The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-08-10
FIGHT FOR FOOD
Greatest Battle of European
War Is Fought
On the Farms of the Belligerent
Nations.
THE CONTEST WILL GO ON
AS Long as the People Have
Enough to Eat.
Bayard Hale Predicts That YER
dun viii Fall.
HE CONTEST WILL GO ON
By WILLIAM BAYARD HALE.

spondent has 1ourneyed across the
breadth of the central empires with
| a view to ascertaining the results of
the harvest. For the greatest battle
of the war has been fought upon the
farms of Germany and Austria
Within sight of the citadel of YER
dun and the shells that are battering
it, acress part of Northern France
, now under a high state of cultivation.
across the Rhineland, Westphalia and
MeckIenberg- SchweTin. thru the vast
agricultural stretches of East Prussia
into German Poland, across all Aus
tria. along the Danube. thru the
fruitful plains of Hungary to the ex-
IRENE villages of Sieberbuergen into
the mountains of Transatlantic he has
made a war correspondent notes on
the harvest.
On the Meuse and on the Somme,
in the Bukowina and in Nolhynia
men are killing and offering them
selves to be killed for the possession of
a few miles of earth and the eyes of
the world are turned upon the SAN
culinary struggles. as if they were the
determining factors.
The fact is that the real, the de-
Gliding battle of the war is fought else
where This has been the effort the
German people, while holding back
their human enemies, to wrest from
nature enough sustenance for another
year of existence.
Verdlln VIII Fall.
VerduE will fall. The English Of
fensive will penetrate 81 few kilometers
of the German line. The Russians Will
gain few miles Of mountainous land.
! Little or nothing will be decided.
In the view Of the German people
official and private--one great issue
is now being decided, whether the
Teuton people can he starved. They
cannot be.
NV observations extending entirely
/ across the two empires are confirming
this judgment.
1t must be remembered that Ger
many never fed herself under normal
conditions and that last year several
millions of men were withdrawn IRON
AGRICULTURAL work. Full crops could
not be planted. Labor and cultivation
fell largely to women, girls and boys,
old men and inflrm-
And now comes the harvest with the
pressing demand for extraordinary L.
Dor so ia miliar on our western farms
ard southern planta tions. Let the
ina gination of the American reader
conceive conditions for himself. Ie-
Numbering that the Teutons are be-
set on every side by enemies and that
every available man is supposed to be
at one or another front. Then let him
ask himself if it would not be mir
acle should the German lands this
wear put away 10 per cent of the av-
erage harvest.
hazard to estimate that the re-
suit is not far from this figure.
An Opuient Land.
To the eye familiar only with Amer
lean wheat fields, the aspect OF the
far more intensely cultivated plains OF
East Prussia and Hungary. fof in
stance, would give an overpower!ng
10r1f nisttf
land.
Every valley and prairie is riotous
with ripe heads of nodding wheat,
every hillside jubilant with fruitage.
From dawn till sunset one travels by
fast trains through fields running over
with gathered sheaves teeming with
laborers and noisy with the clack of
busy machines. Through the long twi-
light women are busy on the straw
ricks. Troops of children are among
the gleaninss and at sunup smoke is
pouring from the traction engines and
batteries of American threshing ma
chimes. Often dozen in the field are
at work pouring out their golden riv-
ulets of grain and wheat towns of
straw stacks.
To tell the truth, an Indiana farmer
would notice there is somewhat too
much straw in proportion to wheat.
The hea % are not all full.
Where Cosn Grows.
AS one goes eastward. fields of In
dian corn replace the wheat and sam
pies of the early ears proved plump
and toothsomc-Such as any Iowa wife
would be glad to set before the visit
ing minister with his Sunday chicken.
ut is wonderful however different
everything turned out from what we
expected said Count Apponyi to me
as we Travelled down the Danube VAL
ley from his estate at Eberhart to
Budapest, where the Hungarian par
lament is about to open session. The
count is large agriculturist-
''Some of us had been saying" he
resumed, that war nowadays would
be impossible. that it had grown SO
murderous and colossal that it would
exterminate itself. But we are at the
end of the second year of the war and
somehow we have been able to get
along much as If no war were in prog
ress at all. There are hardships and
privations of all sorts. expedienss and
makeshifts and substitutes But the
human animal is wonderfully resource
full and adaptable and we are doing
with what is, on the whole. surpris-
ing case what we thought quite i'm
possible.
Now. putting away the satisfa Glory
harveSt-how. 1 don't quite under
stand-but what with the women and
boys and cripDles it is being done"
And so it is thruout the Teutcnic
countries. The harvest is coming sat
isfa ctorily. The traveller sees also
that in everv Swallowed pasture and
along the cool borders of streams
herds of Ho1stein cattle contentedIy
chewing cud or at work for their
country. tho their numbers are sadly
insufficient to supply the milk needed
by children and sick.
Germany Needs Milk.
The great need in Germany is milk.
not meat or bread.
Yet in Ruman:a this week it was
more difficult to get milk than it was
last week n Germany and Austria,
No living creatures are doing. more
than thoasa nds of thousands of bat
talions of geese that march before
the whip of diminutive girls This
familiar picture of the German coun-
tryside seems enlarged three or four