HOW GERMANS ECONOMISE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1916, Page 9

HOW GERMANS ECONOMISE.

RKKiX OF THE "SUBSTITUTE." | .Some day, perhaps, writes Mr. Francis Griliblc (recently a prisoner in Germany), in the Daily Graphic, we shall really begin to economise in England; the Germans began long ago. A string of hints on the "subject— the Ten Commandments, as it were, of the thrifty i housewife—were posted up in public places at the very beginning of the war. A placard of the kind faced me in the railway carriage when I was journeying to a land flowing with milk and honey from the land of milk cards and honey substitutes. It furnished me with all the reading matter which I needed on that memorable day; and the pleasure which I took in the persual of it was enhanced by the manner and remarks of a German soldier to whom, in consideration of, some small service rendered on the frontier, I offered a few wheat-meal biscuits. He seemed as glad as a man parching with thirst when, at last; he gets something to drink; and, with his mouth full of the unaccustomed delicacy, he gasped out, in broken English: "Ach, Good! That biscuit not made in Germany." It was not; and its like could not have been made in Germany. Not only the prescriptions of economy, but the law of the land forebade. Cakes and biscuits have been prohibited under some German equivalent of the Defence of the Realm Act; and their disappearance from the afternoon- tea tables of the polite is only one example among many of the ways in _ which self-denial has been imposed upon the German people by stern decrees and economic pressure. For the hints to housekeepers which 1 studied in" the train —very sensible hints, if I may venture an opinion—were quite, out of date when I read them. It was no longer then—and still less is it now—merely a question of being careful with the gas and coal, and spreading the butter thin, and making sure that nothing was wasted. For most people in Germany now economy is only another name for privation. In the eases in which it docs not mean absolutely going without tilings it means using "substitutes'' instead of the real article. The live stock in Germany is being fed on fodder substitutes; the sausages are being stuffed with meat substitutes, and the mattresses with wool or straw substitutes. There is a substitute for almost every article of food, and for a great many article of clothing. And such substitutes! Of some of them I have had personal experience. Others I know from the descriptions in the German papers; the glowing descriptions of the synthetic chemists who invent them, and the picturesque descriptions of the analytical chemists who denounce them as fraudulent. For a long time I have collected examples; and a few extracts from my collection will be interesting, if not instructive, to the economic evangelists of our own country.

1. The German substitute for wool in a mattresses is shavings. I had to sleep for months or a mattress filled with shavings, and know what it feels like. The people, who cannot afford shavings use old newspapers. 2. The German substitute for hay and .similar fodder is dried leaves. Lists of [trees whose leaves are suitable for the purpose are published in the papers from time to time. 3. Leather being now seventeen marks a pound, and hardly procurable at that price, the Germans are soling their boots with wood. 4. Beef, mutton, and pork being scarce, the flesh of dogs, cats, and donkeys is not despised. Butchers advertise for these domestic pets; I have myself seen the advertisements. 5. German flour is not made solely of wheat or rye. Other ingredients are bran, potato-meal, and a kind of meal made from straw and wood. Some enterprising bakers have also tried the experiment of adulterating it with powdered chalk; but that kind of adulteration is punishable. 1 6. Roasted acorns are commonly used instead of coffee. I have tried that mixture and do not recommend it. 7. "Soap," I read in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, "should be entirely dispensed with." Alkali powders, it appears, will keep anyone clean enough for Germany. 8. Offal and old bone-;, such as may bo picked out of dust-bins, are recommended as the basis of a nourishing soup. Jt is only necessary to "treat" them with salicylic acid. i). Beetroot juice serves instead of treacle, and woodlice exude a fat which can be spread on bread instead of butter. 10. A palatable fat' can be extracted from sewage. One could go on like that interminably. A day seldom passes without the appearance of a recommendation of some fresh economy of the kind in one or other of the German papers. Most of them are not only recommended, but extensively adopted; but as a large proportion of the substitutes on the market have been proved by anaylsis to have no food value, the case of those who use them is not much better than that of those who cannot afford them. In the last resort German economy consists in going short of some of the necessaries of life and going without others.