STARVATION IN HUNGARY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1670, 3 February 1917, Page 4

STARVATION IN HUNGARY.

Describing food conditions in Hungary, Mr Joseph Szebenyei, in the latest number of the Fortnightly Review, says: In Buda Pestli and in the other large towns one sees outside the shops the same long rows of people that are to he met with in the streets of Berlin, but the food is still dearer and more scarce than it is iu Germany. And the separation allowance made to the wives of soldiers is quite inadequate to their needs. In Buda Pestli the wife gets 7d a day, while iu the provinces the allowance is from 5d to (id, and for each child about half this amount. Out of this small sum (lie wife lias to pay for rent , fuel —which is nbw very dear —and other household expenses. The money which remains is barely sufficient to buy bread and potatoes, for bread is 7d per kilo in Buda. Pestli, and elsewhere dearer still. A woman with four children receives about Is (id a day. Of this, rent and fuel take at least Is, thus leaving fid a day on which to pi’ovide food for five persons. The men at the front are simply heartbroken at the tales of want and suffering which come to them from their loved ones at home. It takes the heart out of the men to know that while they are enduring tremendous hardships in defence of their fatherland their families are almost starving. So much do the authorities fear a decline in the lighting spirit of the men as a result of the spread of hud news from home that they have forbidden the women to write any more complaining letters to their husbands, and have warned them that any such letters will not he delivered. Numbers of letters from soldiers at the front pour into the newspaper offices expressing the men’s indignation at the injustice of the existing arrangements. One man tells how lie went home on a brief spell of leave from the front, hut found the experience so depressing that he returned to the trenches before his leave was up, He fel( (hat while staying at home he was eating the bread which Ids children needed, and by going hack to the army he would get his food there and he one mouth less to feed at home, Hungarians attribute the unfortunate position of their country in

the matter of foodstuffs partly to the activity of a German institution, created after the commencement of the war, entitled the Zentral Einkaufs Geselischaft (Central . Purchasing Company). This company, known shortly as the Z.E.G., was formed to buy up all the food and raw materials that are obtainable in all the markets of the world to which it has access. It has a practical monopoly, for somewhat similar institutions formed in Austria and Hungary come under its control. The Z.E.G., has ransacked countries such as Bulgaria and Turkey, Roumania, and Scandinavia, for supplies, and even Hungary has not escaped its activities. In Turkey and Bulgaria the Z.E.G. has the sole right to purchase goods, even Austria-Hungary being shut out from this area.