Germany, The Next Republic?

by Carl W. Ackerman

That was the first success of the Bavarian Socialists. Now they have had another. Batocki is reported as having announced that all food supplies will be confiscated. The Socialists are responsible.

Excepting the very wealthy and those who have stored quantities of food for the "siege," every German is undernourished. A great many people are starving. The head physician of the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria Hospital, in Berlin, stated that 80,000 children died in Berlin in 1916 from lack of food. The Lokal-Anzeiger printed the item and the Foreign Office censor prohibited me from sending it to New York.

But starvation under the blockade is a slow process, and it has not yet reached the army. When I was on the Somme battlefields last November and in Rumania in December the soldiers were not only well fed, but they had luxuries which their families at home did not have. Two years ago there was so much food at home the women sent food boxes to the front. To-day the soldiers not only send but carry quantities of food from the front to their homes. The army has more than the people.

It is almost impossible to say whether Germany, as a nation, can be starved into submission. Everything depends upon the next harvest, the length of the war and future military operations. The German Government, I think, can make the people hold out until the coming harvest, unless there is a big military defeat. In their present undernourished condition the public could not face a defeat. If the war ends this year Germany will not be so starved that she will accept any peace terms. But if the war continues another year or two Germany will have to give up.

I entered Germany at the beginning of the Allied blockade when one could purchase any kind and any quantity of food in Germany. Two years later, when I left, there were at least eighteen foodstuffs which could not be purchased anywhere, and there were twelve kinds of food which could be obtained only by government cards. That is what the Allied blockade did to the food supplies. It made Germany look like a grocery store after a closing out sale.

Suppose in the United States you wanted the simplest breakfast--coffee and bread and butter. Suppose you wanted a light luncheon of eggs or a sandwich, tea and fruit. Suppose for dinner you wanted a plain menu of soup, meat, vegetables and dessert. At any grocery or lunch counter you could get not only these plain foods, but anything else you wanted.

Not so in Germany! For breakfast you cannot have pure coffee, and you can have only a very small quantity of butter with your butter card. Hotels serve a coffee substitute, but most people prefer nothing. For luncheon you may have an egg, but only one day during two weeks. Hotels still serve a weak, highly colored tea and apples or oranges. For dinner you may have soup without any meat or fat in it. Soups are just a mixture of water and vegetables. Two days a week you can get a small piece of meat with a meat card. Other days you can eat boiled fish.

People who keep house, of course, have more food, because as a rule they have been storing supplies. Take the Christian Scientists as an instance. Members of this Church have organised a semi-official club. Members buy all the extra food possible. Then they divide and store away what they want for the "siege"--the time when food will be scarcer than it is to-day.

Two women practitioners in Berlin, who live together, bought thirty pounds of butter from an American who had brought it in from Copenhagen. They canned it and planned to make this butter last one year. Until a few weeks ago people with money could go to Switzerland, Holland and Denmark and bring back food with them, either with or without permission. Some wealthy citizens who import machinery and other things from outside neutral countries have their agents smuggle food at the same time.

While the Dutch, Danish and Swiss governments try to stop smuggling; there is always some going through. The rich have the money to bribe border officers and inspectors. When I was in Düsseldorf, last October, I met the owner of a number of canal boats, who shipped coal and iron products from the Rhine Valley to Denmark. He told me his canal barges brought back food from Copenhagen every trip and that the border authorities were not very careful in making an investigation of his boats.