Entertaining "Kriegskinder."
The Mittelstandsküche and the Volksküche are also charitable organizations and are run by women's clubs. These kitchens are places where the middle and lower class people can get a good meal for from fifty to seventy pfennigs,—a meal consisting of soup, meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Compote or stewed fruit can be bought for ten pfennigs a dish, and salad can be bought for the same price. They do not have bread, you must bring that with you. They cut off your food cards for meat and potatoes, but they are not very strict about it. If you were terribly hungry and went to a Volksküche you could very likely get something to eat without a card. The city sees that these places are well provided for, and often you could not get potatoes in the fashionable restaurants, but the kitchens always had them.
The Iron Hindenburg on the Kaiser's Birthday.
Besides these kitchens, club women have a traveling soup kitchen. It consists of a goulash cannon driven around the streets on a wagon, and the people come with their buckets to get a hot stew for thirty-five pfennigs.
The American Chamber of Commerce had a fine soup kitchen in Berlin. It was opened two winters ago with great pomp, and Mr. and Mrs. Gerard were present at the occasion. Society ladies took turns helping in the kitchen, and they made it a very great success. Everything served in the kitchen was free and the food was splendid. They served many hundred people each day.
In Munich the Americans have a hospital which they conduct themselves. I don't know how it is run since America got into the war, but before this time the Americans paid for everything. Two years ago the American ladies in Dresden had a bazar for the German Red Cross. They made many thousand marks. In Berlin there is a very rich American man who keeps the families of one hundred and fifty German soldiers that have been killed in the war. When America got into the war, it was thought that his charity would end, but he said, "No, these poor women and children cannot help it that America is in the war."
