CHAPTER IV.

Germany under the "Hunger-Blockade."

The men whose duty it was to take every measure to increase Germany's preparedness for war and her ability to carry on an extended conflict had long realized that the Empire had one very vulnerable point. This was her inability to feed and clothe her inhabitants and her consequent dependence on imports of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Germany in the days of her greatness occupied so large a place in the sun that one is prone to forget that this mighty empire was erected on an area much less than that of the State of Texas. Texas, with 262,290 square miles, was 53,666 square miles greater than the whole German Empire. And Germany's population was two-thirds that of the entire United States! Germany was, moreover, comparatively poor in natural resources. The March (Province) Brandenburg, in which Berlin is situated, is little more than a sandheap, and there are other sections whose soil is poor and infertile. Nor was it, like America, virgin soil; on the contrary, it had been cultivated for centuries.

Driven by stern necessity, the Germans became the most intelligent and successful farmers of the world. Their average yields of all crops per acre exceeded those of any other country, and were from one and a half to two times as large as the average yield in the United States. The German farmer raised two and one half times more potatoes per acre than the average for the United States. He was aided by an adequate supply of cheap farm labor and by unlimited supplies of potash at low prices, since Germany, among her few important natural resources, possessed a virtual monopoly of the world's potash supply.

Try as they would, however, the German farmers could not feed and clothe more than about forty of Germany's nearly seventy millions. Even this was a tremendous accomplishment, which can be the better appreciated if one attempts to picture the State of Texas feeding and clothing four of every ten inhabitants of the United States. Strenuous efforts were made by the German Government to increase this proportion. Moorlands were reclaimed and extensive projects for such reclamation were being prepared when the war came. The odds were too great, however, and the steady shift of population toward the cities made it increasingly difficult to cultivate all the available land and likewise increased the amount of food required, since there is an inevitable wastage in transportation. What this shift of population amounted to is indicated by the fact that whereas the aggregate population of the rural districts in 1871 was 63.9 per cent of the total population, it was but 40 per cent in 1910. During the same period the percentage of the total population living in cities of 100,000 population or over had increased from 4.8 to 21.3.

In the most favorable circumstances about three-sevenths of the food needed by Germany must be imported. The government had realized that a war on two fronts would involve a partial blockade, but neither the German Government nor any other government did or could foresee that a war would come which would completely encircle Germany in effect and make an absolute blockade possible. Even if this had been realized it would have made no essential difference, for it must always have remained impossible for Germany to become self-supporting.

Another factor increased the difficulties of provisioning the people. The war, by taking hundreds of able-bodied men and the best horses from the farms, made it from the beginning impossible to farm as intensively as under normal conditions, and resulted even in the second summer of the war in a greatly reduced acreage of important crops. Livestock, depleted greatly by slaughtering and by lack of fodder, no longer produced as much manure as formerly, and one of the main secrets of the intelligent farming-methods of the Germans was the lavish use of fertilizer. And thus, at a time when even the maximum production would have been insufficient, a production far below the normal average was being secured.

Germany's dependence on importations is shown by the import statistics for 1913. The figures are in millions of marks.

Cereals 1037. Eggs 188.2 Fruits 148.8 Fish 135.9 Wheaten products 130.3 Animal fats 118.9 Butter 118.7 Rice 103.9 Southern fruits 101.2 Meats 81.4 Live animals 291.6 Coffee 219.7 Cacao 67.1

It will be observed that the importations of cereals (bread-stuffs and maize) alone amounted to roughly $260,000,000, without the further item of "wheaten products" for $32,500,000.

Fodder for animals was also imported in large quantities. The figures for cereals include large amounts of Indian corn, and oilcakes were also imported in the same year to the value of more than $29,600,000.

Germany was no more able to clothe and shoe her inhabitants than she was to feed them. Further imports for 1913 were (in millions of marks):

Cotton 664.1 Wool 511.7 Hides and skins 672.4 Cotton yarn 116.2 Flax and hemp 114.4 Woolen yarn 108.

Imports of chemicals and drugs exceeded $105,000,000; of copper, $86,000,000; of rubber and gutta-percha, $36,500,000; of leaf-tobacco, $43,500,000; of jute, $23,500,000; of petroleum, $17,400,000.

Of foodstuffs, Germany exported only sugar and vegetable oils in any considerable quantities. The primarily industrial character of the country was evidenced by her exportations of manufactures, which amounted in 1913 to a total of $1,598,950,000, and even to make these exportations possible she had imported raw materials aggregating more than $1,250,000,000.

The war came, and Germany was speedily thrown on her own resources. In the first months various neutrals, including the United States, succeeded in sending some foodstuffs and raw materials into the beleaguered land, but the blockade rapidly tightened until only the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and Switzerland could not be reached directly by it. Sweden, with a production insufficient for her own needs, soon found it necessary to stop all exports to Germany except of certain so-called "compensation articles," consisting chiefly of paper pulp and iron ore. A continuance of these exports was necessary, since Germany required payment in wares for articles which Sweden needed and could not secure elsewhere. The same was true of the other neutral countries mentioned. Denmark continued to the last to export foodstuffs to Germany, but she exported the same quantity of these wares to England. All the exports of foodstuffs and raw materials from all the neutrals during the war were but a drop in the bucket compared with the vast needs of a people of seventy millions waging war, and they played a negligible part in its course.

Although the German Government was confident that the war would last but a few months, its first food-conservation order followed on the heels of the mobilization. The government took over all supplies of breadstuffs and established a weekly ration of four metric pounds per person (about seventy ounces). Other similar measures followed fast. Meat was rationed, the weekly allowance varying from six to nine ounces in different parts of the Empire.[14] The Germans were not great meat-eaters, except in the cities. The average peasant ate meat on Sundays, and only occasionally in the middle of the week, and the ration fixed would have been adequate but for one thing. This was the disappearance of fats, particularly lard, from the market. The Germans consumed great quantities of fats, which took the place of meat to a large extent. They now found themselves limited to two ounces of butter, lard, and margarine together per week. Pork, bacon, and ham were unobtainable, and the other meats which made up the weekly ration were lean and stringy, for there were no longer American oilcakes and maize for the cattle, and the government had forbidden the use of potatoes, rye or wheat as fodder. There had been some twenty-four million swine in Germany at the outbreak of the war. There were but four million left at the end. Cattle were butchered indiscriminately because there was no fodder, and the survivors, undernourished, gave less and poorer meat per unit than normally.

[14] This allowance had dropped to less than five ounces in Prussia in the last months of the war.

How great a part milk pays in the feeding of any people is not generally realized. In the United States recent estimates are that milk in its various forms makes up no less than nineteen per cent of the entire food consumed. The percentage was doubtless much greater in Germany, where, as in all European countries, much more cheese is eaten per capita than in America. What the German farmer calls _Kraftfutter_, such concentrated fodder as oilcakes, maize-meal, etc., had to be imported, since none of these things were produced in Germany. The annual average of such importations in the years just preceding the war reached more than five million metric tons, and these importations were virtually all cut off before the end of 1917.

The result was that the supply of milk fell off by nearly one half. Only very young children, invalids, women in childbed and the aged were permitted to have any milk at all, and that only in insufficient quantities and of low grade. The city of Chemnitz boasted of the fact that it had been able at all times to supply a quarter of a liter (less than half a pint!) daily to every child under eight. That this should be considered worth boasting about indicates dimly what the conditions must have been elsewhere.

The value of eggs as protein-furnishing food is well known, but even here Germany was dependent upon other countries--chiefly Russia--for two-fifths of her entire consumption. Available imports dropped to a tenth of the pre-war figures, and the domestic production fell off greatly, the hens having been killed for food and also because of lack of fodder.

Restriction followed upon restriction, and every change was for the worse. The _Kriegsbrot_ (war bread) was directed to be made with twenty per cent of potatoes or potato flour and rye. Barley flour was later added. Wheat and rye are ordinarily milled out around 70 to 75 per cent, but were now milled to 94 per cent. The bread-ration was reduced. The sugar-ration was set at 1-3/4 pounds monthly. American housewives thought themselves severely restricted when sugar was sold in pound packages and they could buy as much heavy molasses, corn syrups and maple syrup as they desired, but the 1-3/4-pound allowance of the German housewife represented the sum total of all sweets available per month.

By the autumn of 1916 conditions had become all but desperate. It is difficult for one who has not experienced it personally to realize what it means to subsist without rice, cereals such as macaroni, oatmeal, or butter, lard or oil (for two ounces of these articles are little better than none); to be limited to one egg each three weeks, or to five pounds of potatoes weekly; to have no milk for kitchen use, and even no spices; to steep basswood blossoms as a substitute for tea and use dandelion roots or roasted acorns as coffee for which there is neither milk nor sugar, and only a limited supply of saccharine. Germany had been a country of many and cheap varieties of cheese, and these took the place of meat to a great extent. Cheese disappeared entirely in August, 1916, and could not again be had.

In common with most European peoples, the Germans had eaten great quantities of fish, both fresh and salted or smoked. The bulk of the salted and smoked fish had come from Scandinavia and England, and the blockade cut off this supply. The North Sea was in the war-zone, and the German fishermen could not venture out to the good fishing-grounds. The German fishermen of the Baltic had, like their North Seacoast brethren, been called to the colors in great numbers. Their nets could not be repaired or renewed because there was no linen available. Fresh fish disappeared from view, and supplies of preserved fish diminished so greatly that it was possible to secure a small portion only every third or fourth week. Even this trifling ration could not always be maintained.

No German will ever forget the terrible _Kohlruebenwinter_ (turnip winter) of 1916-17. It took its name from the fact that potatoes were for many weeks unobtainable, and the only substitute that could be had was coarse fodder-turnips. The lack of potatoes and other vegetables increased the consumption of bread, and even in the case of the better-situated families the ration was insufficient. The writer has seen his own children come into the house from their play, hungry and asking for a slice of bread, and go back to their games with a piece of turnip because there was no bread to give them. The situation of hard manual laborers was naturally even worse.

The turnip-winter was one of unusual severity, and it was marked by a serious shortage of fuel. Thus the sufferings from the cold were added to the pangs of hunger. There was furthermore already an insufficiency of warm clothing.Articles of wear were strictly rationed, and the children of the poorer classes were inadequately clad.

The minimum number of calories necessary for the nourishment of the average individual is, according to dietetic authorities, 3,000, and even this falls some 300 short of a full ration. Yet as early as December, 1916, the caloric value of the complete rations of the German was 1,344, and, if the indigestibility and monotony of the fare be taken into account, even less. To be continuously hungry, to rise from the table hungry, to go to bed hungry, was the universal experience of all but the very well-to-do. Not only was the food grossly insufficient in quantity and of poor quality, but the deadly monotony of the daily fare also contributed to break down the strength and, eventually, the very morale of the people. No fats being available, it was impossible to fry anything. From day to day the Germans sat down to boiled potatoes, boiled turnips and boiled cabbage, with an occasional piece of stringy boiled beef or mutton, and with the coarse and indigestible _Kriegsbrot_, in which fodder-turnips had by this time been substituted for potatoes. The quantity of even such food was limited.

A little fruit would have varied this diet and been of great dietetic value, but there was no fruit. _Wo bleibt das Obst_ (what has become of the fruit?) cried the people, voicing unconsciously the demands of their bodies. The government, which had imported $62,500,000 worth of fruit in 1913, could do nothing. The comparatively few apples raised in Germany were mixed with pumpkins and carrots to make what was by courtesy called marmalade, and most of this went to the front, which also secured most of the smaller fruits. A two-pound can of preserved vegetables or fruits was sold to each family--not person--at Christmas time. This had to suffice for the year.

A delegation of women called on the mayor of Schoeneberg, one of the municipalities of Greater Berlin, and declared that they and their families were hungry and must have more to eat.

"You will not be permitted to starve, but you must hunger," said the mayor.[15]

[15] The mayor's statement contains in German a play on words: _Ihr sollt nicht verhungern, aber hungern muesst Ihr_.

The other privations attendant upon hunger also played a great part in breaking down the spirit of the people. In order to secure even the official food-pittance, it was necessary to stand in queues for hours at a time. The trifling allowance of soap consisted of a substitute made largely of saponaceous clay. Starch was unobtainable, and there is a deep significance in the saying, "to take the starch out of one." The enormous consumption of tobacco at the front caused a serious shortage at home, and this added another straw to the burdens of the male part of the population. The shortage of cereals brought in its wake a dilution of the once famous German beer until it was little but colored and charged water, without any nourishment whatever.

The physical effects of undernutrition and malnutrition made themselves felt in a manner which brought them home to every man. Working-capacity dropped to half the normal, or even less. Mortality increased by leaps and bounds, particularly among the children and the aged. The death rate of children from 1 to 5 years of age increased 50 per cent; that of children from 5 to 15 by 55 per cent. In 1917 alone this increased death rate among children from 1 to 15 years meant an excess of deaths over the normal of more than 50,000 in the whole Empire. In the year 1913, 40,374 deaths from tuberculosis were reported in German municipalities of 15,000 inhabitants or more. The same municipalities reported 41,800 deaths from tuberculosis in the first six months of 1918, an increase of more than 100 per cent. In Berlin alone the death rate for all causes jumped from 13.48 per thousand for the first eight months of 1913 to 20.05 for the first eight months of 1918.

According to a report laid before the United Medical Societies in Berlin on December 18, 1918, the "hunger blockade" was responsible for 763,000 deaths in the Empire. These figures are doubtless largely based on speculation and probably too high, but one need not be a physician to know that years of malnutrition and undernutrition, especially in the case of children and the aged, mean a greatly increased death rate and particularly a great increase of tuberculosis. In addition to the excess deaths alleged by the German authorities to be directly due to the blockade, there were nearly 150,000 deaths from Spanish influenza in 1918. These have not been reckoned among the 763,000, but it must be assumed that many would have withstood the attack had they not been weakened by the privations of the four war-years.

The enthusiasm that had carried the people through the beginnings of their privations cooled gradually. No moral sentiments, even the most exalted, can prevail against hunger. Starving men will fight or steal to get a crust of bread, just as a drowning man clutches at a straw. There have been men in history whose patriotism or devotion to an idea has withstood the test of torture and starvation, but that these are the exception is shown by the fact that history has seen fit to record their deeds. The average man is not made of such stern stuff. _Mens sana in corpore sano_ means plainly that there can be no healthy mind without a healthy body. Hungry men and women who see their children die for want of food naturally feel a bitter resentment which must find an object. They begin to ask themselves whether, after all, these sacrifices have been necessary, and to what end they have served.

The first answer to the question, What has compelled these sacrifices was, of course, for everybody, The war. But who is responsible for The War? Germany's enemies, answered a part of the people.

But there were two categories of Germans whose answer was another. On the one side were a few independent thinkers who had decided that Germany herself bore at least a large share of the responsibility; on the other side were those who had been taught by their leaders that all wars are the work of the capitalistic classes, and that existing governments everywhere are obstacles to the coming of a true universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines had been forgotten by even the Socialist leaders in the enthusiasm of the opening days of the struggle, but they had merely lain dormant, and now, as a result of sufferings and revolutionary propaganda by radical Socialists, they awakened. And in awakening they spread to a class which had heretofore been comparatively free from their contagion.

Socialism, and more especially that radical Socialism which finds its expression in Bolshevism, Communism and similar emanations, is especially the product of discontent, and discontent is engendered by suffering. The whole German people had suffered terribly, but two categories of one mighty class had undergone the greatest hardships. These were the _Unterbeamten_ and the _Mittelbeamten_, the government employees of the lowest and the middle classes. This was the common experience of all belligerent countries except the United States, which never even remotely realized anything of what the hardships of war mean. Wages of the laboring classes generally kept pace with the increasing prices of the necessaries of life, and in many instances outstripped them. But the government, whose necessities were thus exploited by the makers of ammunition, the owners of small machine-shops and the hundreds of other categories of workers whose product was required for the conduct of the war, could not--or at least did not--grant corresponding increases of salary to its civil servants. The result was a curious social shift, particularly observable in the restaurants and resorts of the better class, whose clientele, even in the second year of the war, had come to be made up chiefly of men and women whose bearing and dress showed them to be manual workers. The slender remuneration of the _Beamten_ had fallen so far behind the cost of living that they could neither frequent these resorts nor yet secure more than a bare minimum of necessaries. The result was that thousands of these loyal men and women, rendered desperate by their sufferings, began in their turn to ponder the doctrines which they had heard, but rejected in more prosperous times. Thus was the ground further prepared for the coming of the revolution.

There was yet another factor which played a great part in increasing the discontent of the masses. Not even the genius of the German Government for organization could assure an equitable distribution of available foodstuffs. Except where the supply could be seized or controlled at the source, as in the case of breadstuffs and one or two other products, the rationing system broke down. The result of the government's inability to get control of necessaries of life was the so-called _Schleichhandel_, literally "sneak trade," the illegitimate dealing in rationed wares. Heavy penalties were imposed for this trade, applicable alike to buyer and seller, and many prosecutions were conducted, but to no avail. The extent of the practice is indicated by a remark made by the police-president of a large German city, who declared that if every person who had violated the law regarding illegitimate trade in foodstuffs were to be arrested, the whole German people would find itself in jail.

It has often been declared that money would buy anything in Germany throughout the war. This statement is exaggerated, but it is a fact that the well-to-do could at all times secure most of the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. But the prices were naturally so high as to be out of the reach of the great mass of the people. Butter cost as much as $8 a pound in this illegitimate trade, meat about the same, eggs 40 to 50 cents apiece, and other articles in proportion. The poorer people--and this, in any country, means the great majority--could not pay these prices. Themselves forced to go hungry and see their children hunger while the wealthy _bourgeoisie_ had a comparative abundance, they were further embittered against war and against all governments responsible for war, including their own.

The German soldiers at the front had fared well by German standards. In the third year of the war the writer saw at the front vast stores of ham, bacon, beans, peas, lentils and other wares that had not been available to the civil population since the war began. Soldiers home on furlough complained of being continuously hungry and returned to the lines gladly because of the adequate rations there.

With the coming of the fourth year, however, conditions began to grow bad even at the front, and the winter of 1917-18 brought a marked decrease of rations, both in quantity and quality. Cavalrymen and soldiers belonging to munition or work columns ate the potatoes issued for their horses. They ground in their coffee-mills their horses' scant rations of barley and made pancakes. A high military official who took part in the drive for the English Channel that started in March, 1918, assured the writer that the chief reason for the failure to reach the objective was that the German soldiers stopped to eat the provisions found in the enemy camps, and could not be made to resume the advance until they had satisfied their hunger and assured themselves that none of the captured stores had been overlooked. Ludendorff, hearing of this, is said to have declared: "Then it's all over." This, while probably untrue, would have been a justified and prophetic summing-up of the situation.

Not only were the soldiers hungry by this time, but they were insufficiently clad. Their boots were without soles, and they had neither socks nor the _Fusslappen_ (bandages) which most of them preferred to wear instead of socks. A shirt issued from the military stores in the summer of 1918 to a German soldier-friend of the writer was a woman's ribbed shirt, cut low in the neck and gathered with a ribbon.

The military reverses of this summer thus found a soldiery hungry and ill-clad, dispirited by complaints from their home-folk of increasing privations, and, as we shall see in the following chapter, subjected to a revolutionary propaganda of enormous extent by radical German Socialists and by the enemy.