"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 51

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.) THE EVE OF CHRISTMAS. December 24. Our scouting aeroplanes are buzzing overhead m a clear, frosty sky, and tonight—the second from the Festival of the Child Whose coming was announced to the shepherds watching their flocks—all along this cold coast we shall watch for the "Christians" who. are trying to celebrate the festival of the "Friend of little children" by seeing how many they can maim and kill. We draw the children close this Christmas-tide. Next Christmas —who knows V Since the raid on London last week, with 85 victims, there has been unusual activity of the enemy in the air, for; despite the blizzards " of snow and wind and sleet, to our amazement in every partial lull the Gothas have attempted to get through. We drove them back last • night and the night before last, and last night when the warning sounded it was blowinc. and snowing. The German airmen are not easily daunted, and to venture through the intense cold of the upper air on such nights shows that they mean to defy heaven and earth as far as human skill and endurance and courage can defy the powers of Nature in the attempt to "do us in" in Christmas greeting and add to the sorrows of our lonely homes by horrible destruction and torturing death. - v How are you spending Christmas in that happy land under the Southern Cross? I know. In some homes mourning; in many' separation; in most, with allowance for extra war costs and extra war work, much as in other years. Your " heavens are telling " no other story save that which Nature has wrilten there of soft, starlitnights, through which no piercing whistle warns " Take cover." You do not sit for cold hours in the dark. The children sleep—sleep in soft snugness; or, if they toss, it is from the heat. They are not dragged from their beds in the bitter cold to stay a hideous night in cellars and underground vaults, of it later. "Suffer the children," Jesus said. Who, when He came to live for us, came as a child, for Whom there was no room. I wish you could see the queues of women and children who form "tup before it is light these frozen mornings, waiting their turn in dumb patience, as sheep before their shearers, to be fleeced of their money for a little butter, a little tea, a little margarine. More! I wish that every soft-living Empire-dweller who has not realised that this war is not England's war, but the Empire's war, had so to suffer for their daily food. Sometimes /the food isn't worth all its cost in money and time and suffering to gain it. And if England is beaten it will be the same for you. While England holds the fort you are immune, but if Britain no longer holds the fort, what of you? You will not count small sacrifices when your all is demanded. When, if ever, this sullen Channel, this strip of troubled waters, that bears no craft to-day far as I can see, ,save the grim, black 'craft that hug the shore—when this, if ever it is taken, small shrift to the islands of tho Pacific Sea. When Britain no longer rules the waves you also go into bondage.. But to-day you are only a little troubled, and you who have helped and are helping are those who understand how the Mother Country needs the help of her children, to whom she has bequeathed the finest* heritage in the world: your part in tho imperishable story is written in letters of gold; but it has not sufficed. All that England and her combined dominions have done has not sufficed. If we fail in the year of crisis before us, we fail for ever." If we slack now we are undone. Russia has slipped her collar and run

away to eat the sop of the enemy, and all that Russia has left undone is piled on us, added burdens. But we shall not fail, although we may suffer terribly. New Zealand, loyal of heart, generous of impulse, will not fail, but will draw nearer in closer understanding as the real crisis .of the nation is understood. Every peaceful . day in the sunshine, every well-fed, well-clothed day is bought at heavy price by the suffering and sacrifice of others, your own among the pthers, that you cannot but comprehend how at one the Empire is, how dependent each member upon the other. If England falls the dominions will become German colonies. Such are our eve of Christmas musings —Christmas without its' old accepted meaning, " Peace on earth and goodwill towards men." And yet is not the Christmas spirit of 1917 fine? Fine in its austerity for the right? its sacrifice for the right? It is, after all, a festival of sacrifice —of a Man of Sorrows who came to fight sin and to die because of evil, — and every man in the trenches is a Knight of the Cross; every woman bereaved, every child orphaned, every lonely or careburdened soul, wherever he or she may be, however high of estate or however humble, doing and bearing because of this war against oppression and the power of the sword, is a Simeon, a cross-bearer, helping Christ on His wounded way to victory. We are on the side of the • Conqueror Who was born In a stable and died on a cross. We are suffering and fighting for th 6 wider- 7 understanding of peace on earth and goodwill towards men —the peace of nations that cannot again be ruthlessly broken, the goodwill .of nation to nation that cannot be shamelessly betrayed. . For this was Christ born in Bethlehem. .« v : Christmas to-day is not an orgy of eating and drinking. The turkey is from" 2s 6d to 3s a lb; there is not enough beef to go round/ neither butter nor tea nor margarine. But of tho German Christmas a writer says: "In the case of every single necessity or. luxury, without exception, Germans are reduced to short commons. A Hamburg goose, if obtainable, is worth its weight in coal. Everything is, and has been for months, or years, rigorously rationed. Real tea and genuine coffee no longer , exist. There is an Ersatz, (substitute) for everything. A lecturer stated in Berlin the other day that the war had brought forth no fewer than 10,000 ' substitutes' —some of them . indeed, so satisfactory that they were destined to survive the war. Fruit and nuts —ordinarily plentiful and lavishly! supplied at Christmas time—will be missing to-morrow night altogether, though the better-class towns have been planning to ' finance' a special ration of lib of apples for the sake of tradition." "Good. We have starved them out a bit," said an 11-year-old Briton to whom I road the above. But they are beginning to starve us, too—the U boats and the profiteers between them. During the week the food queues have become a \ scandal. From long before daylight into the late afternoon they have spread—chiefly composed of women and children—all the-length of a dreary sleet-swept street, •' round the - corner and down the next street, making a circle of the block where the multiple shops are. But the Food Controller has ; stepped in to put an end to the monopoly, and thus end the queues, and given the Local Food Committees power to commandeer tho surplus stock and distribute it to smaller shops, thus scattering the '■ purchasers. On Saturday in London this measure came into force. Men wheeled away on barrows a portion of butter and\ margarine from the Maypole and Home" and colonial shops, and the people followed the butter, the queues melting like magic. Mr Ben Tillett, Independent Labour member for Salford, in his maiden speech in the House of Commons the olher day, said that ha considers the question of food supplies the greatest question wo have to solve, and all the powers of the sea, of the military, and our production ought to be used to solve it. Profiteering commenced almost' as soon as the war. The great food monopolists of meat, com, and flour immediately gave orders to their customers, the retailers, that certain prices had to be charged, even when there was no fear of the U boat menace, and this has gone on. The Food 'Controller did not assume office untirthese profiteers were well entrenched,' and it is almost impossible to discover technically a profiteer. The time has come, thinks Mr Tillett, when we ought to use even more than prison. We could much more afford to lose all the profiteers than one good soldier, and we could much more afford to have all of them shot than lose a company of good soldiers. There is a serkr.ig starvation ux this country. o( our men who are earning 50s a week are unable to obtain two meat meals a week if they N look after tho children. There is great danger in queues. Everv man who has been a husband and a father will understand what it means to women to stand so many hours. All the letters and .Christmas parcels to the men on the western front have been .despatched; but the head of the Army Post Office at Regent's Park says that the volume of parcels traffic to France and Flanders has only been 40 per cent, of what it was last year. This is attributed to the great difficulty in obtaining the seasonable food, and to tho greatly increased prices. But over 70,000 registered letters a day have been dealt with, as people are sending money orders so that the soldiers can procure things for themselves. But can they procure them? And, if so, it cannot be the same as the puddings and cakes and pies from home. This falling off in parcels for the Tommies tells more than words of the scarcity. Last year thousands economised in the home that the "boys" might feast in the trenches, and this year neither "love nor money" will procure ■ come commodities. The Christmas fires are burning low in many grates ; there is

no plum pudding bubbling on many a stove. Heavy fines are being levied on discovered food-hoarders, and prison as well as fines. One man got six months for his little lot, which was confiscated. Here is a list of the goods found in his house (he must have been collecting since the war began): 4221 b tea, 1751 b flour, 1331 b biscuits, 3111 b ham and bacon, 121 b lard, 231 b sugar, 381 b cheese, 1241 b treacle, 1601 b nuts, 4991 b peas, beans, and oats, 127 tins tomatoes and fruit, 96 tins condensed milk, 36 bottles and some tinned fruit, 120 bottles ale, 150 bottles port and other wine, 10 bottles champagne, 14 bottles whisky. His excuse was that he was saving to distribute to the poor I The stock would not have accumulated had it been meant for the poor. More probably he intended to dispose of it at a big profit when there was even greater shortage. There are hundreds of such stores could the Food Controller drop on them. Even the queues have been exploited by some who go from shop to shop and, taking their turn, buy all they can, to sell again at a profit to those who have neither the time nor the strength to stand for hours in fog and frost for a quarter of a pound of butter or margarine: Work ends,to-night till Thursday morning—that is in munition factories, buinet's nouses, and offices. Freed from their driving tasks, hundreds of thousands of women are going home, or are busy in their houses to-day making preparations for to-morrow. Only in Toyland does Christmas look the same, and there the children are disporting themselves as of old. Holly and mistletoe are not on the market. The railways would not carry them —they were superfluous. But the hospitals throughout the land will be gay —the gayest places throughout all England. The best of everything is for our soldiers, wounded and tmwounded. Leave is-granted for as many as can possibly be spared, and every train is laden with men going home from the camps and billets. The prayer of all of us the great Empire over is that next Christmas we .shall have won peace.