POVERTY IN EUROPE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 16, 20 January 1933, Page 9

POVERTY IN EUROPE.

A story of unbelievable poverty and hardship in Central Europe was told by Mrs. Duncan Heaton-Armstrong, a Tasmanian, who for the past 12 years has lived in Czccho-Slovakia and Austria, to the Melbourne "Herald," and who is about to return to her homo among the mountains of Central Austria after a brief visit to Tasmania.

"When we first settled in Europe after the war," she said, "the poverty was appalling. People literally starved. Then times became a little better, but now conditions are becoming steadily worse again through lack of trade and the rate of exchange.

"Food is very expensive in Austria to-day. Meat costs the equivalent of 3/ to 4/ a lb, butter 3/, while fruit and all other imported goods are quite beyond the purses of most people.

"Peasants and middle-class folk seldom see meat, summer or winter. Bread, butter, cheese and milk provide their staple diet. Many large families I know personally live on £2 a month, which provides food and clothing for several children even during the severe cold of our winters. Australians have really no conception of the poverty of Central Europe.

"The high rate of exchange has driven most English people from Austria, as it is practically impossble to obtain Austrian schillings for English money in the country. So we are compelled to find some other way to obtain schillings! I import quite cheap tea from London by the chest. After paying the high duties and import taxes, I make it into packets of 1 kilo or more, then send it to various Austrian friends, who sell it. So tea which cost perhaps 1/0 a pound in England is sold at 8/ or more in Austria. But it must be strong tea to suit the Austrian taste. Hotels and housewives dry the leaves after each brewing, until at length every particle of strength has been procured. Then they are thrown on the rubbiah tip.

"In Czecho-Slovakia living is more difficult for foreigners than in Austria. After the war the Czechs left the Hungarian aristocrats their castles and their woods, but all the profitable acres of land were confiscated. It is wonderful how they keep up appearances on no capital, these feudal lords."