FEEDING GERMANY

Evening Star, Issue 15907, 13 September 1915, Page 7

FEEDING GERMANY

HOLLAND'S SYSTEM. A correspondent of ' L'lnformation,' who undertook a journey of investigation through' neutral countries and Germany, gives some instructive observations he made at Amsterdam, where ho found the hotel full of German contractors telephoning from morning till night to purchase and fell provisions. The chief anxiety always was : " Have you the consent?" which is, it seems, tho equivalent of the permit to export required in France and England for certain goods. Some of the cases that arise are peculiarly embarrassing. For instance, margarine. England, tho Mistress of the Seas, naturally forbids the entry of any goods for transit to Germany. Holland, therefore, cannot re-export what she is allowed to import. But this does not apply to raw material that Holland imports for her own manufactures. She imports bovine fat from the. States and Argentine, which sho work? up into margarine, and sends into Germany. Now, margarine is not made, or not "largely made, in England, but is very widely used. England, therefore, cannot decently ask neutral Holland to refuse to Germany what she herself wants to buy. On the whole, however, the. "Netherlands Oversea Trust," generally known as the "N.0.T.," and which authorises or refuses the ' : ' consent" given out by the Ministry of Commerce, is pretty strict. Ithas been given an official character, and every Dutch subject who trades abroad has to -declare his imports to the ,; N.0.T./' and deposit a euni of money equal in value to tho imported, merchandise, as guarantee that he will not re-export without, the " consent." At one time it was very hard to obtain this, for, as well as having to satisfy English exigencies, the influx of Belgian refugees caused such a scarcity that, having sold all their grain to Germany, the Dutch were for a- while themselves reduced to black bread. A very short experience of this regime was, however, enough for them. "Tho Dutch were ever a. profit-loving race, and when they could no longer sell the grain they imported, they turned to potatoes, of which there was a prodigious crop last spring. All the pigs in Holland could not i eat a tenth part ,->i it, and the Germans were eager to buy. Between Mav 17 and 22 (to take one week) 40,000 .hectolitres of potatoes were passed into Germany by the ore frontier station of Winterswijek. At least as great a quantitv, and probably a-- far greater, must have crossed by tho other lines of railway and by the steamers which ply regularly every day except Saturday, and often several times a, <d ay, between. Rotterdam and Amsterdam and the German river ports on tho Rhine, as far up as Mannheim. Nor should be the long and never-ending strings of barges be forgotten. At The -Hague, the square in front of the Ministry of Commerce is filled all day with impatient German merchants, waiting for '* consents" to allow them to export their purchases, mostly potatoes, po tato Hour, cheese, milk, perk, cocoa, and eceoa, bean huska for feeding cattle, margarine, and the " Dauerwurst," or pre served sausage. All these goods are despatched by whole train loaths at a" time, and so frantically eager are. the Germans to lose no chances that they pay the expenses of shitting at the frontier in order to send back the trains empty, the quicker to he filled again. There are, nevertheless, a number of articles for which " consents " cannot be obtained, and these have to be ; and are, smuggled in a. hundred ingenious ways. The prohibition of the export of all fats was got over by making vegetable preserves with excessive quantities of lam and fat, Tho export of preserves was then forbidden, but this not being enough to stop the smuggling; the "N.0.T." prohibited the import of fats, saying that the country had enough for its own needs, and that it was too difticu.lt to control the traffic'