NOT EXTORTIONATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25562, 15 June 1944, Page 5

NOT EXTORTIONATE

GERMAN LANDLORDS PEOPLE LEFT TO OWN AFFAIRS (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 13. “Except for a marked absence of men of military age and a scantiness of goods in shop windows—scarcely more than can be found in an English provincial town —there is little abnormality noticeable during a stroll through the streets of Bayeux,” says the Daily Telegraph correspondent. “ The town is completely undamaged. There is nothing approaching mass starvation, and nothing that can be compared with the suffering of the Greeks. Bread and meat are not rationed and are reasonably abundant. The Civil Affairs Commissioners discovered a store of 28,000 cheeses. There has been some shortage of tea and coffee, but both are obtainable. Butter, though this is a rich dairy farming country, costs 12s per lb, and sugar, when obtainable, about 6s. There is a marked lack of soap and shoe leather. “ The Allied troops are not faced with a desperate need to feed the population; in fact, far from clamouring for food from the British, the people of Normandy fully expected to have to feed the invasion armies and had even begun preparations. The Germans on the whole have not proved extortionate landlords, and they left the people of Bayeux and the neighbourhood to manage their own affairs to a great extent. When they exacted forced labour they paid reasonably good rates. Unskilled labourers received 6s or 7s a day, and skilled labourers proportionately more. The Germans did not loot towns and carry off cattle from the fields, but apparently they requisitioned butter and cheese wholesale at the time of the Allied landing.”