The Iron Ration Part 25

Materials and labor for upkeep were hard to get at any time and were costly. Real property, moreover, suffered under the moratorium, while the constantly increasing taxes left little in the pocket of the owner to pay for repairs. As already stated, paint was hard to get. Exposed to the weather, the naked wood decayed. Nor were varnishes to be had for the protection of interior woodwork.

Many manufacturing plants had to be closed, first of all those which before the war had depended upon the foreign market. The entire doll industry, for instance, suspended work. In other branches of manufacture the closing-down was partial, as in the case of the textile-mills. Not alone had the buildings to be neglected in this instance, but a great deal of valuable machinery was abandoned to rust. As the stock of copper, tin, and bra.s.s declined the several governments requisitioned the metals of this sort that were found in idle plants and turned them over to the manufacturers of ammunition. While the owners were paid the price which these metals cost in the form of machinery parts and the like, the economic loss to the community was, nevertheless, heavy.

Farm implements and equipment also suffered much from inattention. Tens of thousands of horses perished at the fronts and almost every one of them meant a loss to some farm. The money that had been paid for them had usually been given back to the government in the form of taxes, so that now the farmer had lost his horse or horses in much the same manner as if some epidemic had been at work. Valuable draft and milk animals were requisitioned to provide meat for the armies. In certain districts the lack of vitriol had resulted in the destruction of vineyards and orchards.

To give a better picture of what this meant, I will cite the case of an acquaintance who is somewhat of a gentleman farmer near Coblentz, on the Rhine.

When the war broke out this man had in live stock: Five horses, eight cows, forty sheep, and a large stock of poultry. He also had several small vineyards and a fine apple orchard. In the winter of 1916-17 his stock had shrunk to two horses, two cows, no sheep, very little poultry, and no vineyard. The apple orchard was also dying from lack of Bordeaux mixture.

In January, 1917, I obtained some figures dealing with the wear and tear of war in the kingdom of Saxony. Applying them on a per-capita basis to all of the German Empire, I established that so far the war had caused deterioration amounting to $8,950,000,000, or $128 for each man, woman, and child. In Austria-Hungary the damage done was then estimated at $6,800,000,000.

These losses were due to absence from their proper spheres in the economic scheme of some 14,000,000 able-bodied men who had been mobilized for service in connection with the war. This vast army consumed at a frightful rate and produced very little now. To non-productive consumption had to be added the rapid deterioration due to all abandonment of upkeep. The Central states were living from hand to mouth and had no opportunity of engaging in that thorough maintenance which had been given so much attention before. All material progress had been arrested, and this meant that decay and rust got the upper hand.

XVI

THE ARMY TILLS

Men getting much physical exercise in the open air consume much more food than those confined. In cold weather such food must contain the heat which is usually supplied by fuel. All of which is true of the soldier in a greater degree. This, and the fact that in army subsistence, transportation and distribution are usually coupled with great difficulty, made it necessary for the Central Powers to provide their forces chiefly with food staples.

Before the war about 35 per cent. of the men mobilized had lived largely on cereals and vegetables. Little meat is consumed by the rural population of Central Europe. For the reasons already given, that diet had to make room for one composed of more concentrated and more heat-producing elements. Bread, meat, fats, and potatoes were its princ.i.p.al const.i.tuents. Beans, peas, and lentils were added as the supply permitted. In the winter larger quant.i.ties of animal fats were required to keep the men warm, and in times of great physical exertion the allowance of sugar had to be increased.

Since at first the army produced no food at all, the civil population had to produce what was needed. With, roughly, 42 per cent. of the soldiers coming from the food-producing cla.s.ses, this was no small task, especially since the more fitted had been called to the colors.

The governments of Central Europe realized as early as in the spring of 1915 that the army would have to produce at least a share of the food it needed. Steps were taken to bring that about. The war had shown that cavalry was, for the time being, useless. On the other hand, it was not good military policy to disband the cavalry organizations and turn them into artillery and infantry. These troops might be needed again sooner or later. That being the case, it was decided to employ mounted troops in the production of food. Fully 65 per cent. of the men in that branch of the military establishments of Central Europe came from the farm and were familiar with the handling of horses. That element was put to work behind the fronts producing food.

No totals of this production have ever been published, to my knowledge, so that I can deal only with what I actually saw. I must state, however, that the result cannot have been negligible, though on the whole it was not what some enthusiasts have claimed for it.

I saw the first farming of this sort in Galicia. There some Austro-Hungarian cavalry organizations had tilled, roughly, sixty thousand acres, putting the fields under wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes. When I saw the crops they were in a fair state of prosperity, though I understand that later a drought damaged them much. The colonel in charge of the work told me that he expected to raise food enough for a division, which should not have been difficult, seeing that three acres ought to produce food enough for any man, even if tilled in a slovenly way.

Throughout Poland and the parts of Russia then occupied the Germans were doing the same thing. What the quality of their effort was I have no means of knowing, but if they are to be measured by what I saw in France, during the Somme offensive in 1916, the results obtained must have been very satisfying.

One of the organizations then lying in the Bapaume sector was the German Second Guards Subst.i.tute-Reserve Division-- _Garde-Ersatz-Reserve-Division_. I think that the palm for war economy must be due that organization. In my many trips to various fronts (I have been on every front in Central Europe, the Balkan, Turkey, and Asia) and during my long stays there I have never seen a crowd that had made itself so much at home in the enemy country.

The body in question had then under cultivation some sixteen hundred acres of very good soil, on which it was raising wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, lentils, sugar-beets, roots of various sorts, and potatoes. It had made hay enough for its own draft animals and had sold a large quant.i.ty to neighboring divisions.

At Gommecourt the division operated a well-equipped modern dairy, able to convert into b.u.t.ter and cheese the milk of about six hundred cows.

Its output was large enough to supply the men in the trenches with all the b.u.t.ter and cheese they could reasonably expect. A large herd of pigs was kept by the division, and as General von Stein, the commander of the sector, now Prussian Minister of War, informed me at a table that offered the products of the division at a luncheon, the organization was then operating, somewhere near the actual firing-line, two water-mills, a large sugar-plant, and even a brewery. Coffee, salt, and a few other trifles were all the division received from the rear.

It was then the middle of August, so that I was able to see the results of what had been done by these soldier-farmers. I can state that soil was never put to better use. Cultivation had been efficiently carried out and the crops were exceedingly good.

One of the most vivid pictures I retain from that week in "h.e.l.l" shows several German soldiers plowing a field east of Bucquoi into which British sh.e.l.ls were dropping at the time. The sh.e.l.ls tore large craters in the plowed field, but with an indifference that was baffling the men continued their work. I have not yet been able to explain what was the purpose of this plowing in August, except to lay the knife at the root of the weeds; nor can I quite believe that this end justified exposing men and valuable animals. At any rate, the thing was done.

The case cited represents the maximum that was achieved in food production by any army organization, so far as I know. But that maximum was no mean thing. That division, at least, did not depend on the civil population for food.

Several trips through Serbia and Macedonia in the same year showed me what the German "economic" and occupation troops had done in those parts.

On the whole, the efforts at food production of the "economic"

troops--organization of older men barely fit for service in the firing-line--had not been fortunate. The plan had been to put as much soil under crops as was possible. For this purpose traction plows had been brought along and whole country sites had been torn up. Though the soil of the valleys of Serbia is generally very rich, and the climate one of the best for farming, the crops raised in that year were far from good. Some held that it was due to the seed, which had been brought from Germany. Others were of the opinion that the plowing had been carelessly done, leaving too much leeway to the weeds. Be that as it may, the work of the economic companies was not a success.

The occupation troops did much better, however. Together with the Serbian women they had cultivated the fields on the intensive principle.

Yields had been good, I was told.

In Macedonia the fields had also been put to use by the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Bulgars. The last named, familiar with the cultivation of the tobacco plant, were exchanging with the others tobacco for grain. Food production was also attempted by the Austro-Hungarians on the Isonzo front. But since they were fighting on their own territory in districts which still had their civil population, there was little opportunity, all the less since the soil of the Carso and Bainsizza plateaus, and the mountainous regions north of them, is not suited for agriculture on a large scale. Every _doline_--funnel-shaped depression--of the Carso had its garden, however, whence the army drew most of the vegetables it consumed.

The food that was being raised for the army never reached the interior, of course. If an organization produced more than what it consumed, and such cases were extremely rare, it sold the surplus to the army commissaries. It took men and time to cultivate the fields, and these could not always be spared, especially when the losses in men were beginning to be severely felt and when the opponent engaged in offensives. It had meanwhile become necessary to throw, several times a year, divisions from one front to another, and that, too, began to interfere with the scheme, since the men no longer took the interest in the crops they had taken when they were established in a position.

I spent considerable time with the Ninth German Army operating against the Roumanians late in the fall of 1916. Much booty in food fell into the hands of that organization, among it some eleven hundred thousand tons of wheat and other grains.

Bread was bad and scarce in the Central states. When it became known that so large a quant.i.ty of breadstuff had fallen in the hands of the Centralist troops, people in Berlin and Vienna already saw some of it on their tables--but only in their minds. Falkenhayn and Mackensen issued orders that not a pound of breadstuff was to be taken from the war zone they had established, which comprised all of Roumania occupied, Transylvania, and the Dobrudja district. Nor could other food be exported to the Central civilian population. Whatever was found in the conquered territory was reserved for the use of the troops that had been employed, and the surplus was a.s.signed to the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian commissaries-general.

The quant.i.ties taken, however, were large, and six months later, when all needs of the armed forces had been met, the civilian populations were remembered so far as it was prudent to do so. To give that population too much might have resulted in a lessening of production at home, and that was something which could not be invited.

This policy was followed always. I know of no instance in which it was abandoned, even when the clamor for bread at home was loudest. The army came first in all things, much in the manner of the driver of a team of mules.

But it was not selfishness alone that gave rise to this policy. It served no good purpose to ship into the interior food that would later be needed by the troops. That merely increased the burden of the railroads, first by the transport of the booty homeward, and later by shipping back food as the troops needed it. Keeping the food where it was found obviated this traffic entirely.

On the whole, the Centralist troops never fared poorly in subsistence.

It had become necessary to reduce the bread ration from 500 grams (18 ounces) to 400 grams (14 ounces) per day, but this was made good by increasing the meat and fat ration. Enough to eat was the surest way of keeping the war popular with the soldiers.

Since it is very easy to exaggerate the value of food production due to the army, I will state here specifically that this production took care of little more than what the men consumed in excess over their former diet. Their normal consumption was still borne by the civilian population, and, as the losses on the battle-field increased, and the reserves had to be employed oftener, food production in the army fell rapidly, though at present this condition appears to be discounted by the food produced in Roumania, Serbia, and Poland. The area involved is large, of course, but the surplus actually available is not great. The population of these territories has dwindled to old men, boys, and women, and their production is barely able to meet actual needs. The little that can be extracted from these people does not go very far in the subsistence of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. These countries have together a population of, roundly, one hundred and fifteen millions to-day, of which not less than ten million of the best producers are under the colors, thereby causing a consumption in food and _materiel_ that is at least one-third greater than normal--munitions and ammunition not included.

But the army had much to do with food in other directions. It controlled inter-allied exports and imports and was a power even in trade with the neutrals of Europe.

The relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey were essentially military. They were this to such an extent that they almost overshadowed even the diplomatic services of these countries. For the time being, the _Militarbevollmachtigte_--military plenipotentiary--as the chief communication officer was known, eclipsed often the diplomatic plenipotentiary. Militarism was absolute. The civil government and population had no right which the military authorities need respect.

All commercial exchange pa.s.sed into the hands of these military plenipotentiaries. The diplomatic service might reach an agreement for the exchange of food against manufactured articles, but finally the military saw to it that it was carried out. They bought and shipped, and received in turn the factory products that were the _quid pro quo_ for the food and raw material thus secured.

In Roumania, so long as she was neutral, the _Einkaufstelle_--purchasing bureau--was indeed in the hands of civilians. As a neutral, Roumania could not permit German and Austro-Hungarian officers to be seen in the streets in their uniforms. They were, for all that, members of the army. For the time being, they wore mufti, nor did their transactions show that they were working directly for the army. The food that was bought was intended for the civilian population, naturally. But it has always been hard to keep from any army that which it may need. The same sack of wheat may not go to the military commissaries, but what difference will it make so long as it releases for consumption by the army a like quant.i.ty of home-grown cereals?

The German and Austro-Hungarian purchasing bureaus in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similarly organized. Many members of their staffs are indeed civilians, but that does not change anything, since all shipments of food entering Central Europe fall immediately under the control of the government Food Commissions, if not under that of the military commissaries direct.

To the military, then, the Central states civilian population had to look for such food as could be imported.

There was the case of Bulgaria. That country is still essentially an agricultural state. Of the five and a half million inhabitants fully 90 per cent. engage in farming and animal industry. The products of the soil const.i.tute the major portion of Bulgaria's exports. That meant that she could ease to some extent the food shortage in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

An acquaintance of mine, a Captain Westerhagen, formerly a banker in Wall Street, was in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. He bought whatever was edible--wheat, rye, barley, peas, beans, potatoes, b.u.t.ter, eggs, lard, pork, and mutton. His side lines were hides, wool, flax, mohair, hay, and animal feed-stuffs.

Indirectly, he was also an importer. Under his surveillance were brought into Bulgaria the manufactured goods Bulgaria needed, such as iron and steel products in the form of farm implements, farm machinery, building hardware, small hardware, and general machinery, gla.s.sware, paper products, instruments, surgical supplies, railroad equipment, medicines, and chemicals generally.

When the German army needed none of the food Captain Westerhagen bought, the civilian population was the beneficiary of his efforts. The fact is that my acquaintance bought whatever he could lay hands on. Now and then he bought so much that the Bulgarians began to feel the pinch. In that event the Bulgarian general staff might close down on the purchasing central for a little while, with the result that the Germans would shut down on their exports. It was a case of no food, no factory products.

This sort of reciprocity led often to hard feeling--situations which Colonel von Ma.s.sow, the German military plenipotentiary at Sofia, found pretty hard to untangle. But, on the whole, the arrangement worked smoothly enough.

It was so in Turkey.

The Germans had in Constantinople one of their most remarkable men--and here I must throw a little light on German-Ottoman relations. The name of this remarkable man--remarkable in capacity, energy, industry, and far-sightedness--is Corvette-Captain Humann, son of the famous archeologist who excavated Pergamum and other ancient cities and settlements in Asia Minor.