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Show Europe's Little People 1946 French People Will Feel Effect Of War for Many Years to Come By PAULINE FREDERICK WNU Foreign Correspondent. PARIS. It will take France a long time to get enough leather to walk on, clothes to wear, fuel to heat her houses, and food for her tables. And it will take her children, who have been growing up without enough vitamins and cod liver oil and oranges and milk, a long time to develop the sturdy bodies they will need to face the years ahead in this part of the world. The enemy has gone from France, but there is still a great battle to be won at home. I was never more aware of thc everyday living problems that confront con-front the average French family than when I went to visit a home In Paris which Is experiencing many of the typical troubles of the day. It was bright and cold, so I was wearing my heavy lined field coat over my G.I. slacks and blouse. The car stopped in front of a modest stone front flush with the sidewalk. I was ushered through a hallway crowded with a baby carriage and a heavy dark chest. As I entered , the living room, I might have been going into the room of a modest American home simple but comfortable com-fortable maple furniture, landscape watercolors on the walls, magazines maga-zines on the table and books in the bookcase. But the thing that distinguished distin-guished the room from that of American Amer-ican homes which I knew was that - as I talked with the pretty dark-eyed dark-eyed hostess, our breaths were plainly visible. In my heavy G.I.s I was shivering. Why didn't this gracious French woman light a fire or turn up the heat? There was one compelling reason. She and her family had only enough fuel to keep one room of the whole house moderately warm for six weeks between 10 o'clock in the morning and 5 o'clock in the afternoon. And there were not only the father and mother in that family, but three little children- as well, aged 2, 7 and 11. The middle child was threatened with tuberculosis, which has become one of the postwar prices France is paying. Three children who have known the deprivation of war years because their parents were not wealthy enough to pay black mar- ket prices, and also, because their mother happened to be a Jewess. Even now, the mother was selling one thing after another to get money to buy what she had to have for the mere existence of her family her fur coat, the little bit of jewelry she had, some furniture, rugs. The chest in the hall was to be next. This is not an unusual story in France today. It can be repeated over anH over again. Of course, there are modifications. I dined in a French farm house where there was meat and cheese and whipped cream on the table from the farm's resources, and trees that had been cut down on the broad acres surrounding sur-rounding the house provided the heat. But even so, the little boy of the house walked stiff-legged on his wooden soles, and looked the thin, high-colored age of four instead of his seven years because he had never nev-er had, vitamins and cod liver oil and orange juice. But back to the Family Jacques in Paris, as they shall be known, for they requested they remain anonymous. anony-mous. Today, the official prices for basic commodities in France are 703 per cent higher than the 1939 rates, while black market prices have soared to 3,117 per cent above the prewar cost of living. Under these intolerable financial conditions which have not been alleviated by the devaluation of the franc because prices have gone up, and with the scarcity of the essential items of food, especially bread and potatoes pota-toes which make up 60 per cent of the French diet, Madame Jacques is able to give her family only between be-tween 1,300 and 1,400 calories a day. Germans Li the American zone are permitted 1,500 calories for the average consumer with more for the pregnant mother and heavy workers. work-ers. Moreover, in the American sector sec-tor of Berlin, housewives who take care of two or more persons who are too young or unable to work, have had their rations increased from 1,500 calories to 1,601. (The American army feeds its men between be-tween 3,500 and 4,000 calories a day.) Ordinarily the Jacques family eats three pounds of bread a day for six (a maid lives with-them). But the new ration has been reduced, with adults getting a little over a half pound a day. The children get milk when milk is available but only one-half or three-fourths litre each. Butter and fat are almost non-existent, except as friends from the country bring them in. There has been no fruit for the children. They have had about two pounds of tangerines since the war ended, but have never seen bananas. Last winter there were only carrots and leeks, but this winter there was a , little salad and spinach. The meat ration is about one-third pound a week for each person. "I know there are many people worse than we," she said. "I have an uncle in New York who helps us from time to time." F a . ? , s I " I - 1 i - v , s ! ' HOLDS BREAD . . ..Pauline Frederick Fred-erick stopped to talk to this Frenchman about the price of bread. |