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.