GERMAN FOOD SUPPLIES

Nelson Evening Mail, 31 July 1916, Page 7

GERMAN FOOD SUPPLIES

In an article on the appointment of a food dictator in Germany, Mr Francis Gribble says the demand for universal soup kitchens, though it looks like a measure to enable Germany to stand a siege, is actually a- step to expedite a surrender by Germany. He .says : —The soup kitchens will hasten the opening of negotiations by making the war a. nuisance to all sorts of people who are not at present much incommoded by it. The key facts are these : (1) The peace party in Germany is the hungry party. (2) Though the poor of 'Germany have long been going hungry, the rich have not yet, begun to do so. (3) If the whole population were rationed, then one of two things would infallibly happen. If the rations were ample, the supplies would soon be exhausted;, and', if the rations were small, the rich would know, as well as the poor, what an empty stomach felt like. The argument, is so far as one can get at it by reading between the lines of Social Democrat speeches, is something like this:—"The people who are now suffering most from the war are the people who are allowed to have least to say about it. The important people who really decide whether the war shall continue or stop do not, at present, suffer from' it to any extent worth speaking of. If they did they would be as anxious to stop it as we are. They must, therefore, be compelled to live as we do ; and the only way of putting thati compulsion on them is to shut the shops and restaurants and feed them just as the poor are fed, at soirp kitchens. If only such men as Gwinner, and Ballin, and Thyssen, and Eathenau, and Krupp von Bohlen are obliged, instead of sitting down to a comfortable little dinner every day, to come daily with basins to fetch coarse meals from the same kitchen as the costermonger and the coalheaver, their Weltanschauung will be transformed, and the ranks of our peace party, at present rich in -numbers but poor in influence, will be recruited from among those people of importance who are really in a position to bring pressure to bsar on the Government. In that way, we mayhope to march through tho -universal soup kitchens to universal peace."