GERMANY TO-DAY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3205, 4 February 1924, Page 7

GERMANY TO-DAY.

Towards the end of last year Mr J. B. Merrett, of Christchurch, who is visiting Great Britain in connection with the Dominion’s egg export trade, was in Germany, and ih a letter, dated Berlin, December I, 1923, to a member of the staff of the Christchurch Press ho gives some of his impressions of the state of things in Germany. He writes:—

“There is no doubt that this is a wonderful country. No amount of reading can giv« f be slightest conception of Germany as* it is. The back of the country is absolutely broken commercially. To visit Berlin alone gives one a false impression, hut 1, have got out into the country towns and the position is appalling. Many of the business places are closed. Workmen have been reduced to 18s and 30s per week —that is the artisan class. Giving is terrific; how the people continue to exist I cannot imagine. The loss of the Ruhr is like closing up the West Coast for coal, or Canterbury for grain. Even the trains go at half speed to save fuel. Export trade would help them, but living is so costly that all classes of goods are marked tip at higher prices than we can buy them for in England. Butter is 4s per lb; bread, Is a loaf; meat is beyond pur-e-base. In some of the restaurants you pay up to 10s for a tender loin steak; bacon and eggs cost 6s for breakfast. . . . The money is a great business hero. Eor once I have been a billionaire! I bad 700 billions in notes yesterday. Figures stagger you, and everyone runs round with a notebook in which to do his calculations They put a tax on all foreigners of 100 per cent, to stay at hotels and to .go to public functions. It seems as if the food supplies are in the hands of the German Jews, and they are crushing the life out of the people who have to purchase. What the end will be one does not care to think. Or course, in the city one see the rich living in luxury, but the streets have plentv of beggars. Maimed soldiers stand about the streets, blind soldiers are led by intelligent dogs that make an appeal to the purse. I see two or three women in a pack with their half-dozen or dozen children, ill-clad, luingliy-looking, appealing for help.' 1