GERMAN FOOD RIOTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1527, 25 March 1916, Page 2

GERMAN FOOD RIOTS.

A correspondent of the Morning Post who visited Germany affirms that food riots have been fairly common. “ I had the privilege myself of seeing one of these riots in Dresden not a very serious one, it is true,” he writes, The women were waiting in .queues before a butter shop, and, becoming impatient at having to stand there for hours, they began to shout, and the end of it was that they brushed the police constable aside, rushed the shop, broke everthing, and looted the butter, hundreds of people gathering around the shop and helping them to get away before the police could arrive. It was in consquence of this very incident that the butter tickets were introduced in Saxony. The food riots were everywhere of the same character. W omen > exasperated by the difficulties of providing meals for their families, or who were embittered against everything and everybody in consequence of the scarcity of food

stuffs—although the prices aje quite low —revolted here and there, and broke a shop or two, shouting along the streets until the police caught them and imposed a fine, the Judge giving them a moral lecture on patriotism and seltsacrifice. At Dresden, after the butter riot, I followed the arrested women to the police station. There were some ten of them in the ball waiting for their turn to be fined. In the court-room, where there was one police officer and a clerk, the women were fined by this officer, who acted as the Judge, He fined them 10 to 15 marks, or one day’s imprisonment if they refused to pay. He told them that it was disgraceful for German women to be guilty oi such conduct. One of the women said in reply to this lecture that *if the enemy think we are starving they will not be far wrong, as I and my children are practcally starving, and I do not care what they think. I was standing before that butter shop for the last three days every morning for two hours, and yet I could not get half a pound of butter, although I don’t want it with my bread, but tor cooking, for lard or fat cannot be got.”