ON THE SPREE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 10 August 1921, Page 6

ON THE SPREE.

IE THE KAISER SAW BERLIN TODAY. (By Harry J. Greenwall). Berlin is on the # Spree. This hoary and ancient joko is a truism to-day, for Berlin is very much on the spree. Since the Schiebers came to town they have speeded up the hours of joy m the German capital. Their women folk walk about like peramulating jewellers’ shops, but their walks are not longer than from a gorgeous, umpteenous vestibules of Berlin’s most expensive hotels. Literally, a schiebeT means a pushing feUow, but in plain English it just means war profiteer, with a dash of the peace profiteer.

Having met English and Trench schiebers I thought I knew something about the genus profiteer, but I. find profiteering is only in its infa cy London, and Paris*

A young German who two years ago very happy to run my and make himself generally useful for modest salary, now tours Berhn en auto. He told me that m his fixst-y nf schiebering he made one hundred ° ThTverb to schieber may be follows:—I schieberest, he she, or they >j" It is always the other fellowwho grinds the faces of the poor. i*trade manfully. But my the kXr could see Berlin to-day he would take the first ' tram bac Doorn. He would ceive the assurance of the ixwo v berlain that it really was Berlin.

badly • not only do they bet on man home races, but tWe in a .o™ foil™ of ” “biZ and the corner of the Fnedenchstrasee ano Unter den Linden there ifi a kioek which does its principal trade m selhng t ips and books of “form at a glance for racing in France. I found numerous shops turned most openly into gambling establishments. One such place in, the Fi-iederichstrasse was crowded with young errand boys, betting « form of “little horses’ at which the minimum stake is two marks.

The schiebers are the principal backers of Berlin’s night life, for they are the only ones who can pay the fantastic prices for champagne. Althougn the Germans hate the French with a hatred which now burns with a fiery | heat, they name all their night places with French names, such as Mascotie, Scala, Frou-Frou, Palais de Danse, to name a very few. Nominally all the places shut at 11.30, but as one leaves when the “police hour” strikes a cadaverous hireling of Berlin’s underworld slides out of the shadows and murrhurs the name of a night club for which he is the tout. Of such places.there is an immense choice, ranging from a champagne and music establishment to opium-cum-cocaine, or a little gamble by way of a change. And my mother says Paris is a wicked city.