“Although the crops were good this year, there will be so much organisation that food will spoil,” said practically every German.  Batocki’s method of confiscating food did cause a great deal to spoil and the public blamed him any time anything disappeared from the market.  One day a carload of plums was shipped from Werder, the big fruit district near Berlin, to the capital.  The “Z.  E. G.” confiscated it but did not sell the goods immediately to the merchants and the plums spoiled.  Before this was found out, a crowd of women surrounded the train one day, which was standing on a side track, broke into a car and found most of the plums in such rotten condition they could not be used.  So they painted on the sides of the car:  “This is the kind of plum jam the ‘Z.  E. G.’ makes.”

There was a growing scarcity of all other supplies, too.  The armies demanded every possible labouring man and woman so even the canning factories had to close and food which formerly was canned had to be eaten while fresh or it spoiled.  Even the private German family, which was accustomed to canning food, had to forego this practice because of a lack of tin cans, jars and rubber bands.

The food depots are by far the most successful undertaking of the Government.  In Cologne and Berlin alone close to 500,000 poor are being fed daily by municipal kitchens.  Last October I went through the Cologne food department with the director.  The city has rented a number of large vacant factory buildings and made them into kitchens.  Municipal buyers go through the country to buy meat and vegetables.  This is shipped to Cologne, and in these kitchens it is prepared by women workers, under the direction of volunteers.

A stew is cooked each day and sold for 42 pfennigs (about eight cents) a quart.  The people must give up their potato, fat and meat cards to obtain it.  In Berlin and all other large cities, the same system is used.  In one kitchen in Berlin, at the main market hall, 80,000 quarts a day are prepared.

In Cologne this food is distributed through the city streets by municipal wagons, and the people get it almost boiling hot, ready to eat.  Were it not for these food depots there would be many thousands of people who would starve because they could not buy and cook such nourishing food for the price the city asks.  These food kitchens have been in use now almost a year, and, while the poor are obtaining food here, they are becoming very tired of the supply, because they must eat stews every day.  They can have nothing fried or roasted.

In addition to these kitchens the Government has opened throughout Germany “mittlestand kueche,” a restaurant for the middle classes.  Here government employees, with small wages, the poor who do not keep house and others with little means can obtain a meal for 10 cents, consisting of a stew and a dessert.  But it is very difficult for people to live on this food.  Most every one who is compelled by circumstances to eat here is losing weight and feels under-nourished all the time.