Lies About German Poverty.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1922, Page 1

Lies About German Poverty.

(By Alex M. Thompson, tlie wellknown Labour writer).

COLOGNE. When I travelled through Germany last August, at' a time when tlie mark had fallen to a twentieth part of its pre-war value, I was moved to amazement, by the conspicuous and unmistakable signs of industrial activity and social well-being which met my curious gac.e in every town I visited. A few weeks earlier I had travelled through the mining districts of England and Scotland, and the contrast between the poverty which I had encountered on that tour anil the appearance of universal prosperity which I found in Germany suggested that the vanquished in the war had actually derived more profit from its result than the victors. This impression was confirmed when I revisited Germany in November. The foreign exchange value of the mark had then declined to a fiftieth part of the 1914 rate, anil yet the country seemed, “not one penny the worse.” But while attending the International Trade Union Conference in Rome a fortnight ago, I was so frequently anil positively assured, by British delegates as* well as German, of the people’s suffering from the heavy ; ayment of their war debt and the consequent depreciation of their currency, that I was led to return once more to Germany to discover the extent of the clilinge since my previous visit which these assurances implied.

Well, I have spent some strenuous davs here in Cologne, and the material effects of that change are still further in exchange value. It now takes five paper marks to buy an English penny and thirteen hundred of them to buy an English £1 note. As compared with 1914, the cost of foodstuffs had lieen multiplied 121 times at the beginning of 1921. -I times at the end of the year, and a banker told me this morning that it has since been nearly doubled. At this rate, food which cost one shilling, before the war now costs about C2; and one would naturally suppose that at long last the people must be enduring very severe hardships. lint, lo all appearance, “the more it changes,” as the French saying goes, “the more it remains the same thing. T have earnestly, diligently and honestlv sought for evidences of the poverty which had been reported to me. and I have found absolutely none. There seem to ho no unemployed. 1 have seen no rags, and not one face that betraved insufficiency of food. I began ’mv mission by asking a n-uide to show me the slums of Cologne. He took me through a number of mean and narrow streets leading down to tile wharves on the Rhine, which are ‘out of hounds” to British troops. The bouses in these streets are old and squalid. Many of them sell questionable drink, and some deal in stub even more perilous, including, my guide told me. plentiful supplies ot cocaine and ether. Men of shady aspect prowl at tne corners, ready nt a hint to profiei bargains in stolon jewellery ami equally prepared, if a drunken reveller ventui-es into their precincts at night, to take violent opportunity of replenishing their stocks. In these darksome streets T saw some half-dozen children without hoots or stockings, but, as I told my guide, I • could have seen twenty times as mam , in anv reputable thoroughfare of Newcastle or Liverpool, and they would no have looked so healthy nor so comfortably nourished.” His answer was that he had hieu three years in the city, that lie knew every part of it, and that what lie had shown mo represented the worst poverty he had yet discovered. ‘‘Very well,” I said. “If this is r he vorst von can do, then show ino Jic normal side of Cologne’s lile. He took me first to the biggest , taurant in the town, a place of many little rooms, each provided with a UMin of music. In the small room whore we j took dinner there were two fiddlers rr,d j a pianist to perhaps a dozen guests, | wlm filled it. ! Every room and every table was occupied.' And everybody, as dir as cue could judge by the ladies’ buxom besoms and the gentlemens niounviinnis stomachs, appeared to lie enduing .( struggle for- existence quite bravely. . We" went on a tour of the town. Even- beer and wine hallo was packed bv well-dressed, “comfortable artisans and bourgeois, many drinking beer, some wine, nearly all sinok ng cigars. There were queues at the ,U We went into a gorgeous dancing palace, where we could not find room to Llt Lvn. At one cabaret where music bull turns are given, a table must >c booked days ahead, with a prelimmaii tip of 50 marks. The Opera House, I was tokl, is On the next morning, Sunday, T was awakened at seven by crowds of trippers with nicksache on their backs, pro eroding into the country in formation oHou™, whistling a lively march tune When I went to the railway station at ten the place was like a luu- humming with excited and demonstrative excursionists making access to the booking offices impossible. The tramway to Bonn was equally tU KinaHv' 1 drove out to Mehle.n on on the Rhine, where again every iestaurant was full. I crossed the river to the foot o! Hrachenfels, on the unoccupied German side, and every house <> en ertainineiit on the river had its flowing complement of visitors 1 wont up the Ectersberg by t funicular railway, and in the gorgeou. hotel built there before the war 1 could not secure a window from which to admire the magnificent—perhaps uiisuipassed—panorama of wooded mountain, flowery valley, and swiftly flowing river which the palatial sometime oveiloThe people, call the hotel the “Scliicber’s llininiel” ("the profiteer s heaven”) and the string of. costly motorcars carriages, and taxicabs waiting outside sufficiently accounted for the "‘But as for the misery of the downtrodden and suffering German people, 1 am still looking for it.