PRIVATIONS IN GERMANY,

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16216, 20 May 1918, Page 5

PRIVATIONS IN GERMANY,

1 SHORTAGE OF FOOD. EX-PRISONER'S OBSERVATIONS. An Aucklander who spent 18 moutlis ' in Germany as a prisoner, writes in the "Chronicles ot' the New Zealand ■ Expeditionary Force" an article oil i the conditions of life in Germany, and the privations of the German people. ' He says: During my 18 months I had,! , perhaps, n more varied experience than the average prisoner. 1 was in fivo hospitals and five prison camps, in ten • different parts of Germany. I spoko to hundreds of Germans, occasionally ! in English or French, generally in my . version of their mother tongue. Thpy were doctors, nurses, officers, underofficers, privates, clergymen—good and bad—barbers—full of information m their barbarous way—civilians, men, women, and little children. I was for , four months in a civilian hospitaj, , where I mixed casually enough with the 500 patients. Seventy-five per • cent, of Germans to-day are Socialists ■ at heart, and almost openly; but while this war lasts they "will never be able I to practise their Socialism. _ They . would uproot German militarism if . they could, and dared. The military , caste is weakening, certainly, but *fc ■ controls the machinery of the conn- | try, and 110 revolution is possible while 1 Germany is in a state of war. The j revolution—it may he peaceable or violent—can only come when the present ruling powers are discredited by an , ignominious peace. ... ' HAPPINESS IN BRITAIN ; MISERY 1 IN GERMANY. It may be said: That is all;;'"very ) true, but is not England just as badly i off as Germany? This is the sort of : question, the very natural question " that a repatriated prisoner hears every ' day, and he is not complaining!—more \ than once a day. But ho remembers the last Germans he saw, the inhabitants of Aachen, men, women, and children, paler even than Germans were wont to be, thin (is Germans never were, weaned, worn-out. discontented, fed-up. And 'he remembers the first English folk lie saw as he landed in Boston—the happy, cheering boys ai<d girls who lined the banks and the docks, and the railway stations; their plump, pink, healthy faces were ?n answer to all his anxiety about the condition of England. .J have seen German hospital trains waiting at a station, and there was never a cheor nor a smile from the populace.' I have seen long leave trains packed with Germans returning from Flanders, and there was not a cheerfullooking man among them. The Germans are fed-up. But not with food. Tea queues and butter queues alnuse me I No German—l speak." of course, of the great hulk of the population—no German, for 18 months and more,has had i ail" tea, or coffee, or cocoa, or sugar, or butter, or margarine, or jam. He has had almost no . ineatj lie. has had verv little milk. ' A man whom I I ,knew in Stuttgart 15 months ago, an accountant, with a. fair income, had an ailing wife with a.babe one month old. He had a card for extra milk in addition to his ordinary milk card. Not onlv did he not get his . extra milk, but he could draw only half his ordinary ration. There is no tinned milk in Germany. The baby died. I have seen a potato queue iii Stuttgart wait outside a slum from early mornini/ till noon, when they were told that there were no potatoes to-day." The German soldiers in my hospitals were so badlv nourished that quite simple wounds took months to heal. Their food was mostly a peculiarly vile form of mangelwurzels—shall I ever forget those "steckruben"—other od-J vegetables—including grass—and occasional potatoes—those were the good days—a sort of macaroni (made in Germany), a species of quite rotten fish. . (made rotten in Germany),, and, cf course, black bread. It would amuse English folk to see German black broad —it is quite amusing, when you have not to cat it. It is made of rye and potatoes, with an admixture of sawdust. I am not exaggerating, for it is unnecessary. I have heard English medical officers seriously advise against ' eating the bread provided in some camps. And it is the same bread that is issued to the civil population. In some districts the bread is quite edible; it varies, but no one should make the mistake of imagining that "schwartzbrot" is the same tiling as our'excellent "brown bread." GERMANY TIRED OF WAR. The Germans to-day are always hungry. Their lean bouies and Jean faces show it. I have scan German soldiers, drawing the princeiv military ration, rummaging in dustoins for bits of br'.'ad or other remnants. I have seen a German soldier in lull uniform disappear through the trapdoor of a destructor inside a prison camp to look for leavings, and I liavo seen an unc&n- . scious orderly walk up to the destructor to empty his bucket of slops into ' the trap-door, and express surprise and I contrition when the German soldier ! emerged bubbling with a crust of bread in his hand, ana a more than plentiful ' sprinkling of tea-loaves and what-nots ; elsewhere. j The Germans are a hungry nation. ! : They are deprived of all luxuridiij'/and they have only substitutes for beerCand tobacco. Their cigars are beetroot j leaves soaked in nicotine. A Gorman j doctor who was smoking ono told mc < so, and I believed him. They have no 1 sugar, no chocolate, no sweets of any 1 sort. More important still, they have ( far from sufficient necessaries. Eighty per cent, of the Gorman people would 1 stop the war to-morrow on any terms, i if they could; they .tell you so-frankly, f but tney have no say in the matter. < I . . .uA.. ■

Tliev have proved that it is possible I® support life for a time on surprisingly little food, but they are paying for it now, and they will pay for it with increasing weight in the near and distant future. They cannot subsist indefinitely on their low diet. Time . will starve them out. They aro infinitely worse off now than they wero l-<. months ago. Twelve months hence— who knows! CARRY ON! I can only speak of what prisoners of war have seen of Germany and Germans. Prisoners of war have rather an undue amount of time on then* hands —indeed, it is tho only thing they have too much of in these days of ro- • strictions. so they can sparo an hour or. two to think seriously about the war in.> all its aspects. Theirs is almost, second sight. They seo the war from the Gorman side; they seo it from tho heart of . the European continent, surrounded as tlioy aro by our enemies and our allies; they see it even more from tho heart of England, which is tho heart of the Empire. Tho sum total of their seeing is that if . England is to remain England j if the British Empire is to remain nu Empire, the one great, free Empire that tlio world has known, England must beat Germany in this present war, must crush Germany to a peaco on England's terms; it must be done, it can bo dono—it may be 12 months, it may be 24. Germany js ours if wo only carry on.