FOOD RATIONS AND WAR NEWS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 31 July 1917, Page 5

FOOD RATIONS AND WAR NEWS.

A series of articles has been contributed to the London Times by Professor F. S. Delmer, an Australian who has resided in Berlin since 1901 and was only recently released, after having been on parole since March, 1915. Dealing -with the .food situation he says:—(l) The present rations mean serious privation but not starvation; (2) the rations cannot be further reduced without disaster to the public health; (3) even the present rations mean diminution of productive efficiency in the working man and an increased mortality among the aged and feeble; (4) iT the present rations can he continued indefiuitely the people will be able to struggle on, although with deteriorating morale, till the sword decides. A people that cannot be fed with bread must be fed with delusions. The press, in obedience to the military press manages to doctor every adverse report and to take the sting out of every German defeat. The explosion at Messines was heard from the Shetlands to the Golden‘Gate. In Germany I doubt if they have heard it yet, or, if they have, the press will have carefully muted CTie sound. Professor Delmer describes the’ daily posting of the official reports. I had to learn to read between the lines and to force mys"elf to cusbelieve, not the’ details of the report, but its misleading tone. Little groups of passers-by would gather round the notice board and after a while again dissolve. So modest have these Germans grown that merely to hold out against attacks is greeted as victory. In silence they read the report and in silence they turn and walk away. The women-

folk in queues are more outspoken, and one used often to hear them say: “We have nothing but victories, and yet we always go further back.”