HARDSHIPS OF WAR

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13510, 4 December 1941, Page 3

HARDSHIPS OF WAR

I ead_ rEAPFEAKS F mibH» from battered. I nne has the impression | a lan d flowing with 3 ;> DS I and honey. But a V.^ e !“.eveals that, though at !:# ® eal ‘ suffering the hard- , I Eir e > s '• <Uof* ar : t h er will, she has |> a?a ‘ n J he black loaf, and a ..jW ct ,it is, made of whole and barley flour. i fl!at ’wilflam Bayles. former Ber--1 ,-;e: the American magazine I lias just completed an |■> '" tnur of Ireland, in an arj -f' K overseas Dally Mail. J : 'V e i e ganl Gresham Hotel a I !l ‘Lion ot macaroni from a as a rare delicacy. B 8 ?! country where the raising £1 " .(.bred horses might be I ■ ‘“'"major industry. Yet she is P dansMcrlng thousands ot K ”!and sending their carEngland for dog meat beI** 10 that would have been used I a tliem must now be saved for

; : ‘ an consumption. ffhich for centuries has been ' T tr< beverage, is at the moment >i ' fA t ha if an ounce a week, to be doubled as from p', l 9) Coffee, tobacco, cho|*®fand canned goods are equally 1. Jute, cotton, newsprint, and 3 '% are fast running low. : jre formerly exported 15.000 I 1 either dressed or on the hoof I England each week. The number .■'dropped to 4,400. Englishmen I nre almost forgotten the joy of U„.r a succulent beef-steak, but in j of beef cattle are bell-, destroyed weekly for want of -buyer. At a livestock market in j * b | in i saw good-sized calves aucI ;;o30(i at 15s.

rj r e’s most serious deficiency as -inter approaches is coal. She formerly imported 2,500,000 tons anj’jjllv from England. She now gets "radically none. Ker own native are mostly undeveloped and yield only 120,000 tons a year. Although Dublin is not blacked oat, its lights are dim because coal Blacking in the power plants. Railray services have been reduced by ji much as two-thirds, and trains are sometimes stranded between stations when their coal supply runs oat. Eire's total coal reserves are sufficed for only a few weeks, and unless England can be persuaded to contribute from her own inadequate supply, the Free State faces a cold, ark winter. Ireland’s traditional substitute for tea! is peat, but it is three or four times as bulky as coal, which makes

it unpractical as a fuel for locoaotives and factory furnaces. Except when an odd neutral tanker happens to put into an Irish polT, &e goes without petrol and oil. toy of her cars stand idle, and f-hers have been equipped with Honnous gasbags. Eike so many small nations, Eire, xhich is a third the size of Britain and supports only 3,000,000 people, failed to recognise her free path :o ec °nomic salvation. As the vegetable garden of Engto she could be certain of a con■a‘it market, but her political lead•'kaxe been blinded by the obses■°n of British economic domination, hav e endeavoured to make their country a self-sufficient industrial tut. ~“'r e her own steel industry though she possessed nei„er ' r ° n ore nor coal in sufficient an tty. An aluminium refining i* 1 " as a * so erected, as were a factory and other indus"orks foreign to agricultural ■ capacities. To-day their w aie sa Sging, their machines aud the *r furnaces cold. * 6 t ln struggle for existence nshme n have turned to the So’h .° T n ° Practice of smuggling, f'. i * sker an d Eire have their "' ck markets.

bc^rt 10a( * s ’ * n ant l out of f ° rde f fa nns severed by the jignf Gr ’ across Holds. and down i:r ea*n an6S moves a constant ?sj ar contraband commerce. g U^Br ’ eggs > an d meat, of isj tCoff lre as Plenty, into Ulster; 66 wilite fl° u r into Eire. Sre^j 6 * lei ‘ds of cattle and sheep across the frontier on ijj g . * s ’ lorries loaded with flour there Creep up to border, Vj* a nighfc ly wage of £ 1 , raTe the ]a w to carry the Cl «k “a r aCr ° SS • hj an dre not rationed in Eire -s em Pt is made to prevent Ales, bn^- ln f garments and texfleck Up is a buost impossible to and° n nu " m ber of shirts, '§ the k t ’ 1 ° User s each man cross--N'» Irish - r - IS WeaHns ' UOrth • Vi . sitors returning from V. n[ 18 without his 51b. of white norm luggage of travellers tr hing a usually contains a sur‘ortteent of sides of bacon,

tins of butter, hastily laundered wearing apparel, and even fresh fillets of beef. The prices of contraband goods would jolt even a Croesus. Slatternly market women in Dublin deftly single out weli-dressed persons and offer them of tea for £2. An Irish liquor dealer ,was asked to offer five quarts of his best whisky in exchange for five pounds of ordinary white flour. Those who would eat well in either Eire or Ulster to-day must pay the smuggled his price.