Amateur Starvers Keep Out of View in Germany, Ernest Hemingway
Amateur Starvers Keep Out of View in Germany
Tourists See No Hunger or Distress Except That Shown by Professional Beggars—Middle Classes With Fixed Income Are the Real Sufferers.
GERMAN POLICE SALUTE BRITISH RIGIDLY
The following is the eighth of a series of articles by Ernest M. Hemingway, staff correspondent of The Star, on the Franco-German situation.
By ERNEST M. HEMINGWAY. Special to The Star.
Cologne, April 27.—Traveling on fast trains, stopping at the hotels selected for him by the Messrs. Cook, usually speaking no language but his own, the tourist sees no suffering in Europe.
If he comes to Germany, even traveling quite extensively, he will see no suffering. There are no beggars. No horrible examples on view. No visible famine sufferers nor hungry children that besiege railway stations.
The tourist leaves Germany wondering what all this starving business is about. The country looks prosperous. On the contrary in Naples he has seen crowds of ragged, filthy beggars, sore-eyed children, a hungry looking horde. Tourists see the professional beggars, but they do not see the amateur starvers.
For every ten professional beggars in Italy there are a hundred amateur starvers in Germany. An amateur starver does not starve in public.
On the contrary no one knows the amateur is starving until they find him. They usually find him in bed. Every hungry person does not walk the streets after a certain length of time. It sharpens that feeling that is dulled by bed. In writing of amateur starvers no reference is meant to the inhabitants of bread lines, soup kitchens or rescue missions. They have violated their strictly amateur standing.
Amateur Starvers.
A few case histories of amateur starvers are appended.
No. 1: Frau B. is the widow of the owner of an apothecary shop, who died before the war. She has a yearly income of 26,400 marks, the interest on mortgages. Before the war this yielded $100 a week. Her 29-year-old daughter is suffering from lung trouble and cannot work. Her 21-year-old son passed the final examination at the grammar school, but cannot go to the university, and is earning his living as a miner. Another 13-year-old is in school. The family was formerly very well-to-do. To-day their income for one year is the minimum for the existence of a family of four persons for a period of two weeks.
No. 2: The married couple P., 64 years old, who have been blind for the last ten years, receive from their capital, which they earned by hard work, an income of 3,400 marks a year. They were formerly able to live comfortably on this income. To-day it represents half a week’s wages of an unskilled laborer.
No. 3: Frau B., widow of an architect, is obliged to live with her two children of 9 and 6 years on a yearly income of 2,400 marks. This represents less than two days’ earnings of a laborer.
No. 4: The married couple K. receive 500 marks a month from the rent of their house. The husband, formerly a farmer, is suffering from heart trouble. A short time ago he was in bed a number of weeks as a result of poisoning. For six months the wife has been almost completely paralyzed. The medicines necessary to their illness cost more than their income. In normal times the income derived from the rent would have afforded these people a comfortable existence.
No. 5: The widow H., 48 years old, has four children, three of whom still attend school. She has a capital of 100,000 marks. This gives her 15,000 marks yearly. On this the family can live for one week.
Not Exceptional Cases.
These cases are not exceptional or isolated. They are typical of the situation of these people in the middle class in Germany who are dependent on a fixed income from savings. Neither are they German propaganda cases. All are taken from an appeal for the starving of Cologne signed by Mr. J. I. Piggott, commissioner, the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, and Mr. D. W. P. Thurston, C.M.C., H. M. consul general, Cologne.
Cologne itself looks prosperous. The shop windows are brilliant. Streets are clean. British officers and men move smartly along through the crowds. The green uniformed German police salute the British officers rigidly.
In the evening the brilliant red or the dark blue of the officer’s formal mess kit that is compulsory for those officers who live in Cologne, colors the drab civilian crowds. Outside in the street German children dance on the pavement to music that comes from the windows of the ball room of the officers’ club.
Coming down the broad flood of the Rhine on a freight boat from Wiesbaden through the gloomy brown hills with their ruined castles, that look exactly like the castles in gold fish bowls, in 14 hours on the river, we only passed 15 loaded coal barges. All were flying the French flag.
Last September, in an express passenger boat, we passed an endless succession of them moving up the river toward the canal mouth that would take them, by a network of quiet waterways, to feed the Lorraine furnaces. Then France was getting the hundreds of barges of coal as part of German reparation payment. Now the fifteen barges we passed were part of the thin stream of coal that trickles out of the Ruhr through the mazes of arrested industry and military occupation.
The End
