Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-09-20

remarkable extent because of the
demand for them from taxdodgers.
Under the stress of the changed
food conditions, the hungry German
soon replaced the honest German.
Germans had always had a reputa-
ton for honesty. but their claims to
such distinction hisappears1l with
the food supply. Necessity soon
brought out all that was worst in
the German character.
Although the government decreed
high fine and imprisonment as
punishment for buying or selling
deered, spectators sprang up on
every side and people Dragged
openly of what they had stored
away.
An officer on a train was over
heard to say: "One-half Of the wom-
en- in this town should be in the in
sane asylum and the other half in
Jail" When asked the reason for
this cryptic remark, he explained:
We'll, half of the women ought to
be in Jail for mstering'-hoard-
ing-and the rest of them, who are
not boarding, must certainly be
crazy" I think the officer must
have been wrong in his calculations,
for l, at any rate, never ran across
a single German at this time who
might be included in the insane half.
Every patient who came into my
office Dragged about some forbidden
article of food which he or she had
purchased, and complained of the
awful price exacted for it.
One speculator used to telephone
my wife regularly, identifying him
self by the password: This is your
good friend. Are you going to be
at home this evening"" Needless
to say, my wife usually managed to
be in, as it meant food. This spec
ulator looked like a cutthroat, but
we used to treat him with the great
est consideration, offering him the
best chair in the house and a good
cigar. After he made sure that no
one was listening at the door, he
would reveal what he had for sale.
Sometimes he had fifty pounds of
butter at IS per pound. Another
time it might be 200 pounds of dried
peas at rs cents pound. Whatever
it was we usually took all he had
to sell, as it was a simple matter to
share it with our friends.
From one man we bought 200
pounds of flour and the same guam
tity of sugar at 81 per pound. The
huge sacks were brought to us
through the streets by men dis
guised as soldiers, their military
Garb protecting them against moles-
tation by the police, who believed
that it was being carried from one
barracks to another. The men who
brought the sacks to us declared
that the stuff had been stolen from
soldiers hospital.
I know of a German doctor at the
head of a big field hospital at the
front who sent an American friend
in Berlin fifty pounds of beans.
There is no question but that the
officers were sending food to their
families from the supplies intended
for their men at the front.
One soldier who was in a hos
pital at Berlin but we'll enough to
visit his family occasionally was al
ways asked by the officer command
ing the hospital to deliver to the
officers wife a large bundle of what
was apparently soiled laundry. One
day his suspicious aroused by the
weight of the package, he opened
it and found that instead of laun-
dry it contained a supply of all the
delicacies which the recuperating
oOlulSlo HSSuSu anu WGTS HOI SSl-
ting. Things had changed-the SOL
diers at the front were sending food
home instead of receiving the gifts
which were showered upon them in
the opening months of the war.
Many of my patients lived in the
country and there, of course. it was
much easier to evade the food con-
troll regulations than in the cities.
There they had practically every
thing they needed and they used to
bring me presents of butter or deli
cacies-which 1 carefully locked
away before beginning the consulta-
ton.
Some of the so-called delicacies
appear to me in a very different
light now. One patient from Dres-
den brought me, for instance, some
sausage made from an elephant
which had died in the Zoo! An
other offered to sell me a very cheap
ham-$20. When it arrived it
turned out to be half of a pigs head,
smoked, with the teeth, an eye and
an ear very much in evidence.
AS a rare treat I was able to buy
some Polish sausage which I re-
member I ate with great relish
Later on I heard that in the town
where my sausage was made the
people were falling dead of starva-
ton in the streets, which set me to
wondering whether 1 had been ex-
actly prudent in eating it.
l bought a leg of lamb which
turned out to be a goat and a guam
tity of butter that 1 bought from a
speculator melted into an ill-smell-
ing brown liquid. One was afraid
not to take advantage Of the offers
made by the spectators, but nine
times out of ten the stuff purchased
was inedible or, at any rate, differed
from what it had been held out
to be.
AS time went on there seemed to
be almost no real food to be had,
and feel that 1 possibly owe the
life of my child to Mrs. Gerard, who
so kindly left us a large supply of
her good American stores when she
left Berlin, and to the manager of
the Quaker Oats Company at Ham
burg, who sent me a large box of
Quaker Oats.
Even the things which the Ger
mans had been able to buy from
Denmark, Holland and Switzerland
had a way of disappearing in tran
sit. Batocki, when he was food
controller, told a friend of mine that
six carloads of oranges which the
government had bought were stolen,
the cars arriving empty. and two
IDENTIFY met a similar fate for the
cars arrived loaded with stone!
The people felt that there was
plenty of food in Germany, but the
controllers were limiting it's distri-
hutton How could fheU haIiaUa