those who have stored quantities of food
for the "siege," every German is undernourished. A great many people
are starving. The head physician of the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria
Hospital, in Berlin, stated that 80,000 children died in Berlin in 1916
from lack of food. The _Lokal-Anzeiger_ printed the item and the
Foreign Office censor prohibited me from sending it to New York.

But starvation under the blockade is a slow process, and it has not yet
reached the army. When I was on the Somme battlefields last November
and in Rumania in December the soldiers were not only well fed, but
they had luxuries which their families at home did not have. Two years
ago there was so much food at home the women sent food boxes to the
front. To-day the soldiers not only send but carry quantities of food
from the front to their homes. The army has more than the people.

It is almost impossible to say whether Germany, as a nation, can be
starved into submission. Everything depends upon the next harvest, the
length of the war and future military operations. The German
Government, I think, can make the people hold out until the coming
harvest, unless there is a big military defeat. In their present
undernourished condition the public could not face a defeat. If the
war ends this year Germany will not be so starved that she will accept
any peace terms. But if the war continues another year or two Germany
will have to give up.

I entered Germany at the beginning of the Allied blockade when one
could purchase any kind and any quantity of food in Germany. Two years
later, when I left, there were at least eighteen foodstuffs which could
not be purchased anywhere, and there were twelve kinds of food which
could be obtained only by government cards. That is what the Allied
blockade did to the food supplies. It made Germany look like a grocery
store after a closing out sale.

Suppose in the United States you wanted the simplest breakfast--coffee
and bread and butter. Suppose you wanted a light luncheon of eggs or a
sandwich, tea and fruit. Suppose for dinner you wanted a plain menu of
soup, meat, vegetables and dessert. At any grocery or lunch counter
you could get not only these plain foods, but anything else you wanted.

Not so in Germany! For breakfast you cannot have pure coffee, and you
can have only a very small quantity of butter with your butter card.
Hotels serve a coffee substitute, but most people prefer nothing. F