DANCING AND STARTING.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16522, 14 May 1919, Page 5

DANCING AND STARTING.

THE PLIGHT OF HAMBURG.

Before the war there was no German city which was more closely connected with England by commercial and social ties than Hamburg; and perhaps no German city is now pondering more ruefully upon the dolorous issue of Germany's design forcibly to grasp the world's trade. _ warehouses lie locked and silent; the Elbe may run to the sea, but not the ships on its surface; and what activity there may be on tho wharves is preparatory to the delivery of shipping to the Allies. At first sight, indeed, Hamburg seems busy and cheerful enough. The streets are crowded and the shops are full; folks move briskly over the snow, and look well clad and well fed. Or the Alster the steamboats ply through lanes kept open in the ice, and nearei the shore persons are skating and children sliding. A DESOLATE CITY. It does not take long, however, tc realise that Hamburg is a city squeezec dry of her former opulence. The apparatus of wealth —wharves, ships, warehouses, offices —alono remains. The city suggests a community of bees pent in their hive, powerless to issue iortfc to fill their combs, and nourishing themselves barely upon tjie last drops of their stored food. The shops indeed are full, but full oi substitutes. In a ladies' clothing store there aro certainly cloaks and dresses and stockings, but the best are onlj made of a mixture of wool or shoddj with substitutes, the cheaper of paper! "A little rain," a frank assistant said, "and the paper clothes lose all theii shape. A. little wind, unci they- lost all their warmth." A man may have a half-wool suit made to his measure in a big store —but once in the yeai only, and in return for £35 and J clothes coupon. . In the bootmakers' elegant windows are wooden shoes, rope shoes, snoes with wooden soles and straw uppers. Ahe confectioner shows a few pink sweets on a tray, and a few biscuits; but the former are 6d apiece, tjie latter c present chaos is mirrored in the streets. Here is a soldier still serving with whatever colours are now Germany's; to demonstrate his glorious freedom he slings his rifle upside down. Here is a demobilised soldier; he stin wears his field-grey uniform, but has changed his military cap for a bowler Hore is a woman wearing a cloak made from the field-grey overcoat of her husband or brother; here is a stiir teilow in his well-cut mufti an ex-officer by his carriage and half-defiant, hairsuspicious look. An. untidy squad oi soldiers trails by, without step, without dressing—barely retaining any coiporate nature whatever. Suddenly the brief clatter of machine guns. Persons ask: "Isit an affairr Are the Spartacus men abroad? 13ut no one cares very much, not even when : lorry filled with armed civilians hurries bv. One learns later that troops were merely testing a machine-gun by unrig into the air, and that a few rifles had been issued to civilians, doubtless pillars of the new democracy. DEJECTED PROCESSION. A band is hoard in tho distance, and presently tho lie ad of procession comes into view. The men move in fours; at intervals are banners and more bauds; it is a slow serpent ot slouching, dejected men in seedy overcoats and shabby _ field grey. lhe column takes six minutes to pass, and must number 2000 souls, but no one cares. It is only one more demonstration of tho unemployed, demanding a further increase in their weekly dole. From a doorway comes a peculiar reek—sour, bitter, suggestivo ot bast compromise b.etwe>en wholesome victuals anid sheer refuse. It is the entranco of a communal kitchen where thousands daily eat their one hot midday meal ot potato and mangold-wurael soup, made bitter by vetches . and thickened by chemicals. ~ , Inside are great cauldrons whence the soup is ladled. The fumes, as the lids aro lifted, wreath, the room. A queue of women and girls w«ut to carry their portions home m pails. At the benches bachelors —ageing, _ respectable, black-coated men—old spinsters and truculent ex-soldiers, claw the hot mess into their mouths. • Tho kitchen has a larder or storesroom, where the materials for tho next day are kept. It is a damp cellar, in a corner of which, half confined by woodon planks, lies a sprawling heap of mangold wurzels. , , „ No wonder that the people shudder at the mangold-wurzel. "Save us fron tho mangold-wurzoll" they cry openly : and recall the horror,* of the mangoidwurzel winter of 1916-17. At night the cafes are full, and for a shilling ono may eat a biscuit mado of husksj and for ono and sixpence drink a cup of mangold-wurzel coffee or so-called beer —and listen to excellent music. In tho dancing halls couples move in the tango and foxtrot to American rags, and drink German champagne in the intervals. A girl si a song describing the meagre furniture of the German larder. The refrain runs, "ohne E:er, ohnc Butter,'ohnc Fott" (without eggs, without butter, without fat). _ A man parodies her song by describing the diffipulties of social life: 1 'Ohnc Veste, ohne Hose, ohne Rock'' (without waistcoat, without trousers, without coat). Private soldiers and sailors danco and flirt; members of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council refresh themselves after their day's weighty toil with champagne and cigars, and grow eloquent upon the dangers of PanSlavism and the intoxicating sweetness of international brotherhood. lhe champagne is £2 a bottle, but the members fix their own salaries. The greater part of Hamburg dances, though there are those who lament that there are persons who can dance while two million Germans lie dead and the Fatherland disgraced; and who can reply to Fcch with the fox-trot and the Pole with tho "hesitation." ■ Nevertheless, the first act of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was the removal of the four years' ban upon public dancing. No doubt the Coun-y

cil dccided to show how benign and sensible of human frailty it was, and thought well to celebrate the lofty transition to the now and holy German democracy with dance and timbrel.