NOT ENOUGH TO EAT.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15529, 5 June 1918, Page 4

NOT ENOUGH TO EAT.

Mb Pwb contrasts the comfortable life of the man over military age in England with the Jay of the corresponding type in Germany, which begins with a soapless shave, a soaplees bath, and a breakfast of war bread and invitation coffee; goes on to a thin luneli at which, if he is lucky, he may get the leg of a fowl for eight shillings; and ends with an equally thin dinner, the main dish of which may be a stew composed of the offal of various animals. Unless he has had the foresight to lay in a store of tobacco, he will have to content himself with the deplorable article now doled oak in rations. This is the ease

of a man of some means; it may be imagined how the poor people fare. The broad fact, says Mr Pyke, is that there is not enough to eat. There is any quantity of money in the country, but money cannot buy food, because the food is not there. A workman at Kuhlebeu Camp, who was very free in his political opinions, showed Mr Pyke one day a thick wad of paper money. "I have got all this,” he said, “but look at these’’—and he produced a small piece of sausage and some black war bread—“and I have only got thia wretched food by depriving my wife of a share.”. The abundant supplies of fruit and vegetables in London reminded Mr Pyke that at Ruble ben he had paid 12s for a fresh cabbage, and 4s 6d per pound for Brussels sprouts. Oranges* lemons, bananas and nuts, plentiful in 'London, are unobtainable in Germany. Leather was so scarce two years ago that a pair of ordinary boots cost £2 ss; to-day they are unobtainable at any price. In everything the army has the first call. The Government tabes good care that the soldiers are Well fed, and the vigorous way in which the troops have been attacking on . the Western front during the past two months shells that their physical condition and their morale are good.