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Show IS GERMANY STARVING? We have been repeatedly admonished to take with a liberal allowance of salt reports of food shortage and other uptoward conditions in Germany, lest they be but part of German propaganda propa-ganda designed to lure Germany's nemies into slackening their war preparations. With due allowance to these warnings, there is reason for crediting the stories that come, mostly from adjacent neutral countries, of chronic hunger and growing unrest and rebelliousness re-belliousness among the German people. There is no man and no people that can fight well, and keep on fighting well, on an empty stomach. Famine is a great discourager to bellicosity. And there is the better reason for suspecting that there is lack of an ample and well-balanced ration in Germany because of the frank and somewhat alarming reports that come from England Eng-land and France as to a similar condition in those countries, and one that is steadily growing worse. However badly off they may j be, we may be sure that Germany, and Austria-Hungary as well, I are worse off, since they have not the same external sources of supplies to draw on. We are safe in concluding that hunger and the fear of hunger is playing an increasingly large part in the war, and that it is playing play-ing a larger part in the enemy countries than in the entente nations. na-tions. And it is a part that leads toward peace rather than away from it. There are other factors, too, that go far to explain why the statesmen and newspapers of all lands are indulging, spite of all angry protests, more in a discussion of peace terms than of war strategy. There is the appalling mountain of debt that, with every rising of the sun, is larger and more dispiriting than it was the day before. There is the lack of clothing, of shoes, of fuel, of practically everything that is needed to maintain humanity in a civilized state, and this lack, too, is growing more serious daily. There is the condition of military deadlock which, in its larger aspects, as-pects, has continued for more than a year, and the fear that for either side to break it will require a larger expenditure of force than it can hope to command for another year or twe, possibly even longer. And anxious students of the situation are beginning io ask themselves whether any country, with the exception of the United States, could stand the tremendous strain for another three years without breaking. There are other considerations, it must be recognized, that tend to counterbalance these. In Germany there is the hope of effecting a separate peace with Russia ; a peace that would bring Russian foodstuffs to millions of hungry Germans and release eventually millions of troops to be used in winning the war on the West front. In France, that gallant nation which with emptying veins is fighting with its back to the wall, there is the hope that the United States will enter the war in sufficient force, while there is yet time, to compensate for the Russian loss and help drive the German hordes out of northern France and Belgium. Great Britain hopes that vast fleets of new ships will emerge, within the year, from American yards, to. replace those sunk by the U-boats and replenish the depleted supplies of foodstuffs and other necessities in England, France and Italy alike. Here in the United States the hope that means most to us is that Russia may continue to stand firm for a just and honest peace and that no separate peace will be concluded. For what would mean not only the most serious trouble in Germany but the inspiriting of our associates in the war. And it would afford us a little more desperately des-perately needed time to get our own troops, fully armed and supplied, sup-plied, to the front where the fighting is. What will happen to all these hopes no one can surely foresee. fore-see. But on how they eventuate will depend the tide of the war and the postponement of peace or the bringing of it nearer. One thing seems reasonably sure. The war has reached such a stage of terrific tension that the existing deadlock cannot very long endure en-dure and the war continue. The most important thing in the world to us, overriding all other considerations, is that there may be a "break" and that it will be our way. To insure mat it will be we must do absolutely and literally everything that is in our power. Far from slackening war preparations, this is imperatively impera-tively the time for increasing them, in volume and in speed and in intensity and in practical effectiveness, all that we possibly can. No doubt President Wilson's speech lost some by translation into German and it gained a great deal by comment on it in German. Ger-man. As the suffragists see it, the American house of representatives representa-tives and the British house of lords were equally gallant on the same day. |