'Bolshevisin there takes the form of peasants seizing the estates. Turkey has long ceased to show any hopeful sign to the Paris Conferences The popujlatpon

dwindles, but nothing can be done, for shipping is needed here. The story of Prague is, perhaps, the most lamentable. The Czechs are a capable, industrious high-spirited race. They have neither food nor clothes in Prague, and Lady Muriel Paget, who has undertaken tlie distribution of relief, writes to the Food Commission that people are to be seen practically naked as well as starving. REFORM MOVEMENTS SPREAD. Any picture of Europe to-day would lie false if it did not pay high tribute to the great-hearted men and women who have suffered, whose backs and hearts are breaking, but who stick it out and carry on. T>.ey will probably be the saviours of civilisation. All the rest should be only a phase. The Peace Conference wise men knit their brows over difficulties, and fear that antyhing may happen. In all countries great reform movements are proceeding, and attempts are made to meet the new order of things with a changed order of society and government. It is largely a question of compromise. Will those who have power and money make the necessary surrender? They arc moving that way. Britain is almost pledged to a great policy of nationalisation. Lloyd George wishes it to come at once, and with a rush. Employers everywhere seem to be actuated by a new spirit, to have found something of comradeship in the men who were their boys' pals as fighters. They offer profit-sharing, co-partnership, increased wages. Xowhere is there a sign of what is commonly called "capital" makinsr a fight to the death—an unwise alternative. Europe should be fed during this sprincr. None knows what will happen in Russia, except that no foreign intervention can stifle the new radical spirit. Perhans Lenin will proclaim himself Czar, perhaps Bolshevism will evolve into a western form of society, perhaps the Terror will gradually eive way to selfgovernment, though 80 per cent of the old Russian Empire could neither write nor read! Rut one fact stands out. The anxious days will not b<: ovrr in Central and Western Europe until all peoplo nre fed, employed, economically saved. Then it will be seen into what form Europe is going to settle down.