GERMANY TO-DAY

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 57, 1 December 1923, Page 8

GERMANY TO-DAY

WILD NIGHT LIFE BUT APPALLING POVERTY “Germany lead's a wild night life; indeed, there might never have been a war. Champagne flows like water, the theatres are packed nightly, but—the poverty is awful.” Mr. C. L. Dearslev, of Christchurch, who left the Dominion in 1914 to act as inspector of munition overseas, and who. during his absence, visited Germany a good deal, expressed thtese sentiments on his arrival yesterday. It seemed' a strange thing to mention poverty and gaiety in the same breath, he said, but they dwelt together. The middle classes were in dire straits, and there was great suffering indeed among the poorer classes. In Vienna this was most marked, and also in Berlin. Tho explanation of the wild night life was simple. Who in the name of goodness were going to keen their marks? The German regarded monev as too much an uncertain quantity and spent it as soon as he trot it. For the same reason, hundreds of farmers were grown" wheat and the like, but would not send it to the market. The expenditure of the munificient sum of two shillings in Munich brought the visitors a delightful recast including champagne, but in suite of this, the poverty was appalling There was no need to describe the feelings of the Germans towards the French in occupation of the Ruhr, and Germans made vile threats to the English pf what thev would do to the French —if thev could. The culmination of the affairs between the French and 1 the Germans was difficult to torecast.