THE HUNGER PINCH IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2902, 14 October 1916, Page 6

THE HUNGER PINCH IN GERMANY

, — ' TELL-TALE LETTERS IN THE TRENCHES SUPREMACY OF OUR AIRMEN (From the "Daily News ( ") ■ ; pp.• ...vary-vJimiti;• i 'that.- ; th'e ■ weather makes ..possible; our . 'airmen continue their gallant , 'and successful ; .work. Most eloquent on. this'subject is an extra fro.ni a letter written by and captured on a prisoner:— "... Each-of .us crouches in a little hole that he has.dug out for himself as a protection against poss'ble splinters, and stares. at ; nothing but; the sky and the black wall <vf the'trench . . and t the airmen circle over us and -trjr to do y wme,dairiage," but only enemy ones,-for • a German airman, will not dare come here—fa-r-,too .much . afraid—only beBfnd the front a great crowd, and' here not one makes an appearance.". Another prisoner,;- a well-educated man, discussed .'our. airsupremacy frce- ; ly, maintaining that it was not owing to_ any.-inferlority..iin,vthe..6jerman. ma-. fllrines. ,pr. men, -hut only to the great ' eiterit' of front" which''they, .-"have to • cover,' both in 'the East i' and West, while- machines had also-to : be sent to the Balkans aid to assist, the Turks. . .Eloquent - again is one of our own • .reports upon the subject:—''Eifteen indecisive combats took.ptace, but the hostile machine's for the most part descended 'as soon - as engaged." And .v this experience occurs again and again. . The German tactics, indeed, are very different from the days in which they used to sail in the upper air to'wait .' for our men, and attack ' them from . above ap they came over. Now- the enemy, still keeping well on his side' of' the lines, tries to do what observation he does'from low altitudes, from which he cap quickly'get down.to the ground. [ . Immense Damage. ' As for the. fruits of the . bravery of our men, they' are.simply There is never ; a day when the '.'boras-* tics" are good (the word is surely permissible on the principles of "acoustics," and one needs it badly as a relief ; from "visibility") when, helped by our : aeroplane observation, our guns do not , make a greater or smaller number of direct, hits on enemy batteries and de-' stroy and blow up ammunition pits. Again and again„.also, the air observation has guided them to break up which might otherwise have been serious, and to find and : scatter columns of men, or transport on the road. _. . In addition to all this is the immense damage which the airmen themselves do with.their bombs to points behind the line far into enemy's territory. Railway lines, railheads, and stations, aerodrom&s, depots, factories engaged in ■war manufactures, and all similar, points . which have a. direct military use are our,chief objectives. The testimony of many prisoners agrees as to the enormous demoralisation caused by those attacks and the great hindrances to the enemy's troop movements and concentrations of material behind his lines. !A great quantity of interesting documents continue to be captured with' 1 each batch of prisoners taken, including diaries kept by the soldiers and letters which they have written but not posted, , '• ad,veil as te£tepi cthem .« froij .their jejSjle: atsom|.%T#o(.coh-,-tents of la'St are so'ex- . why! tho. r. v'BSiaffy . censorship—permits them to. (to through. From a.great mass of extracts from these, here are some of the complaints on the subjects of the food

supply, the name of, the town from which .'the letter comes, being prefixed: ' The Cry for Food. Barmen.—People think that it cannot last much longer/for hunger is rife, ■though no one dares to say so; still tne condition, of affairs is indescribable: Mulheim. —If.; the war lasts much longer we do not know what will- happen with regard to food, etc. We cannot and; dare not. write all about 'it to you. Mulheim.—Herb everyone is thin owing to tlie many, meatless and fatless days. It-is really wretchfd '. . people have, to 1 stand from 3 o'clock in tne' morning to obtain a few drains of potatoes. . ' Freiheit.—You know I only get 28b. qf potatoes a fortnight. That's-what we Tiave to 'live on; besides which 1 have to give our' live stock something. Many a time I. don't know what to [ give them. I can't carry on with our hens any more. .1 get no eggs, nor have I any food to give them; so' I shall just have to kil them off.. I have just' potatoes enough for one meal to-mor-row (Monday), and I get no more till Friday. - Berlin.—Will this fearful, horrible .war never come to an end? One feels already so dejected, with no end in sight. I had a little hope yesterday, as a colleague of mine who is at tlie. General Kommando in Berlin told mo that- it cannot possibly go 1 on much longer,' and-that it must come to an end in the autumn. ... Hero every day shopping becomes worse. After August 1 clothing material can only bo obtained by, cards, and in winter boots must be soled with wood. Charlottenburg.— If only the war would end quickly, for we have no more potatoes here, they are so scarc'c. They give us cards, and then there is nothing to be got. To-day wo have: been obliged to eat .bread dumplings. But that cannot go on for ever. Hamburg.—l can never get than lib. of butter; everything here' is so'scarce, and we get no more potatoes. Ken row.—Tilings are getting worse and worse with us; we have been now more than a week/ without meat. MJiat is a wife to give her husband wiien Tie has to work hard ?, Tlie poor people have to bo worried and to enduro hardship in the trenches while others sit here and feed themselves fat in order to worry the poor folk still more. Berlin.—Tho food is always very bad, but thero is -enough to prevent bur having to, die of starvation.- • And so the story goes 011, often with little family details intermingled which leave no possible doubt of the truthfulness of tho writers. One writer says "that from shell .factories in Baden arid Hanover the hands are being turned off, so "I think the war will soon be over." All sorts of scraps of evidence are put forward to show that the end is near, evidently only lo holster up the. writer's own courage; and in many letters there are "gly growls (as in the one quoted from Kenrow above) against the rich and idle and the "usurers," who continue to live in comparative comfort whilo the people suffer. That the suffering is real no one who reads this intimate evidence could doubt.