* * * * *

With regard to the other crops, rye is good; beets look good, but are believed to be deficient in sugar owing to the absence of South American fertilisers; wheat is fairly good; oats extremely good, and barley also excellent.  The Germans have boasted to the neutral visitor that their artificial nitrates are just as good fertilisers as those imported from South America.  It is true that they do very well for most crops when the weather is damp.  But beets, strangely enough, require the genuine Chilean saltpetre to produce their maximum of sugar.  The failure to get this, plus the use of sugar in munition making, accounts for the dearth of that commodity among the civilian population.

In order that nothing shall be wasted, the Government decreed this year that the public should be allowed to scavenge the fields after the harvest had been gathered, and this was a source of some benefit to those residing near the great centres of population.

Schoolmasters were also ordered to teach the children the need of gathering every sort of berry and nut.

Passing along an English hedgerow the other day, and seeing it still covered with withered blackberries, I compared them with the bare brambles which I saw in Germany from which all berries have gone to help the great jam-making business which is to eke out the gradually decreasing butter and margarine supply.  Sickness and death have resulted from mistakes made, not only in gathering berries, but in gathering mushrooms and other fungi, which have been keenly sought.

It is safe to say that the Germans are leaving no stone unturned to avoid the starvation of the Seven Years’ War.  The ingenuity of the chemists in producing substitutes was never greater.  One of the most disagreeable foods I have tasted was bread made of straw.  Countless experiments have been made in the last year to adapt straw to the human stomach, but although something resembling bread has been produced, it contains almost no nourishment and results in illness.

People who reside in the cities and carefully shepherded visiting neutrals, who do not go into the country, have little notion of the terrific effort being put forward to make the fruits of Mother Earth defeat the blockade, and above all to extract any kind of oil from anything that grows.

Here is one notice:—­

  HOW THE CIVIL POPULATION CAN HELP IN THE WAR.

  Our enemies are trying to exhaust us, but they
  cannot succeed if every one
  does his duty.

  OIL is a Necessity.

You can help the Fatherland if you plant poppies, castor plant, sunflowers.  In addition to doing important work for the Fatherland you benefit yourself because the price for oil is high.

I may say that the populace have responded.  Never have I seen such vast fields of poppies, sunflowers, rape plant, and other oleaginous crops.  Oil has been extracted from plum-stones, cherry-stones, and walnuts.