TERRIBLE WINTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1943, Page 4

TERRIBLE WINTER

FAMINE CONDITIONS IN FRANCE. Letters from France have hithei’to shown resignation in face of hardship. Now they are beginning to show panic. One dares not think what the fourth winter of war is going to bring to France. A number of letters published in “France,” the French daily, paint a terrible picture. “Most people have lost weight to the extent of ten to twenty pounds,” says one letter, “and among the really stout people, 60 to 80 pounds.” “We have just had news of Paris,” says another letter. "The town is but the shadow of itself, boiling with revolt since the horrible events of which you are aware.

“More and more ‘they’ are taking everything. A friend living in. Tunis writes to me that even there they are reduced in foodstuffs, and all getting thinner, and have only 500 grammes of oil per person a month. And that in the country where oil is produced! There is the black market—a disgrace introduced and organised by our famous lords. This year the crops are bad because of the lack of fertilisers, the poor quality of the seeds, and the drought. Many people are bound to die this winter of weakness, and are certainly dying already in the towns, the concentration camps and the prisons, which are full, and where they have almost nothing to eat.”