In places like Brussels, where a certain quantity of good flour is still obtainable at very high prices, the bread is made with a mixture of wheat, potato, and maize flour, but in most towns the wheat has been used up, and the bread has to be made without it.
In all the western parts of Belgium, all that remains of the old supply of corn is used for the wounded and the sick.
Pellagia, an old and almost forgotten ailment, caused by bad bread and rotten food, has reappeared in most of the country places where the food is worst. Some cases are really pathetic.
A doctor who is managing a hospital near Courtrai told me that it is impossible to get the good, healthy food indispensable in illness. Some cases of lemons and oranges for the Belgian hospitals which were specially allowed through the Italian frontier, in spite of the exportation bills, have been seized by the Germans.
Generally, German people and German hospitals in Belgium manage to get the very best food; the native inhabitants have to be content with what remains.
To eat, I will not say good, but passable bread, for instance, one must go to one of the establishments regarded as "safe" by the Germans, one of the establishments where the Germans feed, where they can do what they like and drink Munich beer. Such places are allowed to keep open an hour longer than the others.
German people have monopolised the fashionable restaurants, teashops, and best hotels in the town. The Belgian population has completely given up going into such establishments, and patronise only certain others which manage, more or less, to keep the Germans away.
The famous Café des Augustins, on the Boulevard Anspach, the manager of which has been plucky and clever enough to do so without giving the Government a pretext for shutting up the place, has crossed from his lists all German wines, liqueurs, and mineral waters. As the German Government has stopped the production of Belgian beer, in order to be able to send the stored oats and hops to Munich and to Pilsen, and to favour the sale of German beer in Belgium at fairly high prices, no more beer is sold in the establishment.
In the other restaurants, the Germanised ones, the new masters drink beer and champagne, sing, shout, and discuss the war.