3. It is needless to insist on a third cause, which reduces our working-class families to idleness and poverty: the destruction of an enormous number of factories—some bombarded, but most of them burned of set purpose.
4. We have already seen that many factories which remained intact are condemned to inactivity by the lack of raw material, or because they have been deprived of their machinery. The others are equally paralysed.
The stoppage of traffic on the railway lines, the impediments of all kinds placed in the way of inland navigation, the absence of maritime navigation, are causes more than sufficient to prevent the importation of raw materials and the exportation of manufactured products. Of all these obstacles the most important is assuredly the suppression of goods traffic on the railways. "Why," say the Germans, "do not Belgian employés return to their work, since our military trains would in any case be run by our own men?" Hypocrites! The slowness and irregularity of the trains is highly inconvenient to the German army, and it would much like to see them resume their normal speed; but for this it requires the assistance of the Belgian staff. Is it not obvious that if our railway-men resumed their labours they would at the same time facilitate the transport of German troops and munitions?
Let us again cite the prohibition of "circulation" between 8 or 9 o'clock and 6 o'clock, which is an obstacle to night work, which is quite indispensable to the large industries; and the suppression of the special trains by which the workers travelled.
5. Commerce has suffered no less than industry. There is no telegraph, no telephone, no posting of closed letters; that is, no means of sending or receiving orders. No railway, no horses, no motor-cars to deliver goods or to supply customers. And, to cap all, the slightest journey necessitates all sorts of exaggerated expenses: there is the acquisition of a passport, the train journey at the rate of 10 cm. per kilometre, hotel expenses, etc. The expenditure might be a minor matter, but what of the waste of time? Before 1st July, 1915, any one going from Liége to Brussels for business purposes had first of all to waste one or two days in procuring his passport; the journey occupied at least half a day; and after interviewing his client he would find that there was no train back to Liége on the same day. In short, he would have to allow four days for a journey which in normal times took half a day.
Other causes of famine are:
The scarcity and high cost of provisions.
The financial difficulties in which the public powers are involved.