Who Eats?

Last fortnight, for the first time since World War II began, Britons went on rations: for sugar, bacon, ham and butter. Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Belgians can still stuff themselves full of good things to eat, but in most of Europe food was scarce last week.

In battling Finland food is not yet scarce. Up to the time war broke, Finns exported over $12,000,000 worth of dairy products yearly. Today much of this is theirs to eat, since they cannot export, although, if the war continues, they cannot raise as much either. Finland has been 100% self-sufficient in potatoes and meat, 87% self-sufficient as regards all cereals.

In December, under government orders, the Lapp reindeer herdsmen of Finland rounded up eight million pounds of reindeer meat that is still on the hoof this week--an untouched meat reserve. Helsinki talks of a "threatened shortage" of sugar, salt, coffee and tea--but the only thing to disappear from Finnish tables so far has been smorgasbord.

Crab and Vodka. Captured Soviet prisoners tell their tale of lean pickings in Russia, and the Soviet Embassy in London last week told another: "There is no rationing in Russia and an abundance of everything for everybody." Just before Soviet censorship of press cables was reintroduced (TIME, Jan. 8), Moscow correspondents reported butter "virtually unobtainable," milk "scarce" and canned goods "procurable only with great difficulty, except [Japanese] tinned crab, which is too expensive for most pockets." The price of vodka has been upped by the State to a fantastic 68 rubles per liter--equivalent to $14 for a fifth.

Last week Moscow had a bread scandal.

According to the official paper Soviet Trade, citizens were again having to stand for hours before Moscow bread shops in the deeply hated queues. Reason given was a breakdown in the delivery service of the Moscow Bakery Monopoly, "whose functionaries show a sometimes criminally careless attitude." "Heavy" and "Heaviest." In Germany housewives daily stand for hours in food queues reminiscent of Russia a few years ago. Since World War II began these German queues have grown longer, tempers of waiting German housewives shorter.

The Reich is the only country, belligerent or otherwise, where virtually all food is rationed except fish, greens and wild game. It is also the only country in which civilians are divided rationwise into three classes, each with a progressively larger ration: 1) "average citizens"; 2) "heavy workers"; and 3) "heaviest workers." German wartime food wrinkles now include loudspeakers in the big restaurants which blare at intervals, "Achtung! Attention! The kitchen speaking. There is no more veal today!" Last week L G. Farben, the German Chemical Trust, announced triumphantly that by next month the Reich will be supplied with much better ersatz coffee than its present mixture of chicory and barley.

A secret, I. G. Farben's coffee is ground from "synthetic beans," has "aroma" and is dosed with "artificial caffeine." Meanwhile Berlin's Oetekers Baking Powder Works is swinging into production with a synthetic powder which when dissolved in water is said to taste just like cream.

"Can't Ration Love!" Britain has just begun to go in for ersatz--such as "macon" (TIME, Dec. 4), which is mutton smoked to approximate bacon, contains no synthetic chemicals. Native and imported butter are now being lumped together officially as "National Butter," already shortened by Britons to "nutter." Over 48,000,000 ration books came into use in the United Kingdom fortnight ago. King, Queen, Princesses and Royal Dukes are rationed as ordinary civilians, but the State assumes that they must travel, thus their cards are on the forms issued to traveling salesmen.

Still excellently fed, Britons are taking rationed red tape solemnly, but their great music-hall comic, Gracie Fields, is making a smash hit with her new ration song.

Chorus:

They can muck about,

With your Brussels sprout,

But they can't ration love!

"Coffee on Hitler!" There are no ration books yet in France, only a loose system of so-called "meatless days" twice a week, but even on these the French are allowed their fill of pork, chicken, fish. Abundantly nourished France was screaming last week for more coffee. As the French Navy announced it had just captured a shipload of coffee consigned to the Reich, irrepressible Paris sheets splashed "YOUR NEXT CUP OF COFFEE WILL BE ON ADOLF HITLER!" 50,000,000 Rabbits. In Italy a frugal diet restricted by the State has been the rule ever since Benito Mussolini proclaimed his policy of self-sufficiency--"Autarchia"--to meet "sanctions" imposed by the League of Nations. Italy is at peace, but Il Duce last November reaffirmed: "Division between the economy of peace and the economy of war is simply absurd!" Indirect rationing therefore continued by means of State control of prices, which are so adjusted that the average Italian will buy and eat only just about what his Dictator thinks best.

Olive oil, for example, was so enormously jacked up in price before World War II even began that most Italians, except the very rich, switched long ago to cooking with cottonseed oil. In the early peaceful months of last year II Duce used his foresight (and perhaps inside tips from the Fuehrer) to see that Italy imported three times as much wheat as in the corresponding period of 1938. Italy today has sufficient to eat--and Italians are now eating rabbits at the rate of 50,000,000 yearly because a decade ago their Dictator ordered rabbits farmed on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Last week, however, he ordered food-ration cards distributed to all Italians, but announced that for the present only coffee would be rationed.

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