STARVING GERMANY

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10278, 13 May 1919, Page 3

STARVING GERMANY

COLLAPSE IMMINENT URGENT WARNING BY AN EYE- ' WITNESS IN BERLIN. : No matter where one begins, one always. comes back to the food question as the root of all the troubles here now (wrote a Reuter correspondent from Berlin in March .last). As - a result - of conversation which I had .yesterday with numerous high authorities • and' also with men on the streefs and in the poorer restaurants, I was struck by the overwhelming and exact repetition of the impression r gained in the very first week after my-ar-rival hero. When I tell people that I have come to give a really, objective and full report of the situation they look at me incredulously os if the fact were too good to be true.- The best informed usually sav. “We hope it is not already too late,.”

An informant whom I know to be thoroughly reliable says the better workingclass people are not enthusiastic over the strike, but people don’t know which way to turn. No confidence is left in anything. They suffered during the war. and expected a betterment of conditions as the. result of the revolution and the Armistice. - "WE ARB ALL ARMED."

■Five months’ steadv deterioration has made them desperate. The acute excitement turns blindly against tuc Government. and the better classes of the masses savj that President Wilson lias turned out just such a swindler as others. People in the queues say to ono an, other. "In the last, resource we at any rate are all armed.”

Mr informant is convinced that if the Government could better the food situation and the people could Ret work, the situation could still be saved, but it js> a question of days only. Pitiful stories of hunger are related, the people eat their week’s bread allowance in the first three days. Sometimes thev succeed, in burins for 7 or 8 marks an extra bread card entitling; them to one loaf. Children are repeatedly becoming ill, and never get completely weft again.' ■

I have myself Rone unannounced Into factories at noon, and .seen that the whole of the employees had nothing hut a handful of boiled vegetables or a scrap of black bread, with artificial honev or turnip marmalade, for dinner. These people iare Rptfine from 250 to 6CO marks montalv. No food is to be bought at ©resent. , "LITERAL STARVATION. ■’ The weekly rations include 4j3b of bread. 250 grammes of meat, including bones, and 51b of potatoes. The allowance of fats varies from 30 to 70 grammes: recently it was 110 grammes. One and a-half pound of sugar a month is allowed.

I have eaten in the humbler icscaurants and seen the cf meals taken there. _ , I have seen the private reports of scientific commissions ,>m the food value of the present rations, and the details of the hygienic and -pathological affects. All ithis is confirmed hv what t see and hear every day. tn the full' consciousness of responsibility, 1 declare that if Germany does not get considerable supplies during April, literal Starvation will be the result. The Government had to raise the bread ration weeks ago to the present amount to . keep the people even relatively quiet. With this ration the grain supplies will be absolutely exhausted by May. Herren Kin stein and Blaachko* and .other responsible scientists, well-informed personal acquaintances of whose honesty T am convinced, tell me. with despair' in their eves, it is only too true that not to raise the ration meant collapse, and to raise it was -speculating on the last possibility, namely, that of getting foodstuffs from the Entente before the collapse. EXPORTS AND THE BLOCKADE. The German Commission has compiled a list of things which could be exported in payment for food now. It is a pitiful list compared with Germany’s prewar expoit. but it would help to tide over the worst of the crisis. Beyond that it is necessary that Germany should get credit somewhere, and tlr.s would be facilitated in some measure by the lifting of the blockade. As necessary as food for the immediate crisis are certain raw materials to enable Germany to carry on work, be. cause Germany can only . buy, food and pay an indemnity by working. It is an easy matter for an Entente Commission tOjWnvince itself of the nakedness of Germany’s industrial warehouses. Meanwhile time presses. The spectre of Bolshevism is taking on flesh and blood as one can sec when one pass-es through the East End to-day, or talks with people who see behind the scenes or with educated Russian fugitives here.