The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-09-15

pite restrictions and official edicts. | ilourlshes exceedingly. with it's Caudv and material Eaiety, made possible by gambling dens. dancing palaces. cab arets, bars, and-"grill rooms ms''-where the only suggestion of the appropri-
 ateness of the name is in the torrid atmOsphereI
 Gambling has seized hold of Berlin's gilded age and youth to a terrible ex- tenJ5 the dcns, where bacCarat most ly Is played, arc secret places known only to the initiated. for the watch fitness of the authorities makes Tibet Iu exclusivencss necessary But they ! exist by hundreds, and really uube- l lievable amounts of money are won and lost nightly.
 No, in all those things Berlin has
 not changed much. And crowds of peo-
 pie still watch and follow the soldiers as they march through the streets Fritz in uniform has certainly smart encd up since he came back to Der
 lin nine months ago, beaten, weary.
 footsore, but revolutionary.
 The New Army.
 The army has. indeed. lost much of it's ''Color;" the once prcruresqueYv uniformed officer Is now hard to dis ! tinguish from his men; the men, we'll l clad and equipped, look infinitely more worSmanlike than they did some months ago. But it is quite another army-you can see that plain enough And the numerous placards appeal | ing for volunteers suggest a difficulty in obtaining recruits or in persuading men to rejoin.
 When you can buy matches-very
 bad ones at cents a boX-from a
 man who, still in shabby feldgrau, was once in one of the famous Guard regiments. then you recognize how far war has broken and reduced a na- ton, once so great and formidable. All along the street you will find many of his one-time comrades selling all sorts of things; here are a few of the things and the prices, taken at A Packet of Woodbines ... 5 A. Half bar of Sunlight Soap .. $2.25. 1 1-2 bar of Dutch chocolate Q. S1.75. These street hawkers do a fairly good business; it Is illegal business, of course, but then the once-dreaded autocrat of the streets, the policeman, ! has disappeared almost completely. This street hawking on a large scale | brings you near to the great changed | Germany.
 1 Round in Unter den Linden it is l the world of wealth you see, the peo- | pie who, having the money, can ob- | tain almost anything. But it is in | FriedriChstrasse that one meets the i vanguard of starving, broken Germany the poor hawking or lounging in | the streets, the bourgeoisie in the Offi- | ces and shops.
 | Both sections are starving badly, ! and their ranks being thinned ter ribly by death.
 l The other evening I walked along | FriedriChstrasse; in tho course of a ! quarter of an hour-it was a pleasant | evening after a day during which the | heat had been by no means great-I | saw four people fall down and faint | That speaks as plainly as do the fol- | lowing statistics regarding Berlin. | 1913-Number of births .... 4O,S33 l 1913-Number of deaths .... 2S,067 | 1917-Number of births .... 1S,725 | 1q17-Number of deaths .... 34,I22 |, CThe figures concern only the civ | ilian pOpulation.)
 Go into the quarters of the city | where those two classes live You will | find that rations are less satisfac- tory now than ever. The bourgoisie is, | I think, more heavily hit by circum- | stances than the working classes The | latter often have the benefit of spe-
 cial rations for "heavy work their | expenditure is naturally less than that
 of the middle classes, whom, in Ger 1 many as elsewhere, everything con | spires against.
 Secret Purchase of Food. | know a family of three winch, be-
 fore the war, lived well inside S1,50O
 q. year; it now spends that on food
 alone, though exercising the greatest | economy, $500. That family is, like
 many others, entrencing on It's capi-
 tai and that cannot last long.
 Tea, sugar. butter and all the com | mon 'necessaries of life'' have to be l purchased secretly at something like 1 twelve times their pre-war cost-or
 have to be done without. There Is no