THE LAST STRAW.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 November 1917, Page 3

THE LAST STRAW.

WAR WEARINtrfS IN GERMANY. It was appear from an article in the Vossische Zcitung, of Berlin, that there is more than a little war-weariness in Germany. We have accustomed ourselves to submit. to the deluge of regulations which for the last three years have been,uninterruptedly falling on our heads', simply because the idea "to Ijold out" must rise superior to any other consideration. Y'et even that has its limitations. Regulations which; generally speaking, are only too well calculated to add to the difficulties of holding out can in no circumstances whatever be accepted in silence. This applies to the latest order which is rendering the taking of a bath in a private house an impossibility. It, is precisely at this season, when bathing is not only an act of cleanliness, but an attribute to the nation's health, that the authorities, to save that fuel and gas which we happen to know is being woefully wasted in other, quarters under the official noses, are placing an embargo on the public health by a prohibition cf bathing, which is bound to produce sooner or later most lamentable conditions of disease and infection. Are we to stand in our tens of thousands for thrci 1 or four hours waiting our turn outside the few bath houses still open, as we have been doing before the market stalls? Are women carrying infants to be hustled or trampled to death in a mob of four million unwashed Berliiicrs ? We solemnly adjure the Government to reflect very seriously as they invite a condition of things so terrible, a state of disease and pestilence so dread as to cause all the other horrors of the war to pale beside it to utter insignificance.