GERMANY'S FOOD SUPPLY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3250, 28 June 1916, Page 19

GERMANY'S FOOD SUPPLY.

STRIKES AND FOOD RIOTS,

LONDON, June 19

Wireless reports state that there are serious strike troubles in Magdeburg. An entire artillery regiment is constantly under arms, bivouacking in the streets. The scarcity of food at Munich led to serious rioting and stone-throwing last week-end. There Avere many soldiers among the demonstrators. The mob clamoured-for peace, but the police dispersed them. Bread cards are now being issued. The meat rations in Berlin have been reduced this week to 300 grammes (twothirds of a pound) per head.

Serious food riots occurred at Aix la Chapelie. Thousands marched in procession. Several police charges dispersed the gathering, and some of the demonstrators were injured. Supplies of foodstuffs had not arrived owing to railway stoppages, due to movements of troops, so that—the city was reduced to the verge of famine. [Aix-la-Chapeile is an important city in Rhenish Prussia, a few miles /from where tho boundaries of Holland and Belgium join and abut on Prussia.] An incendiary fire destroyed Hein's meat-curing factory at Halbestadt, in Saxony, one of the largest in Germany. The factory was engaged on important army contracts. Two million pounds of tinned meat and enormous quantities of fresh and cured meat were burnt.

A wireless message states that the Kolnische Volks Zeitung publishes an officer's letter which, while admitting the starvation and hardships of wives and mothers, urges the censorship of all letters from relatives, because complaints are calculated to have evil effects upon soldiers in the trenches.

The winter rye crop in Germany has been almost entirely ruined by the heavy rains of the past four or five weeks, and unless the weather improves when the crops are bound they will be further seriously damaged.