BACK FROM BERLIN.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 14145, 24 July 1916, Page 2

BACK FROM BERLIN.

ENGLISHWOMAN'S STORY.

THE SHORTAGE OF FOOD

"I expected to find England starving,"- said an Englishwoman, newly arrived in London from Berlin. "I was told such stories before I left Germany f>{ the famine here caused by the submarine war that I thought to find the country bare. In place of that I have just had the finest slice of white bread arid butter —and with all the butter I wanted, too:—that I havo tasted for 'eighteen months. "In Berlin I could not haive had white bread at all, while many people there do not have as much butter in a week as I had on ray one slice of bread. Starvation! I call this the Land of Plenty!" . / Nine men from lluhleben, eight women, 'mainly from Berlin, and three children formed the party. The women had been ordered out .of the country on the plan now being steadily pursued of expelling all Englishwomen from Germany. The Englishwomen all agreed in their description of conditions in Germany. So far as they themselves were concerned they had no complaint to make. Officials dealt with" them .courteously and the public left them alone. They declared emphatically that no English people-fyith. women relatives •in Berlin need be afraid about them. Regarding conditions in the country they were equally agreed. None knew anything at arsfc hand -W the recenc riots in Berlin They all lived in "West, Berlin, and tV riots wc-ru reported to have taken piece* in the working-class! quarters in North Berlin. Various' rumours haM come through about the! liots, but no r-.c-jv. There is unclou'bL-| edly great arid growing distress, par-i tic-ularly air.or.4 fc!ie mitlillo clashes. Tho I working folk obtain employment in I munition factories, and nw earning] good money. I.avfrc si^ctions of tho j middle-class at:-" ui-av stirvatiou.

Tho shortaj;' oi" food i.- incrasin," weekly. Many i-'ilt horr. and n'fjvisio-'i '.hops, particular];,- hi t!,.» botrp-, ]>aus of Berlin, ;,rt* t-'osir.p;, wirilo ot'-ors :>ro only open for ,i •slinvx- nine each day.

icl know many families that ■do not taste-meat for two or three weeks at a time," said one woman, who asked that, for the sake of lior friends in Germany," her name might not be mentioned. "Hero are some, current prices: Veal, good cuts} is 5s a Ib. Knuckle of veal would be about 3s alb. Mutton is over 5s alb. Two. people I knew each bought a goose. One paid £210s and the other ;?3 ss. Butter costs 2s 9d a ib— sometimes more—and you are allowed to buy a-quarter of alb a week. It is very bad." . , •