ed that potatoes could be had for a few days
without tickets, and the unsuspecting public at once ordered great
quantities.

The Agrarians thus got rid of all their bad potatoes to the mass of
the people. In many cases they were rotting so fast that the
purchaser had to bury them. It was found that they produced
illness when given to swine.

What other people in the world than the Germans would stand that?
But they did stand it. "These are only the early potatoes--the
main crop will be all right," said the profiteers right and left,
and gradually the masses began to echo them, as is usual in Germany.

Well, the main crop has been gathered, and Food Dictator von
Batocki is, according to the latest reports I hear from Germany,
unable to make the Agrarians put their potatoes upon the market
even at the maximum price set by the Food Commission.

They are holding back their supplies until they have forced up the
maximum price, just as a year ago many of them allowed their
potatoes to rot rather than sell them to the millions in the cities
at the price set by law.

Some Germans, mostly Social Democratic leaders, declare that since
their country is in a state of siege, the Government should, beyond
question, commandeer the supplies and distribute them, but just as
the industrial classes have, until quite recently, resisted war
taxes, so do the Prussian Junkers, by reason of their power in the
Reichstag, snap their fingers at any suggested fair laws for food
distribution.

The Burgomaster--usually a powerful person in Germany--is helpless.
When on September 1 the great house-to-house inventory of food
supplies was taken, burgomasters of the various sections of Greater
Berlin took orders from the people for the whole winter supply of
potatoes on special forms delivered at every house. Up to the time
I left, the burgomasters were unable to deliver the potatoes,

Any dupes of German propaganda who imagine that there is much
self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in Germany in this war
should disabuse their minds of that theory at once. While the poor
are being deprived of what they have, the purchases of pearls,
diamonds, and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never
before known in Germany.

One of the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria and in
Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold hunt, which is
clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, with the roaring trade
in jewelry in Berlin and Vie