GERMANY BEARING UP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18876, 31 May 1923, Page 8

GERMANY BEARING UP

DOMESTIC TROUBLES OF THE PEOPLE. MEASURES OF MUTUAL PIELP. UTbom Oub Own Corbespondent.i , LONDON, April 18. How Germany is bearing up in spite of the French pressure is a subject dealt with by the Munich correspondent of the Observer. This writer throws some interesting light upon the domestic troubles of the people and shows how they are helping one another in the face of adversity. To-day (says the correspondent) people are serious, but no more serious than during other crises. There is the usual outcry due at this time of the ' year about the scarcity of vegetables and the dearness of moat, slightly more intensified because prices are more than ever out of proportion to wages and salaries, save those of the favoured few, and there is a little more irritability in the . air, which vents . itself, in ordinary conversation in abuse of Jews or other "foreigners" according to the temperament of the speaker. Otherwise, things are as they were. Nobody outside the occupied area is any the worse for M. Poincare. The communal book, in evidence since schools have started again after the Easter holidays, is typical of the cheerful recognition of general bad times. Easter is moving-term, and the horror of book-buying for the new class has been greatly lessened this year, since many municipalities have introduced the custom in both elementary and high-grade schools of parents paying what they can, according to their means, and the school buying at wholesale prices and "lending" for a year. There is much talk of "organised" concert-going as well as the organised theatrical audience already in existence. How many people can read one newspaper has not yet been settled, but it is significant that the wealthier readers of newspapers and reviews are being asked to donate subscriptions for readers obliged to give them up, and are responding readily. There has been more progress made towards a real Socialistic State during the past three months than for many months before. THE POOR HOUSE-OWNER. Not only beneficent to the community at large, but a sign of the return to normal conditions in economio life is the latest development of the housing question. Germany ruined her landlords, that great taxpacing body of the middle classes, who, as often as not, the entire capital of a whole family was vested in one, two, or even three and four big mansions of flats, whose owners have been paying pre-war rent in paper marks ever since 1914. The spectacle of j a dignified old gentleman, owner of a quite palatially-built house, living dingily with j his wife,in one room, let to him by the poorest of his tenants in the back building round the courtyard because he can no longer afford a household of his own, is quite as frequent as that of the father of a young family, frenzied because he, though able to afford it, can get no house- I room beyond furnished apartments. The j new scheme of "building gratuity" enables the old couple to leave their flat, with the permission of the Housing Board, and instead of letting it furnished and living in one room, add a top storey to thr ; r own house or buy a small house, newh built, with the four or five million marks paid them, quite legally and aboveboard, bv the man who must have a roof to his family's head at any price. The impetus to building on an economio scale is enormous, and the number of pe°pl e occupying flats out of all proportion to their post-war income is decreasing.

A MIRACLE FROM WITHIN. Looking at the larger issues, one sees Germany facing with resignation all she knows is coming—production at international prices for consumption in a market teat will have none of her except for cheapness sake. Here the chemical industry is ottering some striking examples of self-help. It would not bo too much to say that all the war inventions' are being utilised for peace purposes. Only the other day one of the leading German chemists counted up the new processes born of the poison-gas period, and stated roundly that in the Germany that cannot import her own materials, materials are being made better and over better use of. Laying stress on the continuous experiments rendering aluminium and magnesia as fit for use in air and water as the heavier metals, he ran through the whole list of chemical proceeds likely to influence domestic and factory life in the near future, and ended on an optimistic note. This is what the Germans are believing in to-day, expecting a miracle no longer from without, but from within. It may be the same type of fatuous selfesteem which led to present disaster, but it is a wonderful tonic under th~ circumstances.