I do not wonder that those who passed the window--and they had to be counted in thousands--gained from it the impression that food would never be scarce in Germany. Farther on there was another meat-shop. Its owner did the same. Next door to him was a bakery. War-bread and rolls, cakes and pastry enough to feed a brigade, were constantly on exhibition. The fourth store sold groceries and what is known in Germany as _Dauerware_--food that has been preserved, such as smoked meat, sausages, and canned foods. The man was really doing his best. For a while he had as his "set piece" a huge German eagle formed of cervelat sausages each four feet long and as thick as the club of Hercules. I thought the things had been made of papier-mâché, but found that they were real enough.
But camouflage of that sort has its good purposes. Men are never so hungry as when they know that food is scarce.
The several state governments of Germany employ the ablest economic experts in the world. These men knew that in the end show would not do. The substance would then be demanded and would have to be produced if trouble was to be avoided. How to proceed was not a simple matter, however. From the food of the nation had to come the revenue of the government and the cost of the war. This had to be kept in mind.
The assertions of the Entente press that Germany would be starved into submission within six months had been amply ridiculed in the German newspapers. That was all very well. Everybody knew that it could not be done in six months, and my first survey of the food situation proved that it could not be done in a year. But what if the war lasted longer? Nothing had come of the rush on Paris. Hindenburg had indeed given the Russians a thorough military lesson at Tannenberg. But this and certain successes on the West Front were not decisive, as everybody began to understand. The Russians, moreover, were making much headway in Galicia, and so far the Austro-Hungarian army had made but the poorest of showings--even against the Serbs.
Thus it came that the replies in the German press to the Entente famine program caused the German public to take a greater interest in the food question. Propaganda and the application of ridicule have their value, but also their drawbacks. They are never shell-proof so far as the thinker is concerned, and ultimately will weaken rather than strengthen the very thing they are intended to defend.