Army, all causes, 1,621,000.
Civil population, through blockade, 763,000, of which 260,000 is for 1917 and 294,000 to the end of 1918. He comes to the conclusion that even now any improvement in the condition, as regards nourishment of the German people, will be possible only in a very partial degree; above all, capacity for work will not increase to the needed extent.—“Vorwaerts,” April 11, 1919.
In a report made by five doctors of neutral lands, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch, dated April 11, 1919, after they had collected information in Berlin, Halle and Dresden, they say: “The food concessions under the Brussels agreement are altogether inadequate. The most they do is to maintain the present necessitous food conditions.... Immediate help is necessary. Every day of delay risks immeasurable injury not only to the whole of Europe, but to the whole world.”
Evidence of the same import is furnished by Jane Adams and charitable English persons, and the liberal periodicals, as distinct from the daily newspapers, have printed columns showing the terrible ravages of an illegal and indefensible blockade which inflicted the horrors of war upon the feeble and helpless, those recognized by the laws of nations and humanity as entitled to protection when not within the sphere of military operations and in no way responsible for or contributing to them.
The armistice was signed November 11, 1918, but so relentless was the English policy of crushing the German people that Winston Churchill, on March 3, 1919, declared in the House of Commons: “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor.... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and children, upon the old, the weak, and the poor, after all the fighting has stopped.” (“The Nation,” June 21, 1919; p. 980.)
The appalling heartlessness which, not content with inflicting starvation on a whole nation—for we will not mention Austria in this connection—designed to add to its horrors still added injuries, is exposed in the terms of the treaty, by which the German people were required to give up 140,000 milch cows and other livestock. Witness the following Associated Press dispatch:
Paris, July 24 (Associated Press).—Germany will have to surrender to France 500 stallions, 3,000 fillies, 90,000 milch cows, 100,000 sheep and 10,000 goats, according to a report made yesterday before the French Peace Commission, sitting under thepresidency of Rene Viviani, by M. Dubois, economic expert for the commission, in commenting on the peace treaty clauses.
Two hundred stallions, 5,000 mares, 5,000 fillies, 50,000 cows, and 40,000 heifers, also are to go to Belgium from Germany. The deliveries are to be made monthly during a period of three months until completed.
A total of 140,000 milch cows! Forty thousand heifers! To be surrendered by a country in which little children were dying for lack of milk, and babies were brought into the world blind because of the starved conditions of the mothers!