WAR'S DEPRIVATIONS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2348, 2 January 1915, Page 2

WAR'S DEPRIVATIONS

NO HOT ROLLS. ' ■ "Give us back our fancy rolls!" the people of Paris and the bakers of this oity have been saying for three months I to the military governor of Paris, writes George E. Curnock, tho special correspondent of the "Daily Mail." Genoral Gallieni is adamant on this subject. _ The confectioners may cook all the little dainty, cakes they please. I may walk into a "five o'clock" teashop in the Rue de Rivoli and eat as many ''babas" as I choose soaked,in oonfectioner's_ "rhum"; I may revel in tiny tarts with slices of sugary pear or cherries prettily embusque in pastry: I may sample a' hundred varieties or fresh-made biscuits and sugar-candies. But when the femme do cbainbre appears to-morrow morning with my petit dejeuner I know that two thick slices of plain bread, heavily crusted and cut from a-loaf of portentous size and weight, will take tho place of those delightfully crisp hot rolls which. I havo enjoyed, and which all Paris enjoyed, before the war.

It is our one hardship, the. solitary fact that calls to our mind that France is really at war, and it is our standing grievance against the military governor, Do not imagine that we take this matter of the fancy rolls in a light spirit, or that General Gallieni fails to appreciate how severely we feel this privation. Even the military governor of Paria is mortal, and I doubt not that lurking somewhere behind his iron-grey moustache is a secret wish and a disturbed; longing for a hot roll with his coffee in the morning. Let this bo tho measure of the military governor's fondness .for the bread of 'faritaisie." He has-issued a serious "note" on the subject (I doubt not we shall see it on the hoardings to-morrow) addreisod to an anonymous deputy, some daring member of Parliament who has ventured to suggest that tho bread called "fantaisie" shall be restored to the people of Paris. In this-note General Gallieni declares that he would indeed have given satisfaction to those who have asked for their_ rolls were it not for a serious Warning he has received on the subject from the Association of the Master Bakers of Paris and the department of the Seine._ Speaking with a.full sense. of_ responsibility the master, bakers remind' the military governor that' no fewer than 5000 gallant bakers of bread have been called,to the colours, and that, the training of the class of 1915 threatens still further to deplete their ranks. Under these cirrumstasces it would seriously hamper them in their Work should they be oalled upon' to bake other than the bread already authorised —namely, those called "boulots" and "fondus we say in English "long poles" and "short cuts"? Sad, but inevitable. Until the war is over, and our bakers come we must forget.that rolls ever formed the mainstay of our morning hours, j