The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1915. THE SHADOW ON THE GERMAN HOME.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1915. THE SHADOW ON THE GERMAN HOME.

According to a famous saying of the Duke of Wellington, the beat fighting general is "the man who can divine what is happening on the other side of the hill." Home papers give some very striking facts, which show the heavy shadow which now rests upon the German home—the domestic and commercial tragedies on German soil—although as yet it may be free of "the enemy." They show, too—war being war—that our Navy is making itself felt right into the very heart of Germany. The price of the necessities of life has risen from 75 to 10 per cent., says the Nation. "The women simply cannot live and rear children on the wages or Government allowances provided for soldiers' families. Potato bread is still available, but there has been a substantial rise in the price of potatoes, and the poor are crying to the Government for help. Milk and butter show an actual scarcity of supply, combined with prohibitive selling price. Meat is practically out of reach of the poor. All the fat substances show also conspicuous scarcity, and a bewildered Government is calling on the German scientists to produce fat from sewage, dead horses, and other by-pro-ducts of the war. Berlin and the great cities look cheerful on the surface to the wandering 'neutral.' Below, in the poor quarters, women are standing en queue often all night for the right to purchase fragments of meat, bacon or lard in the morning, and there are scuffles and struggles, during which, in something like a riot, the weakest go to the wall. The Vorwarts of October 15 last describes the scenes at the sales in the municipal shops of meat and lard. The sales began at seven in the morning and lasted till ten. At 10.30 in one shop there were still 100 people when it dosed, and some 1000 had to go away empty-handed. Women complained that they had spent three or four nights near the shop door, and yet had not arrived early enough to be served with ■ meat. The rise in the price of foodstuffs drives to the barrack door many who in other times would never have dreamt of begging for a soldier's dinner. Meanwhile the Central Authorities can do nothing but issue pathetic requests for the rich and middle classes to curtail their supply of butter in order that the poor may live. Amid the general condemnation of the country by the cities, the agrarians, not without force, hit bark. The rise of prices, they complain, is not their fault. Tt is entirely due to the deprivation of foreign supplies, combined with the immense rise in the cost nf the raw material of their industry. From the eities the cry continually comes for fixing maximum prices; together with a general condemnation of that German internal 'organisation,' whjph was supposed to be 'the wonder of the world." "So wherever we plunge beneath the flag-waving, music and band-celebrating triumphs of arms, this note of misery is apparent—the misery of war. The shadows at home," ' ?*ul Harms calls it iaihe Barling ?«ra-

Watt, contrasted with, and, to some extent, clouding the great military aehivements of Germany abroad, lie bitterly attacks the Government for fumbling and inefficiently dealing with the ■problem, and complains that an Empire waging war against three world Powers is seemingly unable to deal with the feeding of its own people, and that the. sole result of this incapacity will be an immense revival of socialism after the war. "The pity of it," he asserts, '"is' that our brave men and our mighty empire always seem in the field to be condemned to 'begin all over again." How vital those matters are, how great the misery, is revealed in Vorwarts in a Cologne incident. \ bed and wardrobe were, offered as a gift in a local paper. The applications were overwhelming, and sample incidents are quoted. "As I am a poor soldier's wife, with three small children and only one bed and no wardrobes, I beg to reply to your advertisement." "All these letters," says the Vorwarts, in a courageous comment, "show that the life, of the soldiers' families is, after all, something different from the ideas entertained by many simple persons, who see only the surface, and, having deceived themselves, wish io deceive others." The short, successful war, the spoils of victory, the wealth of Belgium, huge indemnities, annexation of colonies, trade which would make everyone prosperous and contented and bring back the armies in triumph and splendor—that was the reward promised and the dream dreamed. To-day the reality is growing daily farther from that intoxicating vision; in the sight of enormous and increasing losses in the field, starving women at home fighting for food for their children, the miseries of another winter in sight, with increasing privation, and no alternative but ruin, whether victorious or defeated, at the end. "It will be a long time before Germany comes to her last gasp," writes a neutral who has just returned from Germany, "but no one can describe the ruin into which she will 'be plunged when the day of the victory of the Entente arrives." Some severely commercial facts given by the Observer prove conclusively that Germany is feeling the pinch. See what her own exporters confess. "It is possible to select from dossiers, numbered not in tens but in hundreds, evidence as to the state of mind' of those who two years ago gave Germany its strength," says the Observer. "As far as the commercial war is concerned,'' writes a German merchant to his branch abroad, "England has at the present time far and away the upper hand, for the export and import of overseas goods via neutraj lands Is to-day practically out of the question." That was in April of this year. Two months later another firm posted two letters, the one to a commercial house in ihe United States, the other to its foreign branch. "In consequence of the existing prohibition of exports," runs the former, "as well as of the impossibility of shipping the goods at present, the delivery of any order must be held back until the conditions may make a shipment possible." The note of the second is more definite: "The new English measures are so vigorous that we anticipate very great difficulties with regard to our import consignments, even if the good: come from ports belonging to the allied powers (Austria and Turkey)." "From your letter," says a third distinguished firm, "we are sorry to see that you have not the slightest idea of the sad position of German transmarine business at the present time. Meanwhile I have to reckon with the impossibility of sending you consignments through neutral countries. We reckon the value of the businesses , which have beon destroyei through England's commercial war, on a moderate estimation, of the capital value of the average profits of the last ten years." Another German merchant is quoted: "For fifty yea» my father and I have built our business up. To-day we are practically penniless. Our export trade is absolutely stopped and I s:» no prospect whatever that, in my lifetime at least, we shall ever be able to recover it." These statements need no commefit; they speak eloquently of the position in which Germany has been placed by the criminality of its ambitious rulers.