GERMAN HUNGER BOGEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 March 1919, Page 5

GERMAN HUNGER BOGEY.

EVIDENCE AT FIRST HAND. The London Times recently published the following article from a member of the Allied Naval Commission in German waters, on food conditions in North-West Germany. In Kiel, Wilhelmsliaven, as in Hamburg and Bremen, and in the surrounding districts, the members of the Commission found no evidence of real hardship through lack of food, ami. ..ir less of anything like starvation. There is no development—political, social, or economic—in Germany now of such real importance as the actual state of the food supply, present and prospective. The German Government (or what remained of it) and Press, from the moment the ink was dry on the armistice signatures, made n concerted appeal for food to be sent them by the Allies on the ground that otherwise great numbers were faced with imminent and certain starvation. This even went to the length of a call from the "womanhood" of Germany to their "sisters" of France and England to intercede on behalf of the dying children of the Fatherland. In response to this appeal comprehensive plans for the revictualling of those parts of Germany actually in need of food have been a part of the Allied programme ever since the signing of the armistice.

It would be absurd to draw conclusions as to conditions in all parts of a country like Germany from those observed in one region, however extensive; and that, I want most explicitly to point out, I am not endeavoring to do. 1 am confining myself here to detailing what various members of the Allied Naval Commission saw with their own eyes in the very considerable area of North-Western Germany over which their work of inspection took them. There may well be other parts of the country where the food conditions are worse than there; as there may be some in which thev are bettor.

But if food conditions in the rest nf Germany are not very much worse—and there is no reason to believe they are — than in Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and Sehleswig-Holstein, there is certainly no need for haste on the part of the Allies in going to their relief. T am confident that none of the score or more members of the various sub-commissions of the Allied Naval Commission —they covered many hundreds of miles of country and saw tens of thousands of people at close range—reported having noticed any evidence of palpable underfeeding among any of the inabitants. Indeed, they are of the unanimous opinion that the whole population, both urban and rural, of these regions have been, and are being, fed near enough to their normal requirements to keep them at their full physical vigor. As a member of the Intelligence staff who had spent many years in the country before the war put it, "You don't see so many people with rolls of fat on them as you did five years ago, but you do see a healthier, harder, and generally more fit-looking population."'

The men in the dockyards and the first ships searched at Wilhelmshaven, slovenly-and filthy though they were, betrayed none of the traces of underfeeding which are. so readily recognised by one who has been in India or China in famine time, or in Serbia or Greece since the war. This party prepared us for the well-nurtured look of the people of the town itself. In no place of the same character in England—say Portsmouth, Plymouth, or Harwich—would the people have been in better flesh or of better color. As to clothes, the Germans would certainly have had the best of the comparison.

A German officer attached to one of the snb-commissions, on having his attention called to the well-fed look /of the people in Wilhelmshaven and the country round, said, in effect, ''Yes, it is true we have never suffered for food in this part of the country, because it is so largely agricultural. But wait till you go to the industrial centres. In Hamburg and Bremen, there you will see want and hunger." Personally I did not visit either Hamburg or Bremen. But the head of one of the sub-commissions, wlin spent several days in inspecting interned British ships' between the two ports, assured me that he saw no material difference between the people in the streets of Bremen and Hamburg and those of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. The sub-commission took "pot-luck" at the Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg. The food was ample in quantity and not unappetising, even on a meatless day.

"But what of Hip poor?" T asked; "did yon see aiiythiii.3: of die quarter what would correspond to the slums of London or Liverpool?" '•'fieriiiiiny," ho replied, ''to lipr credit, lias very few places where the housing is so had as in many Rvitisli industrial cities I rould name. We did not see much of I lie parts of Hamburg and Bremen where the working classes live. But we did sec a good deal of the workers themselves. I know under-feeding when I see it, for T was in Russia not long ago. So far as T could see. the chief difference between the men in the dockyards and shipbuilding establishments of Hamburg and those of the Tyne and Clyde was that the former were working harder. They merely glanced up at us as we passed, with little curiosity and no resentment, and went right on.with the job in hand. No, everything considered, I should not say that anyone is suffering seriously for lack of food in either Hamburg or Bremen. That may come only if they J>!:a»k out into activt BolghevUm/