Chapter 12

IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET

There is only one way to realise the distress in Germany, and that is to go there and travel as widely as possible--preferably on foot. The truth about the food situation and the growing discontent cannot be told by the neutral correspondent in Germany. It must be memorised and carried across the frontier in the brain, for the searching process extends to the very skin of the traveller. If he has an umbrella or a stick it is likely to be broken for examination. The heels are taken from his boots lest they may conceal writings. This does not happen in every case, but it takes place frequently. Many travellers are in addition given an acid bath to develop any possible writing in invisible ink.

In Germany, as it is no longer possible to conceal the actual state of affairs from any but highly placed and carefully attended neutrals travelling therein, the utmost pains are being taken to mislead the outside world. The foreign correspondents are not allowed to send anything the Government does not wish to get out. They are, moreover, regularly dosed with propaganda distributed by the _Nachrichtendienst_ (Publicity Service of the Foreign Office).

One of the books handed round to the neutrals when I was in Berlin was a treatise on the German industrial and economic situation by Professor Cassell, of the University of Upsala, Sweden.

He came upon the invitation of the German authorities for a three weeks' study of conditions. In his preface he artlessly mentions that he was enabled to accomplish so much in three weeks owing to the praiseworthy way in which everything was arranged for him. He compiled his work from information discreetly imparted at interviews with officials, from printed statistics, and from observations made on carefully shepherded expeditions. Neutral correspondents are expected to use this sort of thing, which is turned out by the hundredweight, as the basis of their communications to their newspapers. We were supplied with a similar volume on the "Great German naval victory of Jutland."

One feels in Germany that the great drama of the war is the drama of the food supply--the struggle of a whole nation to prevent itself being exhausted through hunger and shortage of raw materials.

After six months of war the bread ticket was introduced, which guaranteed thirty-eight ordinary sized rolls or equivalent each week to everybody throughout the Empire. In the autumn of 1915 Tuesday and Friday became meatless days. The butter lines had become an institution towards the close of the year. There was little discomfort, however.

For seventeen months Germany laughed at the attempt to starve her out. Then, early in 1916 came a change. An economic decline was noticeable, a decline which was rapid and continuous during each succeeding month. Pork disappeared from the menu, beef became scarcer and scarcer, but veal was plentiful until April. In March, sugar could be obtained in only small quantities, six months later the unnutritious saccharine had almost completely replaced it. Fish continued in abundance, but became increasingly expensive. A shortage in meat caused a run on eggs. In September egg cards limited each person to two eggs per week, in December the maximum became one egg in two weeks. Vegetables, particularly cabbage and turnips, were plentiful enough to be of great help.

In Berlin the meat shortage became so acute in April, 1916, that for five days in the week preceding Easter most butchers' shops did not open their doors. This made it imperative that the city should extend the ticket rationing system to meat. The police issued cards to the residents of their districts, permitting them to purchase one-half pound of meat per week from a butcher to whom they were arbitrarily assigned in order to facilitate distribution. The butchers buy through the municipal authorities, who contract for the entire supply of the city. The tickets are in strips, each of which represents a week, and each strip is subdivided into five sections for the convenience of diners in restaurants.

Since the supply in each butcher's shop was seldom sufficient to let everybody be served in one day, the custom of posting in the windows or advertising in the local papers "Thursday, Nos. 1-500," and later, "Saturday, Nos. 501-1000," was introduced. A few butchers went still further and announced at what hours certain numbers could be served, thus doing away with the long queues.

Most of the competent authorities with whom I discussed the matter agreed that the great flaw in the meat regulations was that, unlike those of bread, they were only local and thus there were great differences and correspondinng discontent all over Germany.

One factor which contributed to Germany's shortage of meat was the indiscriminate killing of the livestock, especially pigs, when the price of fodder first rose in the last months of 1914. Most of this excess killing was done by the small owners. Our plates were heaped unnecessarily. Some of the dressing was done so hurriedly and carelessly that there were numerous cases of pork becoming so full of worms that it had to be destroyed.

The great agrarian Junkers were not forced by lack of fodder to kill; consequently they own a still larger proportion of the live-stock than they did at the beginning of the war.

On October 1st, 1916, the regulation of meat was taken out of the hands of the local authorities so far as their power to regulate the amount for each person was concerned, and this amount was made practically the same throughout Germany.

First and foremost in the welfare of the people, whatever may be said by the vegetarians, is the vital question of the meat supply. Involved in the question of cattle is milk, leather, other products, and of course, meat itself.

One German statistician told me he believed that the conquest of Roumania would add between nine and ten months to Germany's capacity to hold out, during which time, no doubt, one or other of the Allies would succumb.

At the beginning of 1917 the actual number of cattle in Germany does not seem to be so greatly depreciated as one would expect. After a very thorough investigation I am convinced that there are in Germany to-day from three-fourths to four-fifths as many head of cattle as there were before the war.

In the spring and summer these cattle did very well, but with the passing of the grazing season new difficulties are arising. Cattle must be fed, and unless sufficient grain comes from Roumania to supply the bread for the people and the fodder for the cattle it is obvious that there must be a wholesale slaughtering, and consequent reduction of milk, butter, and cheese.

All these details may seem tiresome, but they directly concern the length of the war.

To add to the shortage, the present stock of cattle in Germany was, when I left, being largely drawn upon for the supply of the German armies in the occupied parts of Prance, Belgium, and Russia, and the winter prospect for Germany, therefore, is one of obviously increased privation, provided always that the blockade is drastic.

Cattle are, of course, not the only food supply. There is game. Venison is a much commoner food in Germany than in England, especially now there is much of it left. Hares, rabbits, partridges are in some parts of Germany much more numerous even than in England. A friend of mine recently arrived from Hungary told me that he had been present at a shoot over driven partridges at which, on three successive days, over 400 brace fell to the guns. Wherever I went in Germany, however, game was being netted.

Before the war, pork, ham, and bacon were the most popular German food, but owing to the mistake of killing pigs in what I heard called the "pork panic" the Germans are to-day facing a remarkable shortage of their favourite meat. I am convinced that they began 1917 with less than one-fourth as many pigs as they had before the war.

The Berlin stockyards slaughtered over 25,000 pigs weekly before August, 1914. During the first 10 months of the war the figure actually rose to 50,000 pigs per week in that one city alone. In one week in September last the figure had fallen to 350 pigs!

The great slaughter early in the war gave a false optimism not only to Germans, but also to visitors. If you have the curiosity to look back at newspapers of that time you will find that the great plenty of pork was dilated upon by travelling neutrals.

To-day the most tremendous efforts are being made to increase the number of pigs. You will not find much about this in the German newspapers--in fact what the German newspapers do not print is often more important than what they do print. In the rural districts you can learn much more of Germany's food secrets than in the newspapers.

In one small village which I went to I counted no fewer than thirty public notices on various topics. Hers is one:--

FATTEN PIGS.

Fat is an essential for soldiers and hard workers. Not to keep and fatten pigs if you are able to do so is treason to the Fatherland. No pen empty--every pen full.

These food notices may be necessary, but they are bringing about intense class hatred in Germany. They are directed at the small farmer, who in many cases has killed all his pigs and most of his cows, because of his difficulty in getting fodder. As I have said, the great agrarian junkers, the wealthy landowners of Prussia, have in many cases more cows, more pigs, more poultry than before the war.

The facts of these great disparities of life are well known, and if there were more individuality in the German character they would lead to something more serious than the very tame riots, at several of which I have been present.

That the food question is the dominating topic in Germany among all except the very rich, and that this winter will add to the intensity of the conversations on the subject, is not difficult to understand. Most of the shopping of the world is done by women, and the German woman of the middle class, whose maidservant has gone off to a munition factory, has to spend at least half her day waiting in a long line for potatoes, butter, or meat.

There is a curious belief in England and in the United States in the perfection of German organisation. My experience of their organisation is that it is absolutely marvellous--when there are no unexpected difficulties in the way. When the Germans first put the nation on rations as to certain commodities, the outside world said, "Ah, they are beginning to starve!" or "What wonderful organisers!"

As a matter of fact, they were not beginning to starve, and they were not wonderful organisers. The rationing was done about as badly as it could be done. It was arranged in such a fashion as to produce plenty in some places and dearth in others. It was done so that wealthy men made fortunes and poor men were made still poorer. The inordinate greed and lack of real patriotism on the part of influential parties in both Germany and Austria-Hungary have added to the bad state of affairs. As if to make matters worse, the whole vast machine of rationing by ticket was based on the expectation of a comparatively quick and decisive victory for Germany. This led to reckless consumption and a great rise in prices. The fight that is now going on between the masses in the towns and the wealthy land-owning farmers has been denounced in public by food dictator Batocki (pronounced Batoski), who, in words almost of despair, complained of the selfish landed proprietor, who would only disgorge to the suffering millions in the great manufacturing centres at a price greatly exceeding that fixed by the food authorities.

All manner of earnest public men are endeavouring to cope with the coming distress, and at this point I can do no better than quote from an interview given me by Dr. Sudekum, Social Democratic member of the Reichstag for Nuremberg, Bavaria. He is a sincere patriot, and a prominent worker in food organisation.

"More than a year ago," he explained, "I worked out a plan for the distribution of food, which provided for uniform food-cards throughout the entire empire. For example, everyone, whether he lived in a Bavarian village or in a Prussian city, would receive, say, half a pound of meat a week. I presented my plan to the Government, with whose approval it met. Nevertheless, they did not see fit to adopt it for three reasons. In the first place because they believed that the people might become unnecessarily alarmed. Secondly, because our enemies might make capital out of such measures. _Thirdly, because our leaders at that time believed that the war might be over before the end of 1915_.

"But the war dragged on, and we were somewhat extravagant with our supplies--I except bread, for which we introduced cards in February, 1915--and instead of the whole Empire husbanding the distribution of meat, for example, various sections here and there introduced purely local measures, with the inevitable resulting confusion.

"Hunger has been a cause of revolution in the past," Dr. Sudekum continued thoughtfully. "We should take lessons from history, and do everything in our power to provide for the poor. I have worked hard in the development of the 'People's Kitchens' in Berlin. We started in the suburbs early in 1916, in some great central kitchens in which we cook a nourishing meat and vegetable stew. From these kitchens distributing vehicles--_Gulasch-kanonen_ (stew cannons) as they are jocularly called--are sent through, the city, and from them one may purchase enough for a meal at less than the cost of production. We have added a new central kitchen each week until we now have 30, each of which supplies 10,000 people a day with a meal, or, more correctly, a meal and a half. In July, however, the work assumed greater proportions, for the municipal authorities also created great central kitchens. Most of the dinners are taken to the homes and eaten there.

"The People's Kitchen idea is now spreading throughout Germany. But I believe in going further, I believe in putting every German--I make no exception--upon rations. That is what is done in a besieged city, and our position is sufficiently analogous to a besieged city to warrant the same measures. All our food would then be available for equal distribution, and each person would get his allowance."

This earnest Social Democrat's idea is, of course, perfect in theory. Even the able, hard-working Batocki, however, cannot make it practicable. Why not? _The Agrarian, the great Junker of Prussia_, not only will not make sacrifices, but stubbornly insists upon wringing every pfennig of misery money from the nation which has boasted to the world that its patriotism was unselfish and unrivalled.

The most important German crop of all at this juncture is potatoes, for potatoes are an integral part of German and Austrian bread. The handling of the crop, to which all Germany was looking forward so eagerly, exhibits in its most naked form the horrid profiteering to which the German poor are being subjected by the German rich.

It was a wet summer in Germany. Wherever I went in my rural excursions I heard that the potatoes were poor. The people in the towns knew little of this, and were told that the harvests were good.

An abominable deception was practised upon the public with the first potato supply. For many months tickets had been in use for this food, which is called the "German staff of life." Suddenly official notices appeared that potatoes could be had for a few days without tickets, and the unsuspecting public at once ordered great quantities.

The Agrarians thus got rid of all their bad potatoes to the mass of the people. In many cases they were rotting so fast that the purchaser had to bury them. It was found that they produced illness when given to swine.

What other people in the world than the Germans would stand that? But they did stand it. "These are only the early potatoes--the main crop will be all right," said the profiteers right and left, and gradually the masses began to echo them, as is usual in Germany.

Well, the main crop has been gathered, and Food Dictator von Batocki is, according to the latest reports I hear from Germany, unable to make the Agrarians put their potatoes upon the market even at the maximum price set by the Food Commission.

They are holding back their supplies until they have forced up the maximum price, just as a year ago many of them allowed their potatoes to rot rather than sell them to the millions in the cities at the price set by law.

Some Germans, mostly Social Democratic leaders, declare that since their country is in a state of siege, the Government should, beyond question, commandeer the supplies and distribute them, but just as the industrial classes have, until quite recently, resisted war taxes, so do the Prussian Junkers, by reason of their power in the Reichstag, snap their fingers at any suggested fair laws for food distribution.

The Burgomaster--usually a powerful person in Germany--is helpless. When on September 1 the great house-to-house inventory of food supplies was taken, burgomasters of the various sections of Greater Berlin took orders from the people for the whole winter supply of potatoes on special forms delivered at every house. Up to the time I left, the burgomasters were unable to deliver the potatoes,

Any dupes of German propaganda who imagine that there is much self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in Germany in this war should disabuse their minds of that theory at once. While the poor are being deprived of what they have, the purchases of pearls, diamonds, and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never before known in Germany.

One of the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria and in Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold hunt, which is clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, with the roaring trade in jewelry in Berlin and Vienna. As an instance I can vouch for the veracity of the following story:--

A Berlin woman went to Werner's, the well-known jewellers in the Unter den Linden, and asked to be shown some pearl necklaces. After very little examination she selected one that cost 40,000 marks (2,000 pounds). The manager, who knew the purchaser as a regular customer for small articles of jewelry, ventured to express his surprise, remarking, "I well remember, madam, that you have been coming here for many years, and that you have never bought anything exceeding in value 100 marks. Naturally I am somewhat surprised at the purchase of this necklace." "Oh, it is very simple," she replied. "My husband is in the leather business, and our war profits have made us rich beyond our fondest hopes."

Throughout Austria and Germany in every village and townlet are appearing notices to bring in gold.

The following notice is to be met with in all parts of Germany:--

LET EVERY ONE WORTHY OF THE NAME OF GERMAN DO HIS DUTY NOW.

Our enemies, after realising that they cannot defeat us on the field of battle, are striving to defeat us economically. But here they will also fail.

OUT WITH YOUR GOLD.

Out with your gold! What is the value of a trinket to the life of the dear one that gave it? By giving now you may save the life of a husband, brother, or son.

Bring your gold to the places designated below. If the value of the gold you bring exceeds five marks, you will receive an iron memento of "Die grosse Zeit."

Iron chains will be given for gold chains. _Wedding rings of those still living will not be accepted_.

From rural pulpits is preached the wickedness of retaining gold which might purchase food for the man in the trenches.

The precedent of the historic great ladies of Prussia who exchanged their golden wedding rings for rings of iron is drummed into the smaller folk continuously. The example is being followed by the exchange of gold trinkets for trinkets made of iron, with the addition of the price paid at the central collecting station--paid, of course, in paper, which is at a 30 per cent. discount in Germany and 47 per cent. discount in Austria. Every bringer of a trinket worth more than 5s. receives a small iron token of "_die grosse Zeit_" (the great epoch).

The gold hunt has revealed unexpected possessions in the hands of the German and Austrian lower classes. To me it was pathetic to see an old woman tremblingly handing over treasures that had come down probably for two or three generations--treasures that had never been worn except on high days and festivals, weddings, and perhaps on the day of the local fair. Particularly sad is this self-sacrifice in view of the gigantic profits of the food usurers and war profiteers. The matter is no secret in Germany or Austria. It is denounced by the small Socialist minority in the Reichstag, to whose impotence I have often referred. It is stoutly defended in good Prussian fashion by those openly making the profits.

There has arisen a one-sided Socialism which no one but Bismarck's famous "nation of lackeys" would tolerate. At the top is a narrow circle of agrarian and industrial profiteers, often belonging to the aristocratic classes. At the other end of the scale is, for example, the small farmer, who has now absolutely nothing to say concerning either the planting, the marketing, or the selling of his crops. Regulations are laid down as to what he should sow, where he should sell, and the price at which he should sell. Unlike the Junker, he has not a long purse. He _must sell_.

What state of mind does this produce among the people? I know that outside Germany there is an idea that every German is working at top speed with the spirit of the Fatherland flaming him on. That was the spirit I witnessed in the early days of the war, when Germany was winning and food was plentiful.

In certain rural districts as well as in centres of population there is an intense longing for peace--not merely for a German peace--but any peace, and a peace not merely for military reasons, but arising out of utter weariness of the rule of the profiteers and the casualties not revealed by the doctored lists--ingeniously issued lists, which, for example, have never revealed the loss of a submarine crew, though intelligent Hamburg shipping people, who are in close touch with German naval people, estimate the loss of German submarines as at least one hundred. I have heard the figure put higher, and also lower.

This kind of one-sided Socialism makes the people so apathetic that in some parts of Germany it has been very difficult to induce them to harvest their own crops, and in German Poland they have been forced to garner the fields at the point of the bayonet.

When a man has no interest in the planting, marketing, and selling price of his produce; when he knows that what he grows may be swept away from his district without being sure that it will be of any benefit to himself and his family; when, in addition, the father or sons of the households lie buried by the Yser, the Somme, the Meuse or the Drina, it is impossible for the authorities to inspire any enthusiasm for life, let alone war, even among so docile a people as those they deal with.

* * * * *

With regard to the other crops, rye is good; beets look good, but are believed to be deficient in sugar owing to the absence of South American fertilisers; wheat is fairly good; oats extremely good, and barley also excellent. The Germans have boasted to the neutral visitor that their artificial nitrates are just as good fertilisers as those imported from South America. It is true that they do very well for most crops when the weather is damp. But beets, strangely enough, require the genuine Chilean saltpetre to produce their maximum of sugar. The failure to get this, plus the use of sugar in munition making, accounts for the dearth of that commodity among the civilian population.

In order that nothing shall be wasted, the Government decreed this year that the public should be allowed to scavenge the fields after the harvest had been gathered, and this was a source of some benefit to those residing near the great centres of population.

Schoolmasters were also ordered to teach the children the need of gathering every sort of berry and nut.

Passing along an English hedgerow the other day, and seeing it still covered with withered blackberries, I compared them with the bare brambles which I saw in Germany from which all berries have gone to help the great jam-making business which is to eke out the gradually decreasing butter and margarine supply. Sickness and death have resulted from mistakes made, not only in gathering berries, but in gathering mushrooms and other fungi, which have been keenly sought.

It is safe to say that the Germans are leaving no stone unturned to avoid the starvation of the Seven Years' War. The ingenuity of the chemists in producing substitutes was never greater. One of the most disagreeable foods I have tasted was bread made of straw. Countless experiments have been made in the last year to adapt straw to the human stomach, but although something resembling bread has been produced, it contains almost no nourishment and results in illness.

People who reside in the cities and carefully shepherded visiting neutrals, who do not go into the country, have little notion of the terrific effort being put forward to make the fruits of Mother Earth defeat the blockade, and _above all_ to extract any kind of _oil_ from anything that grows.

Here is one notice:--

HOW THE CIVIL POPULATION CAN HELP IN THE WAR.

Our enemies are trying to exhaust us, but they cannot succeed if every one does his duty.

OIL _is a Necessity_.

You can help the Fatherland if you plant poppies, castor plant, sunflowers. In addition to doing important work for the Fatherland you benefit yourself because the price for oil is high.

I may say that the populace have responded. Never have I seen such vast fields of poppies, sunflowers, rape plant, and other oleaginous crops. Oil has been extracted from plum-stones, cherry-stones, and walnuts.

The Government have not pleased the people even in this matter. One glorious summer day, after tramping alone the sandy roads of Southern Brandenburg, I came to a little red-brick village in the midst of its sea of waving rye and blaze of sunflowers and poppies. Taking my seat at the long table in front of the local _Gasthaus_, and ordering some imitation coffee--the only refreshment provided in the absence of a local bread ticket--I pointed out one of these notices to the only other person at the table, who was drinking some "extraordinarily weak beer," as he put it. "Have the people here planted much of these things I see on that notice?" I asked, pointing to one of the placards. "Yes," he said, "certainly. A great deal; but the Government is going to be false to us again. It will be commandeered at a price which they have already set." Then came the usual string of grumbles which one hears everywhere in the agricultural districts. I will not repeat them. They all have to do with the food shortage, profiteering, and discontent at the length of the war.

Though all Germans, with the exception of a few profiteers, are grumbling at the length of the war, it must not be supposed that they have lost hope. In fact their grumblings are punctuated frequently by very bright hopes. When Douaumont fell, food troubles were forgotten. The bells rang, the flags were unfurled, faces brightened, crowds gathered before the maps and discussed the early fall of Verdun and the collapse of France. Again I heard on every hand the echo of the boasts of the first year of the war.

The glorious manner in which France hurled back the assault was making itself felt in Germany with a consequent depression over food shortage when the greatest naval victory in history--so we gathered, at least, from the first German reports--raised the spirits and hopes of the people so high that they fully believed that the blockade had been smashed. On the third day of the celebration, Saturday, June 3rd, I rode in a tram from Wilmersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, to the heart of the city through miles of streets flaring with a solid mass of colour. From nearly every window and balcony hung pennants and flags; on every trolley pole fluttered a pennant of red, white and black. Even the ancient horse 'buses rattled through the streets with the flags of Germany and her allies on each corner of the roof. The newspapers screamed headlines of triumph, nobody could settle down to business, the faces one met were wreathed in smiles, complaining was forgotten, the assurance of final victory was in the very air.

Unter den Linden, the decorations on which were so thick that in many cases they screened the buildings from which they hung, was particularly happy. Knots of excited men stood discussing the defeat of the British Fleet. Two American friends and I went from the street of happy and confident talk into the Zollernhof Restaurant. With the din of the celebration over the "lifting of the blockade" ringing in our ears from the street, we looked on the bill of fare, and there, for the first time, we saw _Boiled Crow_.

Through the spring and early summer the people were officially buoyed up with the hope that the new harvest would make an end of their troubles. They had many reasons, it is true, to expect an improvement. The 1915 harvest in Germany had fallen below the average. Therefore, if the 1916 harvest would be better per acre, the additional supplies from the conquered regions of Russia would enable Germany to laugh at the efforts of her enemies to starve her out. Once more, however, official assurances and predictions were wrong, and the economic condition grew worse through every month of 1916.