GERMANY’S FOOD TROUBLES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3247, 7 June 1916, Page 22

GERMANY’S FOOD TROUBLES.

ROTTERDAM, May 30. Berlin messages state that Herr von Batocks is carrying oat the organisation of food supplies with characteristic Prussian thoroughness, securing inventories of food at all private houses. The municipality of Berlin had established 25 large kitchens to supply 620.000 persons daily. The price of the meal would be 35 pfennigs. Other municipalities had taken similar action. Communal feeding was originally intended for working-class districts, but many middle-class districts were in a sad plight, causing agitation in favour of the authorities feeding rich and poor in a uniform manner. The German harvest promises to be exceptionally poor. Prior to the war 700.000 tons of nitrates were imported for agricultural purposes, but none has been used this year. HIGH PRICES IN GREAT BRITAIN. LONDON, May 30. In the House of Commons, Mr E. G. Pretyraan (Under-secretary for the Board of Trade), in explaining the high prices for meat, said they were due to the large requirements of the armies and not to any deficiency in the sources of supply, but less was available for the civilian tion. This deficiency was sufficiently serious to increase the prices. The dominions’ legislation for the regulating and controlling of trade and commerce in war time is forming the basis of a growing agitation in Britain for the enforcement of a maximum price. It is being urged that it is imperative to deal with artificial food prices, since the supply of food is ample, and its distribution is not a difficult matter; but the price is being raised, to suit sellers’ judgment, to the utmost limits of consumers’ endurance, and it is felt that those limits have long been passed.