The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-26

Gesellschaft-"Th Central society for buying food from other countries which found that it was interfering with their graft.
 This society was formed by
 company of clever Jewish business
 men to buy food from foreign
 countries and sell it to the people
 small percentage of the prof
 its going to the government. It
 not only developed into most
 successful enterprise from the
 standpoint of profit, it's prosperity
 being augmented by graft, but it
 provided haven for the stacker
 sons of the proprietors and stock
 holders. Just before I left Ber-
 lin, this company, to hide their
 war profits, bought a building for
 SyOOO,O00 marks, which they
 claimed was needed for the busi-
 ness.
 One of the subterfuges resorted to by some of the war profiteers to conceal the extent of their gains and escape taxa tion was to invest their surplus earnings in works of art and other expensive lux uries. As the tax assessments were based principally upon the individuals bank deposits and the tax collecting ma chinery was very much out of gear 1t was comparatively easy to evade the law by careful manipulation of one's bank account, and by disbursing profits re- ceived without having them go t'>cough the bank. A German whom I knew told me that he had disposed of an oil paint ing which had cost him $500 for no less than S5,000, the price of works of art and antiques having increase to re- markable extent because of the demand for them from tax-dodgers.
 BROUGHT OUT THE WORST
 Under the stress of the changed food conditions the hungry German soon re, placed the honest German. Germans had always had a reputation for hon. esty, but their claims to such distinction disappeared with the food supply Necessity soon brought out all that was worst in the German character.
 Although the government decreed a high fine and imprisonment as punish ment for buying or selling anything which had been commandeered, specula- tors sprang up on every side and L<5ple bragged openly of what they had stored away.
 Ar officer on a train was overheard to say: ''One half of the women in this town should be in the insane asylum and the other half in iail'' When he ex- plained: Well half the women ought to be in jail for transferring -hoarding- and the rest of them, who are not hoard ing, must certainly be crazy!" I think the officer must have been wrong in his calculations, for I, 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 bragged about some forbidden article Of food which he or she had purchased and complained of the awful price ex- acted for it.
 HOW SPECULATOR WORKED 10 al wife regularly, identifying himself by the pass-word This is your good friend. Are you going to be at home this morning?" Needless to say, my wife usually managed to be in, as it meant food. This speculator looked like a cut-throat, but we used to treat him with the greatest consideration, offering him the best chair in the house and a good cigar. After he made sure that nc one was listening at the door, he would reveal what it was he had for sale. Sometimes he had fifty pounds of butter at $5 per pound. Another time it might be 200 pounds of dried peas at 10 cents pound. Whatever it was we usually took all he had to sell, as it was a sim- pie matter to share it with our frienG FOOD FROM FRONT From one man we bought POO pounds of flour and the same quantity of sugar, each at $1 per pound. The huge sacks were brought to us through the streets by men disguised as soldiers, their mili- tary garb protecting them against mo- lestation 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 stol Sl from a soldiers hospital.
 l know of a German doctor at the head of big field hospital at the front whe sent an American friend in Berlin 50 pounds of beans. There is no ques- tion 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 hospital at Berlin but well enough to visit his fam fly occasionally was always asked by the officer commanding the hospital to de- liver 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 laundry it con tained a supply of all the delicacies which the recuperating soldiers needed and were not getting. Things had changed-the soldiers 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 coun- try and there, of course, it was much easier to evade the food control regula . tionS than in the cities. There they had practically everything they needed and thet used often to bring me presents of butter or delicacies-which I carefully locked away before beginning the con sutation.
 Some of the so-called delicacies ap- pear to me in very different light now. One patient from Dresden brought me. for instance, some sausage made from an elephant that had died in the Zoo! Another offered to sell me very cheap ham-$1. When it arrived it turned out to be half of pigs head, smoked, with the teeth. an eye and an ear very much in evidence.
 SAUSAGE FROM POLAND
 As rare treat l was able to buy some Polish sausage which I remember I ate with great relish Later on heard that in the town where my sausage was made the people were falling dead of starva- ton on the streets, which set me to wondering whether I had been exactly prudent in eating it.
 I bought leg of lamb which turned out to be goat and quantity of butter that I bought from speculator melted into an ill-smelling brown liquid. One was afraid not to take advantage of the offers made by speculators, but nine oinf RnnI