HUNGRY HUNS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1916, Page 9

HUNGRY HUNS.

LETTERS TELL OP FAMINE AND DESPAIR. LIFE NO LONGER. WORTH LIVING, SAYS OME WHITER. London, June 15. The Central News lias received from, a thoroughly trustworthy source a comprehensive report regarding the economic conditions existing in Germany and Austria-Hungary. _ The problem to which greatest attention has been devoted during the past month or two has been the meat problem. The press has been allowed to publish the most disquieting complaints on the subject, and it has been made quite clear that there is a real and serious shortage of cattle, and that for weeks past' the markets We received nothing approaching the normal number of leasts. The poorer classes are being turned into compulsory vcegetarians, and even persons or moderate means cannot buy meat, for the very good reason that there is no meat to be 'bought except at extortionate prices.' DISASTROUS TO HEALTH. A possible danger from the restricted diet to which most people in Germany are condemned is beginning to attract public attention. Professor Rubner, a well-known medical authority, in a recent letter, pointed out that a defective organisation of the means of nutrition only embittered the population and did not even ensure the proper utilisation of the country's proluce. A uniform diet imposed upon a whole population, living under different climatic conditions, fol. lowing different occupations and accustomed to widely different regimes, must, he said, produce disastrous consequences from the point of view of health.

The tone of the majority of intercepted letters continues to be desperately pessimistic. Letters recently noted speak of "business growing worse from month to month," of the increasing numbers of women in receipt of State allowances, of '''business providing hardly anything," of the absence of purchasers, etc., but it is in regard to the scarcity of food that the writers wax most eloquent, as can he judged from the following extracts taken from the hundreds of intercepted letters:— XOT WORTH LIVING. Berlin, May S— "Here life is no longer worth living. Food is very dear; often we can buy nothing, and do not know what will become of us." Hamburg, May <!.—"Many a day I spend hours in the streets going from shop to shop in search of provisions and finding none. 1 am astonished that the people preserve some measure of calm." Brunswick, May 3.—"1 am contnually hungry. Meat and sausage I have not eaten since 1 don't know when —nothing but fish and cheese. There is no possibility of getting any butter, lard or potatoes. For one whole week I have had no potatoes. One really does not know on what one can live. It is dreadful." Glievitz.—"Aunt Anna has written to say that people are starving in Westphalia." Altona, May o.—"You can have no idea of the state of things in Hamburg, where food is incredibly dear." THE DEVIL HAS COME. Obersehlesien, May s.—"Food is three times "as dear as it used to be, and there is no mqat, butter-or drippingnothing but unceasing work. It is enough to drive you mad. The devil lias come from hell to Obersehlesien." Posen. May s.—"The misery here is ghastly." ' Wciner. "There is famine in Germany. The rich oat meat and all they want, but the poor are dying of starvation. The poor fellows in the trenches are complaining dreadfully of hunger, too." Still, though there are many circumstances which, justify the belief in the growing restiveness of the masses with the internal conditions created by the war, it is evident that, for the present, in spite of food riots and street demonstrations, organised labor, as represented by the trade unions, continues to support the war policy, and only the imminence of starvation or the pospects of military defeat is likely to move it from this attitude.