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I ventured the opinion that street-car travel was a tribulation. The
cars were always overcrowded.
"It is not that," explained the lady. "It is the smell."
"Of the unwashed multitude?"
"Yes! And--"
"And, madame?"
"Something else," said the woman, with some embarrassment.
"I take it that you refer to the odor that comes from underfed bodies,"
I remarked.
"Precisely," assented the noble lady. "Have you also noticed it?"
"Have you observed it recently?" I asked.
"A few days ago. The smell was new to me."
"Reminded you, perhaps, of the faint odor of a cadaver far off?"
The light of complete understanding came into the woman's eyes.
"Exactly, that is it. Do you know, I have been trying ever since then to
identify the odor. But that is too shocking to think of. And yet you are
right. It is exactly that. How do you account for it?"
"Malnutrition! The waste of tissue due to that is a process not wholly
dissimilar to the dissolution which sets in at death," I explained.
I complimented the woman on her fine powers of discernment. The smell
was not generally identified. I was familiar with it for the reason that
I had my attention drawn to it first in South Africa among some underfed
Indian coolies, and later I had detected it again in Mexico among
starving peons.
"Good God!" exclaimed the lady, after a period of serious thought. "Have
we come to that?"
I assured her that the situation was not as alarming as it looked. In
the end the healthy constitution would adjust itself to the shortage in
alimentation. No fit adult would perish by it, though it would be hard
on persons over fifty years of age. There could be no doubt that many of
them would die of malnutrition before the war was over. Babies, also,
would cease to live in large numbers if their diet had to be similarly
restricted.
The smell had a repellent effect upon the woman. I met her many times
after that and learned that it was haunting her. Her desire to keep it
out of her palatial residence caused her to pay particular attention to
the food of her servants. The case was most interesting to me. I had sat
for days and nights in the trenches on Gallipoli, among thousands of
unburied dead, and there was little that could offend my olfactory
nerves after that, if indeed it had been possible before, seeing that I
had for many weary months followed the revolutions in Mexico. Thus
immune to the effects of the condition in question, I was able to watch
closely a very interesting psychological phenomenon.
I found that it was torture for the woman to get near a crowd of
underfed people. She began to shrink at their very sight.
"I take it that you fear death very much, madame," I said, one day.
"I dread the very thought of it," was the frank reply.
"But why should you?" I asked. "It is a perfectly natural condition."
"But an unjust one," came the indignant answer.
"Nothing in nature is unjust," I said. "Nature knows neither right nor
wrong. If she did, she would either cease to produce food altogether for
your people and state, or she would produce all the more--if war can be
laid at the door of nature in arguments of right and wrong."
"But that has nothing to do with the smell--that awful smell," insisted
the woman.
"It has not, to be sure. Our conversation was side-tracked by your
remark that death was an unjust natural condition. Your words show that
you are living in illusions. You have an inherent loathing for the
underfed, because your instincts associate the smell of their bodies
with dissolution itself. But you are not the only one so affected.
Thousands of others feel the same discomfiture."
The long and short of the discussion was that I proved to my own
satisfaction that the woman was one of those self-centered creatures to
whom pity is merely known as a noun. I suggested discreetly that a
little more sympathy for the afflicted, a little more love for her kind,
would prove a first-class deodorant.
Let us examine what the diet of the Central states population then was.
In doing this, it must be borne in mind that the rural population,
always at the fountainhead of food, fared much better. The conditions
pictured are essentially those of the industrial classes in the towns
and cities.
The adult, after rising in the morning, would drink a cup or two of some
substitute for coffee, or very bad tea, without milk, if there were
children, and with very little sugar. With this would be eaten a third
of the day's ration of bread, about two and one-half ounces. That meal
had to suffice until noon, when a plate of soup, a slice of bread, two
ounces of meat, and two ounces of vegetables were taken, to be
supplemented by a small quantity of farinaceous food in the form of some
pudding or cake. A cup of coffee substitute would go with this meal. At
four in the afternoon another cup of substitute coffee or poor tea would
be taken by those who could afford it, usually together with cake equal
to a half-ounce of wheat flour and a quarter-ounce of sugar. The evening
meal would be the same as dinner, without soup and pudding, a little
cheese and the remaining seventy grams of bread taking their place. As a
rule, a glass of beer was drunk with this. But the nutritive value of
that was small now. It was more a chemical than a malt product, and
contained at best but 4 per cent. of alcohol.
That was the meal allowed by the government. Those who had the
opportunity never allowed themselves to be satisfied with it. But the
vast majority of people received that and nothing more, especially later
when fish and fruit had soared skyward in price.
A chemical analysis of this bill of fare would probably show that it was
ample to sustain human life. Some American food crank might even
discover that there was a little to spare. But the trouble is that often
the scientific ration is compounded by persons who lead an inactive life
and who at best make exercise the purpose of special study and effort.
The bulk of any population, however, must work hard, and must eat more
if elimination is not to exceed assimilation.
The food scientist has his value. But he generally overestimates that
value himself. Thus it happened that the Central states governments were
soon obliged to allow a larger ration of bread, sugar, and fat to all
persons engaged in heavy labor. At first this was overlooked here and
there, and, bureaucratism being still strong then, strikes were
necessary to persuade the governments to meet the reasonable demands of
the hard-labor classes.
[Illustration: THE BUTTER AND FAT CARD OF DRESDEN
(transciption follows)]
Der Rat zu Dresden.
Bezugskarte für ¼ kg (½ Pfd.)
Butter oder Margarine
oder Speisefett oder
Kunstspeisefett
in der Zeit vom 30.11. bis 27.12.15.
Scant as this daily fare was, it was not everybody who could add to it
the allowance of meat. The unskilled laborer, for instance, did not earn
enough to buy beef at from sixty to seventy-five cents American a pound,
the cheapest cut being sold at that price. As a rule, he tried to get
the small quantity of animal fat, lard, suet, or tallow which the
authorities allowed him. But often he failed to get it. Potato soup and
bread, and maybe a little pudding, would in that case make up the meal.
If luck had been good there might also be a little jam or some dried
fruit to go into the "pudding," which otherwise would be just plain
wheat flour, of which each family was then given five ounces daily. If
there were children to take care of, the wheat flour had to be left to
them, for the reason that the quantity of milk allowed them was entirely
too small, amounting in the case of children from three to four years to
seven-eighths of a pint daily, with 1.76 pints the limit for any infant.
[Illustration: MILK CARD ISSUED TO NURSING MOTHERS AND THE SICK AT
NEUKOLLN, A SUBURB OF BERLIN (transciption follows)]
Lfd. Nr.
Vor-u. Zuname: Straße Nr.
Milchkarte für stillende Mütter und Kranke
Giltig für den Monat November 1915
Der Inhaber dieser Karte ist während der Gültigkeitsdauer
berechtigt, aus einem der auf der Rückseite bezeichneten
Geschäfte der
Meierei J. Schmidt Söhne
zum Preise von 28 Pf. täglich 1 Liter Vollmilch zu beziehen.
Die Karte ist an jedem Tage beim Kauf der Milch vorzulegen und
wird nach erfolgter Ausgabe der Milch durchlocht.
Am letzten Gültigkeitstage ist die Karte gegen Umtausch einer
neuen Karte in den Milchgeschäften zurückzugeben. Sind die
Voraussetzungen für die Berechtigung der Milchentnahme
fortgefallen, wird die Karte eingezogen.