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.
CHAPTER XIII
A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES
The only food substitute which meets the casual eye of the visitor to England in war time is margarine for butter. Germany, on the contrary, is a land of substitutes.
Since the war, food exhibitions in various cities, but more especially in Berlin, have had as one of their most prominent features booths where you could sample substitutes for coffee, yeast, eggs, butter, olive oil, and the like. Undoubtedly many of these substitutes are destined to take their place in the future alongside some of the products for which they are rendering vicarious service. In fact, in a "Proclamation touching the Protection of Inventions, Designs, and Trade Marks in the Exhibition of Substitute-Materials in Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1916," it is provided that the substitutes to be exhibited shall enjoy the protection of the Law. Even before the war, substitutes like Kathreiner's malt coffee were household words, whilst the roasting of acorns for admixture with coffee was not only a usual practice on the part of some families in the lower middle class, but was so generally recognised among the humbler folk that the children of poor families were given special printed permissions by the police to gather acorns for the purpose on the sacred grass of the public parks. To deal with meat which in other countries would be regarded as unfit for human consumption there have long been special appliances in regular use in peace time. The so-called Freibank was a State or municipal butcher's shop attached to the extensive municipal abattoirs in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and elsewhere. Here tainted meat, or meat from animals locally affected by disease, is specially treated by a steam process and other methods, so as to free it from all danger to health. Meat so treated does not, of course, have the nutritive value of ordinary fresh meat, but the Germans acted on the principle that anything was better than nothing. Such meat was described as bedingt tauglich (that is, fit for consumption under reserve). It was sold before the war at very low rates to the poorer population, who in times of scarcity came great distances and kept long vigils outside the Freibank, to be near the head of the queue when the sale began. Thus we see that many Germans long ago acquired the habit of standing in line for food, which is such a characteristic of German city life to-day.
Horseflesh was consumed before the war in Germany, as in Belgium and France. Its sale was carefully controlled by the police, and severe punishment fell upon anyone who tried to disguise its character. An ordinary butcher might not sell it at all. He had to be specially licensed, and to maintain a special establishment or a special branch of his business for the purpose. Thus, when wider circles of the population were driven to resort to substitutes, there was already in existence a State-organised system to control the output.
Since the war began, sausage has served as a German stand-by from the time that beef and pork became difficult to obtain. In the late spring, however, the increased demand for sausage made that also more difficult to procure, and we often got a substitute full of breadcrumbs, which made the food-value of this particular Wurst considerably less than its size would indicate. It was frequently so soft that it was practically impossible to cut, and we had to spread it on our bread like butter.
The substitute of which the world has read the most is war bread. This differs in various localities, but it consists chiefly of a mixture of rye and potato with a little wheat flour. In Hungary, which is a great maize-growing country, maize is substituted for rye.