faces, particularly among the poor of large cities and in factory
districts. In a social stampede such as that surging through Germany for
the past year or two those who get down under the hoofs of the herd are
the chief sufferers. The poor, the sick, whether at home or in
hospitals, the weak, the old, the less hardy women, and the little
children showed the most definite evidence of the efficiency of the
blockade and of the decrease in home production. On the streets,
especially of the poorer districts, the majority of those one passed
looked as if they ought to be in bed, though many a household included
invalids never seen in public. Flocks of ragged, unsoaped, pasty-skinned
children swarmed in the outskirts. Even such food as was to be had by
those in moderate circumstances contained slight nourishment, next to
none for weaklings and babies; while the most hardy found next morning
that very little of it had been taken up by the body. Hasty visitors to
Berlin, well supplied with funds, who spent a few days in the best
hotels, often with the right to draw upon the American or Allied
commissaries, or with supplies tucked away in their luggage, were wont
to report upon their return that the hunger of Germany was “all
propaganda.” Those who lived the unfavored life of the masses, even for
as short a time, seldom, if ever, confirmed this complacent verdict.
There were, of course, gradations in want, from the semi-starvation of
the masses to the comparative plenty of the well-to-do; but the only
ones who could be said to show no signs whatever of under-nourishment
were foreigners, war profiteers, and those with a strangle-hold on the
public purse.
The scarcity of food was everywhere in evidence. Almost no appetizing
things were displayed to the public gaze. The windows of food-dealers
were either empty or filled with laborious falsehoods about the taste
and efficacy of the _Ersatz_ wares in them. Slot-machines no longer
yielded a return for the dropping of a pewter coin. Street venders of
anything edible were almost never seen, except a rare hawker of turnips
or asparagus—_Spargel_, for some reason, seemed to be nearly
plentiful—who needed not even raise their voices to dispose of their
stock in record time. It was no use dropping in on one’s friends, for
even though the welcome were genuine, their larder was sure to be as
scantily garnished as one’s own.
The distribution of such food as remained was carried on with the
elaborate orderliness for which the German has long been noted. All
Berlin bloomed with posters advising those entitled to them where they
could get six ounces of marmalade on such a day, or four pounds of
potatoes on another date. The newspapers gave up much of their space to
the _Lebensmittelkalender_, or “food calendar,” of Berlin, the capital
being divided into hundreds of sections, or “commissions,” for the
purposes of distribution:
Until Sunday, in the divisions of the 169, 170, 190, 205, and 207th
Bread Commissions, 125 grams of cheese per head are being allowed.
During the next week 50 grams of cooking fat for the coupon No. L4
of the new special card for foodstuffs from outside the Empire. A
half-pound of foreign white flour, for those previously reporting,
in the time between the 4th and the 7th of June, 1919, on the coupon
P5 of the new card.
This week, as already stated, there will be given out a new source
of nourishment as a substitute for meat. The main rations remain
unchanged. In Bread Districts 116, 118, 119, 120, and 209 will be
given out 125 grams of marmalade. On the CI and CII cards will be
given a can of condensed milk every four days. Children born between
May 1, 1913, and May 1, 1917, receive a card for chocolate (though
it is not guaranteed that they can find any for sale). On coupon E2
will be given 125 grams of American pork products.
As late as May the long-announced supplies of food from America had not
put in an appearance in sufficient quantities to make an appreciable
increase in Germany’s scanty ration. In the occupied region, where our
army kept close tabs on the distribution and prices, and even assisted
the municipalities, for the sake of keeping peace in the community,
American foodstuffs reached all classes of the population, with the
exception of the “self-providing” peasants. But “over in Germany” only
tantalizing samples of what might come later were to be had at the time
of my visit. This may have been the fault of the Boche himself, though
he laid it to the enmity of the Allies, whom he accused of purposely
“keeping him starved,” of dangling before his hungry nose glowing false
promises until he had signed the Peace Treaty. The “Hoover crowd,”
demanding payment in gold before turning over supplies to the
authorities of unoccupied Germany, often had laden ships in port long
before the Germans were prepared to pay for the cargo. Moreover, once
financially satisfied, they bade the Teutons “take it away,” and washed
their hands of the matter. There were rumors that large quantities were
illegally acquired by the influential. At any rate, the “American food
products” publicly for sale or visibly in existence inside Germany were
never sufficient, during my stay there, to drive famine from any door.
Berlin and the larger cities issued a few ounces of them per week to
those who arrived early; in the rest of the country they were as
intangible as rumors of life in the world to come.
The _Brotcommissionen_ charged with the equal distribution of such food
as existed were chiefly run by schoolteachers. Their laborious system of
ledgers and “tickets” was typically German, on the whole well done,
though now and then their boasted efficiency fell down. Seldom, however,
were such swarming mobs lined up before the places of distribution as in
France—which implied a better management behind the wicket. Each
applicant carried a note-book in which an entry was made in an orderly
but brief manner, and was soon on his way again, clutching his handful
of precious “tickets.”
My own case was a problem to the particular Bread Commission of the ward
I first inhabited in Berlin, to which I hastened as soon as
Wilhelmstrasse had legalized my existence within the country. But they
were not only courteous to a superlative degree, in spite of—or,
perhaps, because of—my nationality; they insisted on working out the
problem, before which a Latin would probably have thrown up his hands in
disgust or despair. There was no difficulty in supplying me with
food-tickets during my stay in the capital, nor of transferring my right
to eat to any other city in which I chose to make my residence. But what
was to be done for a man who proposed to tramp across the country,
without any fixed dwelling-place? Apparently the ration system of
Germany had neglected to provide for such cases. A long conference of
all members of the commission wrestled with the enigma, while the line
of ticket-seekers behind me grew to an unprecedented length. A dozen
solutions were suggested, only to be rejected as irregular or
specifically _verboten_. But a plan was found at last that seemed free
from flaws. Tickets of all kinds were issued to me at once for the
ensuing week, then the foolscap sheet on which such issue would have
been noted weekly, had I remained in the capital, was decorated with the
words, in conspicuous blue pencil, “_Dauernd auf Reise_”—“Always
traveling.” Provincial officials might in some cases decline to honor
it, but the commission was of the unanimous opinion that most of them
would accept the document as a command from the central government.
Some of the supplies to which the tickets entitled me must be
purchased on the spot, in specified shops scattered about the
neighboring streets. That was a matter of a few minutes, for the
shopkeepers already had them wrapped in tiny packages of the
allotted size. There was a half-pound of sugar, coarse-grained,
but nearly white; then a bar of sandy soap of the size of a
walnut. My week’s supply of butter I tucked easily into a
safety-match box and ate with that day’s lunch. Three coupons on
an elaborate card entitled “American Foodstuffs” yielded four
ounces of lard (in lieu of bacon), two ounces of what seemed to be
tallow, and a half-pound of white flour. The price of the entire
collection, being government controlled, was reasonable enough,
especially in view of the foreign rate of exchange; a total of two
mk. eighty, or less than the butter alone would have cost from
“underground” dealers. Fortunately the meat, potato, and bread
tickets were good anywhere, sparing me the necessity of carrying
these supplies with me. In fact, _Reisebrotmarken_, or “travel
bread-tickets,” were legal tender throughout the Empire, and were
not confined to any particular date or place. Those I had been
furnished for a month to come, a whole sheath of them, totaling
twenty-five hundred grams. That sounds, perhaps, like a lot of
bread, but the fact is that each elaborately engraved fifty-gram
coupon represented a thin slice of some black concoction of bran,
turnip-meal, and perhaps sawdust which contained little more
nourishment and was far less appetizing in appearance than the
ticket itself. The potato-tickets were invaluable; without them
one was either denied the chief substance of a Berlin meal or
forced to pay a painful price for an illegal serving of it; with
them one could obtain two hundred and fifty grams for a mere
thirty pfennigs. Other vegetables, which were just then beginning
to appear on bills of fare, were not subject to ticket regulation.
The white flour left me with a problem equal to that I had been to the
_Brotcommissionen_. Obviously I could not afford to waste such a luxury;
quite as obviously I could not eat it raw. In the end I turned it over
to the head waiter of my hotel, together with the lard, and breakfasted
next morning on two long-enduring _Pfannkuchen_. But the go-between
charged me a mark for his trouble, three marks for two eggs, without
which a German “pancake” is a failure, and a mark for the cooking!
I drifted out to the central market of Berlin one afternoon and found it
besieged by endless queues of famished people, not one of whom showed
signs of having had anything fit to eat, nor a sufficient quantity of
anything unfit, for months. Yet the only articles even of comparative
abundance were heaps of beet-leaves. A few fish, a score or so of eels,
and certain unsavory odds and ends, all “against tickets,” were
surrounded by clamoring throngs which only the miracle of the loaves and
fishes could have fed even for a day with the quantity on hand. Only the
flower-market showed a supply by any means in keeping with the demand,
and that only because various experiments had proved flowers of no
edible value. The emptiness of these great market-places, often of
ambitious architecture and fitted with every modern convenience—except
food—the silence of her vast slaughter-house pens, and the idleness of
her sometimes immense, up-to-date kitchens, make the genuine hunger of
Germany most forcibly apparent.
The efforts of the masses to keep from being crowded over the brink into
starvation had given Berlin new customs. Underfed mobs besieged the
trains in their attempts to get far enough out into the country to pick
up a few vegetables among the peasants. Each evening the elevated, the
underground, and the suburban trains were packed with gaunt, toil-worn
men, women, and children, the last two classes in the majority,
returning from more or less successful foraging expeditions, on
fourth-class tickets, to the surrounding farms and hamlets; the streets
carried until late at night emaciated beings shuffling homeward, bowed
double under sacks of potatoes or turnips. Then there were the
_Laubengärten_, or “arbor gardens,” that had grown up within the past
few years. The outer edges of Berlin and of all the larger cities of
Germany were crowded with these “arbor colonists,” living in thousands
of tiny wooden shacks, usually unpainted, often built of odds and ends
of lumber, of drygoods-boxes, of tin cans, like those of the negro
laborers along the Panama Canal during its digging. About Berlin the
soil is sandy and gives slight reward for the toil of husbandry, yet not
an acre escaped attempted cultivation. In most cases a “general farmer”
leased a large tract of land and parceled it out in tiny plots, hiring a
carpenter to build the huts and an experienced gardener to furnish
vegetarian information to the city-bred “colonists.” Here the laborer or
the clerk turned husbandman after his day’s work in town was done, and
got at least air and exercise, even though he made no appreciable gain
in his incessant struggle for food. Here, too, he might have a goat,
“the poor man’s cow,” to keep him reminded of the taste of milk, and
perhaps a pig for his winter’s meat-supply.
The great shortage in animal flesh and fats had made the German of the
urban rank and file a vegetarian by force. Theoretically every one got
the allotted one hundred and twenty-five grams of meat a week;
practically many could not even pay for that, and even if they had been
able to it would scarcely have ranked them among the carnivorous
species. The rich, of course, whether in hotels or private residences,
got more than the legal amount, and of a somewhat higher quality, but
they paid fabulous prices for it, and they could not but realize that
they were cheating their less fortunate fellow-countrymen when they ate
it. The war had not merely reduced Germany’s cattle numerically; the
lack of fodder had made the animals scarcely fit for butchering. They
weighed, perhaps, one half what they did in time of peace, and the meat
was fiberless and unnourishing as so much dogfish. The best steak I ever
tasted in Berlin would have brought a growl of wrath from the habitué of
a Bowery “joint.” The passing of a gaunt _Schlachtkuh_ down a city
street toward the slaughter-house was sure to bring an excited crowd of
inhabitants in its wake. To bread and potatoes had fallen the task of
keeping the mass of the people alive, and the latter were usually, the
former always, of low quality.
The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought to light a myriad
of _Ersatz_ foods that were in reality no food at all. It was frequently
asserted that this consumption of unwholesome imitations of food was
responsible for the erratic conduct of many a present-day German,
manifesting itself now in morose, now in talkative moods, often in more
serious deviations from his moral character. Certainly it had made him
less pugnacious. Indirectly it had made him more of a liar—at least on
his bills of fare. The best hotel in Berlin made no bones of shredding
turnips or beet-roots and serving them as mashed potatoes. Once in a
while an honest waiter warned the unsuspecting client, as was the case
with one who shattered my fond hopes of an appetizing dish announced on
the menu-card he had handed me. “_Venison_ your grandmother!” he
whispered, hoarsely. “It is horse-meat soaked in vinegar. Take the beef,
for at least that is genuine, poor as it is.” Milk, butter, and all such
“trimmings” as olives, pickles, sauces, preserves, and the like were
wholly unknown in public eating-places. Pepper I saw but once in all
Germany—as a special luxury in a private household. Coffee might now and
then be had, but an imitation of burnt corn and similar ingredients took
its place in an overwhelming majority of cases, and cost several times
what real coffee did before the war. Beechnut oil, supplied only to
those holding tickets, did the duty of butter and lard in cooking
processes. The richest and most influential could not get more than
their scanty share of the atrocious, indigestible stuff miscalled bread.
Bakers, naturally, were mighty independent. But those who could get
bread often got cake, for there was always more or less “underground”
traffic in forbidden delicacies. One of the most difficult tasks of all
was to lay in a lunch for a journey. Before my first trip out of the
capital I tramped the streets for more than an hour in quest of
something edible to carry along with me, and finally paid six marks for
an egg-and-sausage sandwich that went easily into a vest pocket.
Good linen had almost wholly disappeared—at least from sight. It was
never seen on dining-tables, having long since been commandeered by the
government for the making of bandages—or successfully hidden. Paper
napkins and tablecloths were the invariable rule even in the most
expensive establishments. Personal linen was said to be in a sad state
among rich and poor alike; the _Ersatz_ soap or soap-powders reduced it
quickly to the consistency and durability of tissue-paper. Many of the
proudest families had laid away their best small-clothes, hoping for the
return of less destructive wash-days. As to soap for toilet purposes,
among German residents it was little more than a memory; such as still
existed had absolutely no fat in it, and was made almost wholly of sand.
Foreigners lucky or foresighted enough to have brought a supply with
them might win the good will of those with whom they came in contact far
more easily than by the distribution of mere money.
But we are getting off the all-absorbing topic of food. If the reader
feels he can endure it, I wish to take him to a half-dozen meals in
Berlin, where he may see and taste for himself. The first one is in a
public soup-kitchen, where it will be wiser just to look on, or at most
to pretend to eat. Long lines of pitiful beings, women and children
predominating, file by the faintly steaming kettles, each carrying a
small receptacle into which the attendants toss a ladleful of colored
water, sometimes with a piece of turnip or some still more plebeian root
in it. The needy were lucky to get one such “hot meal” a day; the rest
of the time they consumed the dregs of the markets or things which were
fed only to hogs before the war. The school lunch and often the supper
of perhaps the majority of the children of Berlin consisted of a thin
but heavy slice of war-bread lightly smeared with a colic-provoking
imitation of jam. In contrast, one might stroll into the Adlon in the
late afternoon and see plump and prosperous war profiteers—“Jews” the
Berliners called them, though they were by no means confined to a single
race—taking their plentiful “tea” in the midst of, and often in company
with, Allied officers.
My own first German meal—for those in the occupied region were rather
meals in Germany—was a “breakfast” in a second-class hotel, of the kind
with which almost every one began the day in the Fatherland. There was
set before me with great formality a cupful of lukewarm water with
something in it which made a faint effort to pretend it was coffee, a
very thin slice of war-bread, yielded only after long argument because I
had as yet no bread-tickets, and a spoonful of a sickly looking purple
mess that masqueraded under the name of “marmalade.” Where the Germans
got their comparative abundance of this last stuff I do not know. Its
appearance suggested that it was made of bruised flesh; its taste
reminded one of rotten apples. The bill on this occasion was three
marks, plus 10 per cent. for service. Begin a few days on that and see
how much “pep” you have left; by noon you will know the full meaning of
the word hungry.
I took lunch that day in a working-man’s restaurant. There I got a
filling, though not a very lasting, dinner of beans and potatoes, a
“German beefsteak”—resembling our “Hamburger,” but possibly made of
horse-meat—a slice of what Europe calls bacon, which is really salt
pork, and two mugs of weak beer—total, four mk. forty. No bread was
asked or given. The clients ranged from small merchants to hackmen.
For supper I investigated a long-established vegetarian restaurant on
Friedrichstrasse. An oat soup was followed by a plate of mashed peas,
one storage egg (two marks), a cold potato salad, a pint of “white
beer,” and a pudding that would have been tasteless but for its
_Himbeer_ sauce, sickly as hair-oil. The check came to seven mk.
seventy-five, including the usual tip.
A few blocks farther on along this same chief cross-artery of Berlin is
a famous “Tunnel” restaurant below the level of the sidewalk. If you
have been in the German capital during this century you have no doubt
passed it, though you probably took care not to enter. In 1919 it was
one of the chief rendezvous of lost souls. Girls of sixteen, already
_passées_, mingled with women of once refined instincts whom the war had
driven to the streets. Their male companions were chiefly “tough
characters,” some of them still in uniform, who might give you a
half-insolent, half-friendly greeting as you entered, but who displayed
little of that rowdyism so characteristic of their class in our own
country. Here no attention was paid to meatless days, and, though the
date was plainly written on the bill of fare, it offered, even on
Tuesdays and Fridays, several species of beef and veal and many kinds of
game—wild duck, marsh fowl, rabbit, mountain goat, and so on, all
evidently the real article. The servings were more than generous, the
potatoes almost too plentiful. The menu asserted that “Meat, bread, and
potatoes were served only against tickets,” but for the payment of an
extra twenty-five pfennigs the lack of these was overlooked, except in
the case of bread. A small glass of some sickly-sweetish stuff called
beer cost the same amount; in the more reputable establishments of the
capital the average price for a beverage little better was about four
times that. Five marks sufficed to settle the bill, after the most
nearly satisfying meal I had so far found in Berlin. Here 15 per cent.
was reckoned in for service. Evidently the waiters had scorned a mere 10
per cent. in so low-priced a resort.
While I ate, an old woman wandered in, peddling some sort of useless
trinkets. She was chalky in color and emaciated to the last degree,
staggering along under her basket as if it had been an iron chest.
Several of the habitués got rid of her with a pewter coin. I happened to
have no change and gave her instead a few bread-tickets. The result was
not exactly what I had expected. So great was her gratitude for so
extraordinary a gift, beside which mere money seemed of little or no
interest, that she huddled over my table all the rest of the evening.
Before the war she had been the wife of a shopkeeper in Charlottenburg.
Her husband and both her sons had died in France. Business had dwindled
away for lack of both demand and supply until she had been dispossessed,
and for nearly two years she had been wandering the night streets of
Berlin with her basket. Her story was that of thousands in the larger
cities of Germany.
“No, I am not exactly sick,” she explained, after all but toppling over
upon me, “but my heart is so weak that it gives way when I try to work.
I faint in the street every few hours and know nothing about it until I
find myself in some shop door or alleyway where passers-by have carried
me. The back of my head and my neck have ached for more than a year now,
all the time, from the chin clear around. It is lack of food. I know
where I could get plenty of meat, if I could pay for it and spend six or
seven marks for a coach to get there.”
“But you get American bacon now, don’t you?” I put in, more out of
curiosity to know how she would answer than to get information.
“Bacon!” she coughed. “Yes, indeed, one slice every two weeks! Enough to
grease my tongue, if it needed it.”
A moment later I chanced to mention Holland. She broke off a mumbling
account of the horrors of war suffering at home with:
“Holland! Isn’t that where our Kaiser is? Do you think our wicked
enemies will do something wrong to his Majesty? Ah me, if only he would
come back!”
Like all her class, she was full of apologies for the deposed ruler and
longed to bask once more in the blaze of his former glory, however far
she was personally removed from it. Nor had her sufferings dimmed her
patriotism. An evil-faced fellow at a neighboring table spat a stream of
his alleged beer on the floor and shouted above the hubbub of maudlin
voices: “_Ein Hundeleben ist das in Deutschland!_ A _dog’s_ life! Mine
for a better country as quick as possible.”
“Rats always desert a sinking ship,” snapped the old woman, glaring at
the speaker with a display of her two yellow fangs, “no matter how well
they have once fared upon it.”