Food for Europe: door-to-door campaign opposed by minister
8 December 1945
The question of giving voluntary aid to European people by sending food was raised by Mr Stokes (Lab – Ipswisch) in the House of Commons yesterday. Thousands of people in this country were anxious to do that, he said, but the government was denying them the opportunity. Miss Rathbone (Ind – English Universities) spoke of a committee in this country that has received 60,000 to 70,000 individual postcards from people of all classes expressing their willingness to sacrifice their food to help Europe and there was a strong feeling of indignation against the minister of Food for refusing them permission to do this.
Sir Ben Smith (Minister of Food) said, in reply to Mr Stokes, that there was not enough food or dollars available to do what he asked. He would not reveal Britain’s food stocks, for this would create difficulties for us when buying in world markets.
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“Claims of humanity” in Europe
11 December 1945
Miss Vera Brittain addressed a public meeting in the Houldsworth Hall, Manchester, last night on what the chairman, the bishop of Salford, described as the “claims of humanity” – the present tragic position of Europe’s peoples. Miss Brittain asked her audience to write to British ministers urging measures to alleviate the position on the Continent. The government should again approach the Polish and Czechoslovakian governments to stop deportations; should arrange for the extra Christmas rations to go to the people of central Europe; should release food for Europe from our reserves; should provide urgently needed transport; should try to reduce the armies of occupation; and should allow those who so desired voluntarily to give up their rations for use in Europe.
It was highly important, Miss Brittain said, to treat Europe as an economic unit. Our zone of occupation in Germany was administered under a policy of non-rehabilitation. Only recently Danish farmers had been unable to dispose of 36,000 surplus head of cattle. If the Ruhr output of coal had been greater, Denmark could have obtained urgently needed fuel and Germany food for her starving people.
Paris prepares for Christmas
By Rev R Allen
21 December 1945
They are selling Christmas trees in the streets of Paris. You see them among the flower-stalls along the railings of the Madeleine. You also see them among the bookstalls on the banks of the Seine. Here too you may find some pretty Christmas cards with coloured views of Paris at three shillings a card. Sometimes you see a Parisienne carrying home a Christmas tree shouldered like a rifle, her feet perched on two-inch-high soled shoes. Paris has need of the Christmas benison this year, for Parisians are depressed. You hardly see one happy face, but you see many who look tired, worried, and hauntingly puzzled. Paris is suffering from sheer physical and psychological exhaustion.
More serious than all the material difficulties is the air of moral defeatism. Parisians tell you that the occupation has a left a spiritual instability which seems to inhibit recovery. Their gay cynicism used to mark above all the knowledge of how to live intelligently, but now they are becoming disillusioned with disillusionment.
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Europe faces its first Christmas of the Peace
24 December 1945
Christmas will be a black affair over most of Europe this year. And the whiter it threatens to be, as in fuelless Germany and Austria, the blacker it will become; a Christmas of hunger or black-market “feasting.”
In Berlin Christmas will at least be cheap. Bread is fourpence a two-pound loaf, potatoes are three-halfpence a pound and meat a shilling a pound. So, on present rations if a family of four spends more than two shillings on its Christmas dinner, it will be a lucky family. On the black market, naturally, things are somewhat dearer. Butter is £25 for a pound. Potatoes cost £4 a hundredweight (or thirty cigarettes), and an odd rabbit fetches £12 10s.
Legally, however, a Berliner can get a cup of coffee in some cafes for 7s 6d, and a bottle of wine for £5 or £7 10s, or even a rag doll for £5. There is a more cheerful side, however, and people living in the Russian sector in Berlin are getting an extra pound of flour and half a pound of sugar for Christmas; more that 300,000 children will be given a free cinema or Punch and Judy show; Berliners collected £75,000 to buy toys or clothes for children, and many restaurant-keepers are giving free meals to children. And in Frankfurt the municipality has set up a large undecorated Christmas tree in the middle of a cold, dimly lit, bomb-damaged railway station.
In Vienna all the 23,000 children living in the British zone will have a Christmas party. British troops have accepted a voluntary cut in their rations for the past few weeks in order to accumulate supplies. Every child will receive two jam sandwiches, an egg roll, three cakes, cocoa, fruit, and sweets-all saved from ordinary Army rations. British troops have felled 11,000 tons of timber for Christmas fires in the city.
In Italy things look better. Food and wineshops in the Corso. Rome’s main street, draw crowds for hours after sunset. The windowless food shops have plenty of cheeses, nuts, olives, fish, figs. large bowls of eggs, some chickens and geese, and a variety of sausages. Smart shops (with glass windows) show elaborate confectionery, chocolates, and cakes. There seems to be plenty of people who can buy these things, too, but abundance of food and drink in these central shops is really an indication of scarcity, for there is not enough of most things to go round if they were rationed. (In the ordinary town shops there is nothing.)
Good, and cheap, to see
The windows of Paris toyshops are also a treat to look at. Toy Jeeps (£44 10s), motor-boats, motorcars (from £23), trains, rocking-horses, dolls (up to £18 15s), kitchen stoves, houses and furniture, dolls’ teasets (48s), and games abound. Thousands of people go on looking at them.
Things are better in Belgium. The Grand Place of Brussels has been turned into a thick wood of Christmas trees, broken by brightly coloured patches of flowers. In the absence of the traditional turkeys, geese, and ham, restaurant-keepers display impressive rows of chickens, pheasants, and brawn. Toy prices have been voluntarily cut by at least 30 per cent from December ‘7 till after the new year, and often the shopkeeper goes farther.
