BISHOP BURY IN BERLIN

Hokitika Guardian, 9 February 1917, Page 4

BISHOP BURY IN BERLIN

Germans Suffering Grimly

Dr Bnry, the Anglican bishop who has jnst returned from Rubleben, is the only Englishman officially allowed to enter Germany daring the war. He is anxious to avoid any semblance of abuse of the hospitality extended to him, and, secondly, creation of an impression that he desires to depictGerman conditions in terms designed to comfort people in this country. “Pathos is written unmistakably across the face of once care-free, debonair Berlin,” he says. “The faces you see in (Germany to-day are lean and saddened faces, They betray Buffering which no amount of bravado can hide. Wherever you look it is the same. The suffering ia not confined to any sex, age, or rank.

“ My military escort and I happened to be travelling up from tbe Swiss frontier on a meatless day. The consequence was that the mea’s in the restaurant car were more meagre than usual. The 3/6 luncheon or dinner of former times—soup, fish, entree, joint, vegetables galorp, Bweets, cheese, coffee, aud unlimited bread, butUr, potatoes, sugar, and milk—has vanished. To-day your restaurant car meal consists of soup, fish, compotpj and bread—the latter if you happen to possess a bread ticket. I had hoop, so my military companion shared his modest portion with me. “ Wb arrived in Berlin early in the morning and went to the Hotel Excelsior for breakfaß\ The Excelsior is a first-class establishment, but all I could procure, although accompanied by an Army officer in captain’s uniform, either for him or for myself was an undrinkable substitute for coffee, without milk aud with vary little sugar; There was no butter and only a very small portion of war bread. Around na sat many Germans; it was not difficult to obßorve that they were unhappy and unsatisfied. There was an obvious atmosphere of discontent and anguish. “Yet, though I was forced to the conclusion that these little glimpses of war-time food conditions were typical of the whole country—that millions of Germane, must be enduring exactly the same kinds of privation—my sojourn among th6m was to convince me that they aro bearing their snffenngs heroically. Except among the officer class, which wae in high spirits owing to the successes in Roumania, I cannot say I found any very pronounced confidence or optimism ; but I caunot on the other hand, allege that I encountered any downright depression as to the outcome of the war itself,

“ St6rn and resolved as the spirit of both the German Government and people undoubtedly is to carry on the war, it was nevertheless impossible to avoid a conviction that the personal distress whioh every individual inhabitant is suffering will sooner or later be a potent factor in the situation. I cannot avoid that conclusion when I recall those lean faces, though 1 should be doing my country a poor service if I led it to hope that Germany’s internal sufferings alone will hasten victoiy for us.”