Chapter II: Part 2

The sugar card varies, but one gets about 1¾ pounds of sugar each month. At preserving time people are given extra sugar and saccharine on the grocery card. The potato card varies. First it was seven pounds a week for each person, then it was reduced to five and then to three, and then it was raised to five again. This was the only card on which we sometimes did not get our allowance, and when there were not enough potatoes for the cards we could get extra bread on our potato card. At first some of the potato cards were red and others blue. The red cards were good on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and the blue ones were good on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Now no potatoes are allowed to be put into the bread.

The egg card came in the summer of 1916, and for a long time afterward it was possible to get all the eggs you wanted in restaurants without a card, but now one must have a card there as well, even if you order an omelet or an _Eierkuchen_, a pancake of which the Germans are very fond.

The _Lebensmittel_ or "grocery" card is a very important card, and it is for buying such things as noodles, rice, barley, oatmeal, macaroni, white cornmeal and cheese. Then they have other cards for buying oil, saccharine, matches, sardines and smoked fish. Fresh fish is without a card. Each week the stores have numbers hanging up in their windows telling what can be bought that week, like "Rice on Number 13" or a "Pudding on Number 6." It is also printed in the newspapers and on the advertising posts, and sometimes you must be registered for the things and can buy them only in a certain store.

On the first soap cards, you could get every month a cake of toilet soap, a cake of laundry soap and some soap powder, but now one can get only 50 grams of either kind of soap and 250 grams of soap powder each month. Soap was one of the hardest things to get, and a cake of real soap sells from five to ten marks a cake. We never thought of taking a bath with soap but used it only on our faces. They have what they call "War Soap," and it can be used on the hands, but if it drops on your dress it leaves a white spot. If you want to give a real swell present to any one in Germany just send a cake of soap.

I always said that when coffee came to an end in Germany the Germans would be ready to make any kind of a peace. How could a German live without coffee? But last summer the coffee gave out and instead of complaining they took to drinking _Kaffee-Ersatz_, or "coffee substitute," with the same passion that they had lavished on real coffee. It is the most horrible stuff any one ever tasted with the exception of the substitute they have for tea, but the Germans say they like it. They have cards for _Kaffee-Ersatz_, and each person gets a half pound a month.

In the cafés in the summer of 1916 they were still serving real coffee with milk and sugar. Then suddenly the waiters commenced asking the patrons if they wished their coffee black or with cream, and then later they asked if you wanted the coffee sweet, and so they brought it, putting in sugar and milk themselves. A little later you did not get sugar but two little pieces of saccharine were served, and now they have a liquid sweet stuff that is used. They do not serve real coffee any more, but most restaurants still serve milk. The famous _Kaffee mélange_, or coffee with whipped cream, was forbidden at the beginning of the war.

When I left Germany they had no beer or tobacco cards, but there was talk about them. The beer restaurants receive only a certain amount of beer each day, and when this is gone the people must wait until the next day. Most beer halls serve only two glasses to each person. In Munich, because of the shortage of beer, some of the beer halls do not open until 6 o'clock at night, and at 4 o'clock the Müncheners gather at the doors with their mugs in their hands, patiently waiting. Sometimes they knock the mugs against the doors to a tune. Munich without beer is a very sad sight!

In Berlin some of the restaurants will serve beer only to people who can get chairs, but this does not faze the clever Berliners, and when they want their beer they bring camp stools with them, and then they are sure to have a seat. It is forbidden to make certain kinds of fine beers because they take too much malt and sugar. None of the beer is as good as in times of peace, but the Germans have forgotten the delicacies of the past, and they live in the food ideals of the present, and they smack their lips and say, "Isn't the beer fine to-night?"

From August 1916 until March 1917 it was forbidden to sell canned vegetables. They were being saved up for the spring months. The store windows were decorated with glass jars filled with the most wonderful kinds of peas, beans and asparagus. I always felt like smashing the window and stealing the stuff, but the Germans only looked at it admiringly and said, "It will be fine when the vegetables are freed."

Everything on the cards is at a set price, and the dealers don't dare to charge one cent more; even the prices of some things not on the cards are regulated. For instance, this spring no one could charge more than one mark a pound for cherries, and many of the cafés had to cut their cake prices. The police got after Kranzler, the famous cake house, and it had to reduce all its cakes to twenty pfennigs each.

When I was in Dresden in May, 1917, I ate elephant meat. An elephant got hurt in the Zoo and had to be killed. A beer restaurant bought his meat for 7000 marks, and it was served with sauerkraut to the public without a card at 1.30 marks. It tasted like the finest kind of chopped meat, and the restaurant was packed as long as the elephant lasted.

The food question is not the same all over Germany, and in Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and Leipsic they have less than in other places. Bavaria, the Rhine Country and East Prussia are far better off, and in some of the small villages they do not even have a bread card.

One of the hardest things to get is candy. In Berlin one can buy chocolate for sixteen marks a pound, but in Dresden it is very cheap because it is bought on the card. The candy is bought on the grocery card and one gets a half pound every two weeks. Candy lines are the only kind of lines that one sees now in Germany.

One card I forgot to mention is the coal card that will be issued for the coming winter. There is no scarcity of coal, but there are no people or cars for delivering. The people will be given three-fourths as much coal as they formerly consumed.

In times of peace eating in a German restaurant was notoriously cheap, and one could get a menu of soup, meat, potatoes and dessert for 90 pfennigs, and in Munich for 80 pfennigs. Now these same restaurants charge 1.75 marks, that is, twice as much; but even then food is cheaper than in America. Before the war some of the restaurants charged extra if you did not order anything to drink, but this is now done away with.

Anything can be bought without a card if you know how to do it. The government tries in every way to stop this selling, and although the fine is very heavy for selling _ohne Karte_, it goes on just the same. We always managed to get things without a card. Our janitress got coffee for us at 9.25 marks a pound, our vegetable woman gave us extra potatoes, and we could always get eggs. On the card an egg cost 30 pfennigs and without a card we paid anywhere from 50 pfennigs to 1 mark. The hardest thing to get without a card was sugar, for the food commission has an iron hand on the sugar, but we got it for 2.50 marks a pound. On the card it was 30 pfennigs a pound. It is said that butter could be bought for nine marks a pound without the card, but we never tried to get it.

The police sees that every one gets his share of food. If a woman holds a servant girl's rations from her, the girl can report it to the police and the woman is fined. In a boarding-house when the potatoes are passed around the landlady tells you whether you can take two or three potatoes, or one big potato and one small potato. The food conditions are not always comfortable, but the food commission has the things divided off so they will last for years.

WHAT WE ATE IN GERMANY.

Reading over the food restrictions, one does not get a very clear idea of what we really ate in Germany, so I have made out a menu that was possible in the month of April, 1917. April is, of course, one of the hardest months of the year because it is just before the green vegetables come in and the winter supplies are gone. In this month, however, we could buy canned goods which were forbidden during the winter months, and each person was allowed two and one-half pounds of canned goods a week.

The menu as I have written it includes only things which are bought on a card or without a card, but no restricted food that has been bought underhand without a card as everybody does. It does not include any of the expensive articles like chicken, goose, or fresh vegetables which the better middle class have, and it does not include the canned vegetables, fruit and meat which all German families have in their supply cupboard.

When we kept house, we obtained many things from friends, and when my mother came back from a trip to America, she brought with her forty pounds of meat, bacon, ham and sausage, eighteen pounds of butter, sugar, coffee, canned milk, chocolate, rice and flour. Some of this she bought in Denmark, and the rest she brought over from America. In January, 1917, I made a trip to Belgium, and while the Germans were allowed to take only ten pounds of food out of Belgium we had special permits, and I brought back a lot of food. Most people had crooked ways of getting things, and we were all as crooked as we had a chance to be.

Nothing was allowed to be sent from Poland to Germany, but a Polish girl I knew made a trip home to Warsaw, and going over the frontier she made "a hit" with the man that takes up the "louse tickets." You cannot go from Warsaw to Berlin unless you show a ticket stating that you are not lousy. The girl's mother in Warsaw sent the "louse soldier" the food, and he relayed it to Berlin. Once the soldier came to Berlin on a furlough and he called on the Polish girl. He was an awful-looking specimen, but he was served the finest kind of a dinner.

In April we still had 1900 grams of bread, but I have made out the menu with 1600 grams as it is now. Sixteen hundred grams of bread is 32 slices of 50 grams each, but I have allowed five slices of bread a day, for the bread at supper was always cut thin and often weighed only 40 grams. Most families weighed the bread for each person and then every one got his share. People who ate in restaurants always watched their bread rations, for the waiters were liable to bring short weights. If you were in doubt whether you were getting enough in a restaurant, you could demand to have the bread weighed before you. This sometimes stirred up a lot of trouble, and rows often occurred.

We had five pounds of potatoes a week. This makes 2500 grams, and in the menu I have allowed 300 grams of potatoes seven times a week. As this makes only 2100 grams, this leaves 400 grams for the peelings. The omelet for Monday's menu could be made out of real eggs, but the pancakes for Sunday would have to be made out of egg substitute.

As we had 750 grams of meat a week, I have allowed 130 grams four times a week which makes 520 grams, and this leaves 230 grams for sausage. _Graupen_ that I have mentioned is a large coarse barley, and when I say turnips I mean what they call _Kohlrüben_--we sometimes call it rutabaga. We ate this vegetable constantly during the spring of 1917. Most people hated it, but it was fine for filling up space. Dogs were fed almost entirely on it. When I was in Dresden I went to the Zoo, and there they had packages of carrots and _Kohlrüben_ for sale for feeding the monkeys. The monkeys were hungry and they gobbled up the carrots, but they absolutely refused to eat the _Kohlrüben_, and when they were handed a piece they threw it down in disgust.

This menu was typical of the German pension or boarding-house, where the landlady stayed well within the limit of the cards because the things on the cards were cheap. For breakfast we always had the same things--coffee substitute, two pieces of bread, four times a week two pieces of sugar, and three times saccharine, four times a week butter and three times marmalade. Even in peace times Germans eat only coffee and rolls for breakfast. At 11 o'clock they have a second breakfast, and this consisted sometimes of oatmeal with salt and once in a while a piece of bread with jam, then they could not have so much for supper. In the afternoon at 4 o'clock they always have coffee substitute and cake, generally made without eggs or butter and sometimes without flour, using oatmeal or white cornmeal for flour.

DINNER SUPPER

MONDAY

Bouillon. 3 pieces of bread.
300 grams of potatoes, 62½ grams of sausage.
scalloped with mushrooms Omelet. Asparagus.
and milfix. Pickles. Lard instead of butter.
Carrot salad. Tea or beer.
White cornmeal with fruit
juice.
Wine.

TUESDAY

Brown flour soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of beef. 300 grams of potatoes.
300 grams of potatoes. Dried fish. Stewed onions.
Canned beans. Cake. Tea. Beer. Marmalade.
Wine.

WEDNESDAY

Noodle soup. 3 pieces of bread.
Fish. 62½ grams of sausage.
300 grams of potatoes. 300 grams of potatoes.
Fried turnips. Graupen with bouillon.
Gelatine. Radishes. Butter.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

THURSDAY

Onion soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of veal. Bouillon.
Rice. Canned peas. Canned spinach with 1 egg.
Cake. Radishes.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

FRIDAY

Vegetable soup. 3 pieces of bread.
Graupen with stewed fruit. 300 grams of potatoes.
Asparagus. Sardines.
Chocolate pudding. Vegetable salad. Butter.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

SATURDAY

Asparagus soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of pork. Macaroni and cheese.
300 grams of potatoes. Turnip salad.
Stewed dried apples. Marmalade.
Pudding. Pickles.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

SUNDAY

Plum soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of beef. Bouillon.
300 grams of potatoes. Egg pancake filled with cranberries.
Turnips. Butter. Radishes.
Lemon pudding. Tea. Beer.
Wine.

Since the war many war cook-books have been printed, and these books contain recipes for dishes that can be made with things now obtainable in Germany. Some of these recipes are very good, and some of them are simply awful. I will give you some of the most used and popular ones.

BEER SOUP.

2 quarts of beer brought to a boil.
1 egg well beaten.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Flour to thicken.
Boil and serve hot.

PLUM SOUP.

½ pound of plums boiled in a quart of water and strained.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
½ cup of oatmeal.
Boil and serve cold.

APPLE SOUP.

3 cups of apple sauce sweetened.
2 bouillon cubes.
3 cups of water.
Boil and serve hot.
(Pear soup is made in the same way.)

ONION SOUP.

6 large onions boiled and put through a colander.
2 bouillon cubes.
1 quart of water.
Flour to thicken.
Boil and serve hot.

POTATO AND CABBAGE PUDDING.
(This is used as a meat substitute.)

1 head of cabbage boiled thirty minutes.
6 sliced potatoes.
Boil all together until soft.

1 teaspoonful of lard, heat and add flour until a brown gravy is
made. Add salt and pepper. Stir into potatoes and cabbage and
serve hot.

BAKED VEGETABLES.

½ head cabbage.
½ rutabaga sliced.
4 potatoes sliced.
2 bouillon cubes, flour thickening and seasoning.
Mix together and bake in oven for one hour.

STUFFED CABBAGE.

1 head of cabbage boiled one-half hour.
1 cup of chopped meat fried in fat.
Quarter the cabbage, scooping out the heart.
Fill the space with meat.
Bake in an oven ten minutes and serve hot.

CUCUMBERS WITH MUSTARD SAUCE.

3 large cucumbers halved lengthwise and boiled.
1 quart of water boiled with mustard to taste and thickened with
flour--sweetened.
Pour the mustard sauce into a deep dish and lay the hot cucumbers
on top.

POTATO DUMPLINGS WITH STEWED FRUIT.

6 large raw potatoes grated.
1 egg or 2 egg substitute powders.
1 cup bread grated and browned.
Add enough flour to thicken and form into dumplings.
Boil for half an hour.
Serve with hot stewed fruit--peaches, apples, apricots or plums.

DROP CAKES WITHOUT EGGS, SUGAR OR MILK.

½ cup walnut meats.
2 egg substitutes.
½ cup milk substitute.
½ teaspoonful saccharine.
1 tablespoonful baking powder.
1 cup flour.
Add a little cinnamon. Bake as drop cakes.
Flour the baking pan instead of greasing it.

OAT MEAL CAKES.

1 egg.
½ cup milk substitute.
½ teaspoonful saccharine.
Oatmeal to thicken.
1 tablespoonful baking powder.
Beat together and bake as drop cakes.

RAISIN BREAD.

½ cake yeast.
1 cup potato water.
2 tablespoonfuls of raisins.
1 pound of flour.
Set sponge at night and bake one hour.

HOW BERLIN IS AMUSING ITSELF IN WAR TIME.

When war was first declared all the theaters and amusement places in Berlin were closed, and it was not until after Christmas of that year that they were opened again. Now everything is open except the dance halls, for dancing is prohibited during the war. The famous resort "Palais de Danse" is closed up and its outside is all covered with posters asking for money for the Red Cross.

The theaters in Berlin are very well attended. As many times as I went to the opera, which was quite often, every seat in the house was taken. The greater part of every audience are soldiers who are glad to spend some portion of their furloughs forgetting the horrors of war and life in the trenches. The operas are as brilliant as before the war, but many of the young stage favorites are missing, for even the matinee idol must take his turn at the front. Several of the popular actors have been killed.

One can always hear the French and Italian operas, and at concerts the music of the great Russian composers. They do not prohibit the music of enemy composers, and one can hear Verdi, Mascagni and Gounod. However, "Madame Butterfly" and "Bohème" were never given to my knowledge. I do not know whether it was because they had no singers for these operas which are great favorites, or whether it was because of the nationality of the composer.

Just before I left Berlin I saw a wonderful production of "Aïda," and the principal singers were Poles from the Royal Opera House in Warsaw. The singers were received with the wildest enthusiasm. All the cast except the Poles sang in German, and the Poles sang in Polish. The duets sounded very funny. Two of the Polish singers were invited to come and sing permanently in Berlin. They both declined. The man, who has one of the most magnificent voices I ever heard, because he loves Warsaw too much to leave it, and the woman because she did not want to be tied up in Berlin with a five-years' contract, as she wants to come to America as soon as the war is over. There is more or less a movement in Germany to taboo the German singers who are in America, and they also want to prevent all their new young singers from coming to us. It will be a very hard task, for America is the aim of every German singer, and no feeling of patriotism will keep them at home.

Since the war many new stars have arisen, and many new operas have been played. From Bulgaria comes a young singer by the name of Anna Todoroff, and she has taken Berlin by storm. Several boy wonders have sprung up, the greatest being a little boy from Chili, Claude Arrau.

The greatest triumph of last season was Eugen d'Albert's new opera _Die toten Augen_, or "The Dead Eyes," and it was played several times a week. The music of the opera is lovely, entrancing, but what a strange theme--a blind woman who is married to a man she has never seen, prays unceasingly for her sight so that she can see her husband. At last her prayer is answered, and when her eyes are opened she beholds a beautiful man by her side whom she believes to be her husband. She makes love to him, and he loves her in return. The husband who was absent when his wife's sight was restored returns, and he finds his wife's lover. He challenges the man to a duel and kills him. The woman is distracted by grief. She no longer wishes to see, so she goes out and sits in the sun with her eyes wide open. She sits there until her very life is burned out. That is the end. D'Albert is a Belgian and either his fourth or fifth wife was Madame Carreño, the pianist, who died lately. His present wife is an English woman.

An American named Langswroth has written a very successful opera called "California." Perhaps it will be played in America. An old opera that was played frequently last winter in Berlin was Meyerbeer's opera "_Die Afrikanerin_." In spite of its age it was very popular.

The concerts are always well attended in Berlin; and Strauss, Nikisch and von Weingartner are very popular. Each conductor has his following. Last winter Lillie Lehmann gave a concert. She is sixty years old, and her voice is still very beautiful. She does not sing very often in public and spends most of her time writing songs and teaching a few chosen pupils.

One misses the great foreign stars who always came to Berlin each season, but still they have the great artists Joseph Schwartz, Conrad Ansorge, Clara Dux, Slezak, Emil Sauer, Karl Flesch, Arthur Schnabel and scores of others.

The character of the plays has more or less changed since the war, and while comic operas are still being given, the most popular shows are of a more serious character. The greatest favorites are Strindberg, Ibsen, Brieux, Björnsen, Shaw, Wedekind and Shakespeare. A German loves Shakespeare much more than an American or an Englishman does, and last winter, all winter long, Max Reinhardt gave Shakespeare at the Deutsches Theater. In spite of Shakespeare's English origin, the plays were very well attended, and yet I do not think the audience was like the German girl that Percival Pollard told about. He made her say, "What a pity that Shakespeare is not translated into English. I should think that they would like him in London."

The play that caused the greatest sensation in Germany last season was a tragedy called "_Liebe_," or "Love." It was a grewsome tale of two married people. It was full of the sordidness, the horrible actualities of life. I lived at the same boarding-house with the actress that took the part of the wife in the play, _Frau Anna_, the main role. She was quite a frivolous young German girl, but she splendidly managed the part of a woman that had been married nine years.

Moving picture shows are not as popular in Germany as in America because of the high prices. In Germany it costs as much to go to a "Kino"--that is what they call a "movie"--as it does to sit in the gallery at the opera. For shows no better than our five-cent shows we had to pay two marks, and one can sit in the gallery at the Charlottenburg Opera House for ninety pfennigs.

They have their "movie stars," and one of the greatest favorites is an American girl named Fern Andra. When I left Berlin her films were still drawing great crowds, America's entrance into the war having made no difference. They do not have Charlie Chaplin in Germany. They know him in Norway, but so far Germany has escaped. One German editor wrote, "_Gott sei Dank_, the war has prevented us from going Chaplin mad."

As a whole the German "movies" are not nearly so good as ours, they cannot compare with our wonderful productions. The only part that is better than ours is the music, and they always have fine orchestras of from ten to thirty men. Here in America we just drop into a "movie," but in Germany it makes a special evening's entertainment. Most of the "kinos" have restaurants attached, and in all "kinos" you must check your wraps. I often stayed away from shows just because I hated the idea of going to the _Garderobe_ and checking my wraps.

I saw a great number of fine art exhibitions in Germany. Germans consider an art exhibition as one of the necessities of life. Cubist art has rather gone out of date, and war art has taken its place. Such stirring pictures as these war artists have produced! Most of the best German artists have been to the front sketching, and the war productions of such artists as Fritz Erler and Walther Georgi are some of the most wonderful paintings I have ever seen. Weisgerber was another artist who has made blood-stirring war pictures. He was a German officer and was killed a year ago in France. He was very young, and his work was full of great promise. His work was much seen in _Die Jugend_.

I saw the great Berlin exhibition of art last fall. It was not nearly so interesting as the great international exhibitions that were held in Germany before the war. It was monotonous, and yet I have never seen an exhibit where so many pictures were sold. I saw hundreds and hundreds of pictures marked _Verkauft_.

It is surprising the number of art works of all kinds that are being bought in Germany. I often used to go to Lep's Auction Rooms where all kinds of art works were sold, at auction. The place was always crowded with bidders, and the bidding was fast and high. I went one day to a stein sale and saw 119 steins sold for nearly 4000 marks. I am no judge of porcelain, but it seemed like spending a lot of money. Another day I went with a man I knew, a German. For 100 marks he bought three odd tea-pot lids. He thought he had a great bargain, but I could not see it.

Germany has always been the land of _Ausstellungen_, or "exhibitions," and the war has only served to increase the number. In every city I was in during the two years I saw dozens of _Kriegs-Ausstellungen_ advertised. Every city has had exhibitions of artificial arms and legs with demonstrators showing how they work. Then they have displays of uniforms, guns, aeroplanes, ships and photographs. In Berlin they had an exhibition of the forts around Verdun. It was wonderfully made--everything in proportion, with tiny soldiers, wagons, wire entanglements etc. The greatest show they had when I was there was the "Booty Exhibition" in which all kinds of captured war material were displayed.

The Germans are very fond of walking, and the war has not decreased the pleasure which they find in this pursuit. Before the war the walkers did not carry their lunch with them, but now they must if they want to get anything to eat; and every afternoon you can see crowds of people starting out, each with a little package of lunch. The Berliners like to go to the Grunewald where they stop at a little inn and order a cup of _Kaffee-Ersatz_, eat their sandwiches, and feel they are having a very nice time.

Sitting in a café with a cup of cold coffee before them, always has been and always will be the favorite amusement of the German people. Here they can read the magazines and papers and look around. Most Germans do not entertain their friends at home but meet them at a café, and each person pays for what he orders.

All through the war they have boat and track races, and these sports are very popular. Before the war they had aeroplane exhibitions, but these are not held any more. All the hospitals have concerts and moving picture shows for the wounded soldiers.

The main amusement of the people now is talking about things to eat. A man I know in Dresden meets eight of his cronies at a _Stammtisch_ every Saturday night. Before the war they discussed politics, art, music, literature and science, but he says now they talk only about eating. In March and April when we had that awful run of a vegetable called _Kohlrüben_, the man I know said his _Stammtisch_ was going to get out a cook-book for _Kohlrüben_, for they knew twenty-five different ways to cook them!

THE CLOTHES TICKET.

It has been said that the sign _Verboten_ was the most seen sign in Germany, but now that sign has a rival in _Ohne Bezugsschein_, which means "without a clothes ticket." All the store windows are decorated with these cards and merchants are pushing forward these articles because they are more expensive than the articles which require a card, and most people would rather pay a few marks more than go to the trouble of getting a card.

Along in May, 1916, there were rumors of a ticket for clothes, but the people only laughed, "How could there be a ticket for clothes?" they asked and "What will we do if our clothes wear out and we can't get a ticket for any more?"

On the 10th of June the ordinance was published, and it went into effect on the 1st of August. Now the ticket is in full swing, and one must have a ticket to get all the articles of wearing apparel and household things that are not marked _Ohne Bezugsschein_.

The _Bezugsschein_ was not originated to make things uncomfortable for people in general, but to protect the people who are poor and to keep the rich people from buying up the cheap useful articles that poorer people must have for winter. At first it was only cheap useful articles that were on the card, and articles of clothing that were over a set price could be bought without a card, but now many expensive things are on a card as well, and no matter what the price is, a man or a woman can have only two woolen suits a year.

The following list is from the ordinance of June 10, and it tells what things can be bought without a card. The prices quoted are the lowest prices of articles without a ticket. The first list is of articles which require no ticket at any price.

1. Silk or art cloth.
2. Half silk cloth.
3. Silk or half silk stockings for men or women.
4. Ladies' cotton stockings of which a dozen pairs weigh less
than 750 grams.
5. Men's cotton stockings of which a dozen pairs weigh less than
450 grams.
(This is to keep the coarser stockings for the poor.)
6. Silk or half silk gloves for men or women.
7. Cotton gloves made from number 80 thread or finer.
8. Ribbon, cord and bobbin.
9. Suspenders, or garters for men or women.
10. Lace tulle or curtains.
11. Tapestry and all kinds of cloth for furniture.
12. Caps, hats and veils.
13. Umbrellas.
14. Woolen cloth for ladies' dresses or suits which is not over
130 centimeters wide and retails at at least 10 marks a meter.
15. Colored or flowered stuff of cotton material which is not more
than 50 centimeters wide and retails for not less than 3 marks
a meter.
16. Cotton goods as used for aprons etc., which is not over 90
centimeters wide and retails for not less than 2 marks a meter.
17. Printed cotton goods which is not over 90 centimeters wide and
retails for not less than 2 marks a meter.
18. Unwashable white goods.
19. Corsets.
20. Wash goods not more than 80 centimeters wide which retails
at not less than 3 marks a meter.
21. Linen not more than 80 centimeters wide which retails at not
less than 3 marks a meter.
22. Pure linen bed covers which retail at 30 marks or over.
23. Handkerchiefs.
24. Colored aprons which retail at 2 marks and over.
25. White aprons which retail at 2 marks and over.
26. Satin shoes.

Men's ready made clothes without a ticket at the following prices and over.

Suits 75 marks.
Coats 47 "
Jackets 32 "
Vests 11 "
Pants 18 "

All things for military use can be bought without a ticket.

Women's ready made clothes without a ticket at the following prices and over.

Woolen suits 80 marks.
Coats 60 "
Wash suits 40 "
Woolen waists 11 "
Wash skirts 20 "
Woolen skirts 30 "
Trimmed woolen dresses 100 "
Night gowns 10 "
Combination suits 6 "
Drawers 10 "
Corset covers 5 "
Dressing sacks 10 "
Wash petticoats 12 "

For every article of wearing apparel or cloth that is not in this list and is cheaper than the set price, one must procure a _Schein_ in order to buy the article. This means that all the cheaper waists, dresses, aprons, pants, stockings, underwear and skirts require a ticket, also all the cheaper cloth by the meter. One cannot buy a yard of flannel, a wash rag or a dusting rag without a ticket. Nearly everything for children requires a ticket.

It is very troublesome to get a ticket, but if you know what you want before you go to the store, you can procure your ticket first, and this saves time. The _Bezugsscheinstellen_ are scattered all over the city. Each district has a place, and you must get your ticket from the district in which you live. They have on file all the _Scheine_ you have procured, so you can't get more than your allowance, and if you have moved from one place to another you must wait until they investigate what you have had in the other district before they will give you a _Schein_. You must show your passport or your police registration.

The clothes ticket is a large piece of paper with a place for your name, address and occupation. The clerks write on the paper the article you wish and how many of each article. For every kind of an article a separate _Schein_ is needed. On the back of the ticket it tells that it is not transferable and that the misuse of it makes you liable to six months imprisonment or a fine of 15,000 marks. It also says that it is good only in the German Empire. This is not supposed to be a joke.

If anything happens to a person's clothes, like loss by fire, new clothes can be procured if the person can prove that the fire was an accident. An American I knew had all his clothes stolen except the suit he was wearing. He went to the police and explained his case, and after a few weeks he got a permit to get some more clothes.

When a man gets a new suit he has to turn in his old suit. These old suits are repaired and are put away for the soldiers when they come home from the war. Germany forgets no details.

The limit of things that a person can buy is rather indefinite, for some people require more clothes than others. Some men get twelve shirts a year, and others get only six. Two woolen suits are allowed and six pairs of stockings.

Since April, 1917, a ticket has been required for shoes, and each person is allowed two pairs of shoes a year. This is really the hardest restriction of the whole war, for the leather is so poor that hardly the best would last six months. Shoes for men are not as bad as the shoes for women, and the soldiers have very good shoes, but when I left Berlin the only kind of shoes that a woman could buy was fancy patent leather with cloth tops, the soles of which were like paper. What the German women are going to do for shoes this winter I do not know. I could not get any shoes at all. In the summer of 1916 I had a pair made for sixty marks, but the next summer they wouldn't make any to order, and I wear so small a size that I could not get any shoes to fit me in Berlin.

When I left for Denmark I was very shabby looking. I had a nice silk suit and a pretty hat, but that was the extent of my wardrobe. The girls in the boarding-house where I lived bought nearly everything I had. They were just wild to buy my things, and I sold what they could wear because I knew I could get more and they could not. It was a pity that I am so small, because they could hardly get into what they bought. The daughter of the boarding-house keeper with whom I lived was going to have her winter suit made out of a portière that she had dyed a nice brown color. She had used up all her tickets and couldn't buy any woolen material. As I was going away I let the girls get tickets in my name. This was very nice of me, for I had to go and get the tickets myself, and I had to wait in line to get them.

The ticket is very hard on girls about to be married, as a German girl must furnish the house and have at least two dozen sets of sheets and pillow cases and about one hundred towels. As one person can get only two sheets a year on the ticket, it would at that rate take a girl twelve years before she could be properly married. So the scheming of getting things without a ticket was as great as the scheming of getting food without a card, and the government cannot prevent it.

A week before I left Berlin, a printed card was hung up in my room at the boarding-house. It said, "After August 1 people coming to this boarding-house for an extended stay must bring their own bedding with them. The washing will be done every four weeks." It was signed "The Boarding-House Union." I was glad that the washing was to be done every four weeks, because I was seven weeks at that boarding-house, and I never once had clean sheets. After three weeks the sheets got a kind of gray color, and then they never seemed to get any dirtier. Special provisions are made at hotels where each guest must be furnished with a clean sheet.

The clothes _Schein_ is especially designed to limit the sale of woolen goods, and many German women who had never worn silk before in their lives are wearing it now, because wool is so expensive. The ticket is very hard on the dry-goods merchants, the tailors and the men's furnishers, and they complain that their business is frightful, but Germany doesn't care for the individuals, she is looking out for the country as a whole.

MY TYPEWRITER.

It is not only clothes that are getting scarce in Germany, but every kind of manufactured articles as well. Many articles of furniture cannot be bought at all now, even second-hand, and the prices for things still in stock are enormous. A German girl I know was going to be married, and she wanted twin brass beds. She tried all over Dresden but could not get two single brass beds alike. She could not even order them, because she was told by the merchants that they were not being made any more. A perfectly plain brass bed, single size, was 390 marks.

All the old stock of manufactured articles, furniture, cooking utensils, goods by the yard, tablecloths, towels and sheets are being bought up by the people, because they say that the new stock which will be manufactured after the war will be of an inferior quality, and it will be years before they can get the good grade of goods again.

Just to illustrate the scarcity of manufactured articles I will tell the story about my typewriter. When I first went to Germany I rented a Smith Premier for three months for thirty marks. Every one said that this was a great bargain. When the three months were over I sent the typewriter firm a check in payment for three months more. I didn't hear anything from them for about a month, when one day a young man called on me and said that he had come for the typewriter, that his firm was not renting typewriters any more, but that I could buy it if I wished, for 390 marks. Reckoning a mark as a quarter as the Germans do, that meant nearly one hundred dollars for a very old rattle-trap typewriter that any one could buy in America for fifteen dollars.

I told the young man that I would not be threatened into buying his typewriter, and that if he took it away he would have to give me back my entire thirty marks even though I had had it a month. We argued for about an hour, and then he went away. The next day I got a letter saying that I could keep the typewriter the remaining two months, but that at the end of that time I must either give it up or buy it. At the end of the two months I sent another check for thirty marks, but the next day a girl messenger dressed as a boy appeared, handed me back my check, took my typewriter under her arm and disappeared. I hoped carrying it would make her good and tired.

I did not want to lay out 400 or 500 marks for a typewriter, and I had an awful time. It was absolutely impossible to rent a typewriter anywhere in Berlin, and I went everywhere. I put an advertisement in the paper and I got only six answers and upon going to all of these six places, I found that at each place the typewriter was a "Mignon," a little toy machine where you had to turn a wheel whenever you struck a letter.

After spending four days hunting, I finally bought a "Pittsburg Visible." I paid sixty-five marks for it, and it wasn't like any typewriter I have seen before--or since. It was very curious to look at--a long, thin affair with very weak prongs that were always getting twisted around each other. It must have been twenty-five or thirty years old. I was always in terror for fear something would happen to it, and whenever we had a guest I yelled, "Be careful and don't bump the typewriter," or "Don't lay your hat on the typewriter." When I first used it, it had the bad habit of getting stuck in the middle of a line, but after I had had it a year, it worked pretty well and I became very much attached to my little "Pittsburg Visible."

During the year I had my typewriter, typewriters became scarcer and dearer than ever, indeed it was impossible to buy any kind of a second-hand visible typewriter, and the new ones were about 600 marks. New correspondents coming over had an awful time and most of them had to borrow typewriters from friends. As most of the typewriters were of American make, it was hard to get a typewriter repaired, as the parts came from America. Ribbons and carbon paper were very expensive, and although typewriter paper doubled its price, it was cheaper than the paper here in America.

At the time I sold my little Pittsburg Visible in June 1917, I was living in a German boarding-house in Berlin. I believe in advertising, so I put an "ad" in the "Lokal-Anzeiger" which read: "For sale--cheap, visible typewriter, Pension Kostermann, Savigny-Platz 5." I thought that it was a very nice "ad" and it cost me one mark ninety pfennigs.

I will never forget the day my "ad" came out. Before I was up at seven A. M. the maid knocked at my door and said that I was wanted at the telephone. It was some one about the typewriter. That was the beginning. The phone rang all day long, and all the next day. People came in droves, and they would not go away even after the typewriter was sold. They wanted to know what kind it was, and they left cursing themselves that they had not come earlier.

Before I advertised in the paper I had decided to hold out for my price, one hundred marks. At 10.30 A. M. I was offered ninety marks, but I said one hundred was my price. At 11.30 there was a lull in the callers, but the telephone rang like wild. A little Jew came in and offered me fifty-three marks for my typewriter. I was standing there looking very much insulted at the idea of any one daring to offer me fifty-three marks for my good machine, when suddenly the landlady appeared at the door of my room. "Fräulein McAuley," she said severely, glaring at the Jew, "I want this to cease. The maids have done nothing this morning but answer the phone and go to the door about your typewriter. Do you understand?"

I felt squelched and begged her pardon, and when she left banging the door after her, I looked helplessly at the Jew. "Sixty-five marks," he said sympathetically. "Make it sixty-six," I said, "and you can have it." "Done," he answered, and I sold my typewriter at the profit of one mark after having it a year.

I explained to the landlady that I had not put the telephone number in the paper, and she was pacified. Her daughter admired the American way in which I had made the sale, and the following day she put an "ad" in the same paper for a pair of field glasses she had. "All the soldiers will want them," she said. They prepared for a rush such as I had had for the typewriter, and not a soul answered the advertisement. Both mother and daughter blamed me for it. I think they thought that I had done something more than merely advertise in the paper.

MOVING IN BERLIN.

When you move from one place to another in Berlin it takes just about three days to get all the food cards in order again. Here is what you would have to do if you move from one suburb of Berlin to another, say from Charlottenburg to Wilmersdorf. This is for all foreigners--even neutrals.

First you go to the _Portier_ or janitor of the building where you live in Charlottenburg, and he gives you three green slips which you fill out. These slips tell your name, age, occupation, religion, nationality, where you were born and where you last lived. After they are filled out the _Portier_ signs them. The _Portier_ keeps one slip, sends one to the magistrate of Charlottenburg and gives you the third. With this green slip you go to the Charlottenburg police. In the first room a policeman looks up your record which you are surprised to find filed in a little box, and if your record is all right he sends you into the next room where the chief presides. The chief of each police station has charge of all the foreigners, and at the little branch police station on Mommsenstrasse where I reported in June the chief told me he had over five hundred foreigners in his district.

You present your green slip, which the man outside has stamped, and your passport to the chief, and after more filing and stamping both on the slip and on your pass, you are ready to move. As soon as you get to Wilmersdorf the new _Portier_ gives you three white slips to fill out. They are very similar to the green ones and ask the same questions. The _Portier_ signs these, and he keeps one, sends one to the magistrate of Wilmersdorf, and with the third white slip, your green slip and your pass, you go to the police in Wilmersdorf. Here they file and stamp and then give you back your pass and the white slip which has been stamped for the bread commission.

It is not necessary to go to the bread commission in Charlottenburg, but you must take all your food cards and your white slip with you to the bread commission in Wilmersdorf. Here they look over all your cards very carefully to make sure you are not trying to cheat them and then they give you an entirely new lot of cards cutting them off up to date so you can't get more than your share of food. So far moving has been easy, but the worst part of the business is to come, and that is getting registered to buy meat, eggs, butter, sugar and potatoes at certain stores. Lately this registering has been somewhat simplified, and you can get registered at the bread commission for all the articles except meat, but when the registering was first introduced each person had to go to the _Rathaus_ or city hall himself and get registered for each article. This meant that one had to stand at least an hour--for there were always such crowds--at five different rooms waiting to have your sugar, meat, butter, potato and egg cards stamped so that you would be allowed to buy these articles, and after you were registered you could buy them only in a certain store, but if you weren't registered you couldn't buy these articles at all. This registering scheme was a very good one, for since it has been introduced there has been no standing for any of these articles, and when the people go for their butter or eggs they find it waiting for them, and the food controllers give each shopkeeper just as much of each of these articles as he can show he has customers registered to buy that article in his store. This has also done away with a lot of selling _Ohne Karte_, or without a card, for the shopkeeper does not dare to sell without cards, for then he would not have enough for his registered customers and then the police would get after him.

Just to show you what a trouble this registering is I will tell you of the time I had getting registered to buy an egg. I got the egg card easily enough. I had lived at a boarding-house before and I did not even know that you had to be registered for eggs. I took my egg card and went to Herr Blumfeld, an egg-dealer near by, and told him I wanted to buy the egg due on my card. That week we got only one egg apiece. Herr Blumfeld said that he would gladly sell me the egg, but first I would have to go to the magistrate of Charlottenburg and get registered to buy from him, but that after I got registered I could always buy eggs from him.

That didn't sound so hard, so I took the egg card and went to the court-house, which was about six stations on the underground. The court-house was black with people madly rushing to and fro with cards in their hands, red cards, green cards, yellow cards and blue cards. There were soldiers, prosperous looking business men, maids, children, well-dressed women, and women with shawls on their heads. Guides were stationed everywhere, but the people did not seem to be able to find the room they wanted.