The Iron Ration Part 22

XIV

SUBSISTING AT THE PUBLIC CRIB

To eat under government supervision is not pleasant. It is almost like taking the medicine which a physician has prescribed. You go to the food authorities of your district, prove that you are really the person you pretend to be, and thereby establish your claim to food, and after that you do your best to get that food.

Living at hotels, I was able to let others do the worrying. Each morning I would find at my door--provided n.o.body had stolen it--my daily ration of bread, of varying size--300 grams (10.5 ounces) in Germany, 240 grams (8.4 ounces) in Budapest, and 210 grams (7.3 ounces) in Vienna. At the front I fared better, for there my allowance was 400 grams (14 ounces) and often more if I cared to take it.

For the other eatables I also let the manager worry. That worry was not great, though, so long as the food "speak-easy" was in operation. The hotel could afford to pay good prices, and the patrons did not mind if the dishes were from 150 to 300 per cent. dearer than the law allowed.

The law, on the other hand, saw no reason why it should protect people who live in hotels--until it was seen that this policy was not wise on account of the heavy drafts it made on the scant stores. Whether a small steak costs 8 marks or 20 makes no difference to people who can afford to eat steak at 8 marks and lamb cutlets at 15. And to these people it also makes no difference whether they consume their legal ration or two such rations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE BREAD CARDS USED IN VIENNA AND LOWER AUSTRIA (transciption follows)]

Niederosterreich.

Tages-Ausweis uber den Verbrauch von 210 _g_ Brot Gultig nur am ---- 1915

Verkauf nur nach Gewicht gegen Vorlegung der Ausweiskarte und Abtrennung eines entsprechenden Abschnittes zula.s.sig.

Nicht ubertragbar!

Sorgfaltig aufbewahren!

Nachdruck verboten!

Strafbestimmungen. Zuwiderhandlungen werden an dem Verkaufer wie an dem Kaufer mit Geldstrafen bis zu 5000 K oder mit Arrest bis zu 6 Monaten geahndet. Bei einer Verurteilung kann auf den Verl.u.s.t einer Gewerbeberechtigung erkannt werden. Falschung der Ausweiskarte wird nach dem Strafgesetze bestraft.

K. k. n. o. Statthalterei.

Many months of war pa.s.sed before that element began to feel the war at all. But it had to come to that in the end.

Two people feeling the same degree of hunger are far better company than two who form opposite poles in that respect. Magnetic positive and negative never could be so repellent. Nor is this all one-sided. One would naturally expect that in such a case the underfed would harbor hard feelings toward the overfed. That is not always the case, however.

One day a lady belonging to Central Europe's old n.o.bility said to me:

"Well, it is getting worse every day. First they took my automobiles.

Now they have taken my last horses. Taxis and cabs are hard to get. I have to travel on the street-cars now. It is most annoying."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BREAD CARD ISSUED BY THE FOOD AUTHORITIES OF BERLIN (transciption follows)]

Nicht Nicht ubertragbar ubertragbar

Berlin und Nachbarorte.

Tages-Brotkarte

Nur gultig fur den ---- 1916

Ohne Ausfullung des Datums ungultig.

Ruckseite beachten!

I ventured the opinion that street-car travel was a tribulation. The cars were always overcrowded.

"It is not that," explained the lady. "It is the smell."

"Of the unwashed mult.i.tude?"

"Yes! And--"

"And, madame?"

"Something else," said the woman, with some embarra.s.sment.

"I take it that you refer to the odor that comes from underfed bodies,"

I remarked.

"Precisely," a.s.sented the n.o.ble lady. "Have you also noticed it?"

"Have you observed it recently?" I asked.

"A few days ago. The smell was new to me."

"Reminded you, perhaps, of the faint odor of a cadaver far off?"

The light of complete understanding came into the woman's eyes.

"Exactly, that is it. Do you know, I have been trying ever since then to identify the odor. But that is too shocking to think of. And yet you are right. It is exactly that. How do you account for it?"

"Malnutrition! The waste of tissue due to that is a process not wholly dissimilar to the dissolution which sets in at death," I explained.

I complimented the woman on her fine powers of discernment. The smell was not generally identified. I was familiar with it for the reason that I had my attention drawn to it first in South Africa among some underfed Indian coolies, and later I had detected it again in Mexico among starving peons.

"Good G.o.d!" exclaimed the lady, after a period of serious thought. "Have we come to that?"

I a.s.sured her that the situation was not as alarming as it looked. In the end the healthy const.i.tution would adjust itself to the shortage in alimentation. No fit adult would perish by it, though it would be hard on persons over fifty years of age. There could be no doubt that many of them would die of malnutrition before the war was over. Babies, also, would cease to live in large numbers if their diet had to be similarly restricted.

The smell had a repellent effect upon the woman. I met her many times after that and learned that it was haunting her. Her desire to keep it out of her palatial residence caused her to pay particular attention to the food of her servants. The case was most interesting to me. I had sat for days and nights in the trenches on Gallipoli, among thousands of unburied dead, and there was little that could offend my olfactory nerves after that, if indeed it had been possible before, seeing that I had for many weary months followed the revolutions in Mexico. Thus immune to the effects of the condition in question, I was able to watch closely a very interesting psychological phenomenon.

I found that it was torture for the woman to get near a crowd of underfed people. She began to shrink at their very sight.

"I take it that you fear death very much, madame," I said, one day.

"I dread the very thought of it," was the frank reply.

"But why should you?" I asked. "It is a perfectly natural condition."

"But an unjust one," came the indignant answer.

"Nothing in nature is unjust," I said. "Nature knows neither right nor wrong. If she did, she would either cease to produce food altogether for your people and state, or she would produce all the more--if war can be laid at the door of nature in arguments of right and wrong."