rolls weighing two pounds, made of white flour from Hungary, at $2 each. A few fortunate storekeepers still have some white flour which was bought in Hungary at the beginning of the war, but this costs $5 a pound. Coffee is as rare as diamonds. Whoever happens to have any can easily sell it to the rich at $50 a pound. Then the buyer gives a party and everybody talks about it for a week afterward. A poor woman in Trieste hoarded twenty pounds of coffee. A rich Vienna woman journeyed twelve hours to Trieste and bought it all for $800. A man's ready-made suit of shoddy costs from $100 to $150 even in the small cities, where labor is cheap. Boots and. shoes cost from $30 to $50 a pair. They are made of substitutes for leather. A pair of cotton socks costs, if real cotton, $1. Yet not one of the escaped prisoners, exchanged officers, and refugees with whom the correspondent talked sees any prospect of a revolution in Austria. The key to this seems to lie in the fact that no young men are left in the villages and smaller cities. It is true that the women revolted in Vienna, Prague, and Gratz, but the Moslem troops fired upon them, killing several hundred. The army is tolerably well fed, and the people, disciplined to obedience for centuries, are in the main devoted to the house of Hapsburg, which is less an imperial house than an institution. The Austrian people are encouraged by frequent promises of revolution in Italy and France. Germany's Political Changes D Count von Hertling Succeeds Dr. Michaelis R. GEORG MICHAELIS, who had held the portfolio of Imperial Chancellor of Germany since July 14, 1917, placed his resignation in the hands of the Kaiser on Oct. 24, 1917. The resignation was accepted, and Count Georg F. von Hertling, who was occupying the position of Prime Minister of Bavaria, was named as his successor, though Dr. Michaelis temporarily retained the office of Prime Minister of Prussia. The resignation of Michaelis was due to his lack of sympathy with the majority groups of the Reichstag and his suspected attitude of opposition to broadened Parliamentary powers. It was charged that he was not candid in his declarations respecting the Reichstag peace proposals and showed a partiality to the extreme PanGerman annexationists. Count von Hertling consulted with various groups before he accepted the portfolio, which fact was hailed by the liberal leaders as the dawn of a new day in Parliamentary reform; also as the first real evidence of the democratization of German institutions. This view, however, was vehemently attacked by elements of the liberal press. The Emperor sent the following autograph letter to the retiring Chancellor: I am unable to deny the weight of the reasons for your resignation, and I have by decree complied with your request for release from the offices of Chancellor, President of the State Ministry, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In difficult times you, with self-sacrifice and readiness, responded to my call and performed useful service in the highest offices of the empire, the State, and the Fatherland. I cannot forego expressing to you my thanks and my acknowledgment of your faithful, untiring labor. As a token of my esteem I confer upon you the Chain of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle. The decoration goes herewith. Hoping you will continue gladly to place your proved powers at the service of the Fatherland, I remain, your well-disposed Emperor-King, WILHELM. Count von Hertling is 74 years old. He was the Bavarian Premier for five and a half years. In the past he was always regarded as extremely conservative and opposed to Parliamentary reforms. He was opposed to the idea that a Chancellor should be responsible to Parliament. On Oct. 10, in the Bavarian lower house, in discussing the question of the "disannexation" of Alsace-Lorraine, he expressed himself unmistakably in favor of the division of this imperial territory, suggested last Spring, between Prussia and Bavaria. 66 "Of the sacrifice of this German territory," he said, "there can be no talk. "In the question of Alsace-Lorraine, Ba"varia must represent not Bavarian but "German views. According to Bavarian 66 views, the union of Alsace with South "Germany and of Lorraine with Prussia "would be expedient, but the idea of au"tonomy is a great mistake, and would "not produce any reconciliation with "France. "It is not yet time," he also said, "for Germany to make any declaration "with regard to her pawn, Belgium. In "all the circumstances she must take 66 care to obtain political and economic guarantees against the future hostility "of Belgium, but we must proceed with "moderation and with consideration for "the wishes of the Belgian people." A Among his works are Matter and Form and Aristotle's Definition of the Soul," "The Limits of the Mechanistic Interpretation of Nature," "John Locke and the Cambridge School,” “The Principles of Catholicism and Science," and a study of Albertus Magnus. Friederich von Payer, a progressive leader, was designated as German Vice Chancellor, succeeding Dr. Karl Helfferich, who was particularly obnoxious to the liberals. Herr Friedberg, national liberal leader, was made Vice President of the Prussian Ministry. The resignation of Admiral von Capelle as Minister of Marine was not accepted. The fact that both the new Chancellor and the Foreign Minister, von Kühlmann, are leaders in Catholic circles has left the impression that their appointment presages closer relationship between Germany and the policies of Austria-Hungary and the Vatican. French War Economies WAR correspondent tells of the remarkable results of the measures adopted by the French military authorities to prevent waste. At the beginning of the war there was inevitably a terrible waste in clothing. Today everything-old uniforms, old boots, old socks, down to the merest rags-is turned to some purpose. To this end large establishments have been organized in various centres, where thousands of hands are employed, to deal in each case with the waste from one particular army. typical example of these establishments is to be found at Orléans. Here, on the one hand, fresh uniforms and clothing are warehoused and distributed among the troops, and, on the other hand, all the old clothing sent back from the front is renovated and transformed. A For the heavier work reservists of the oldest contingents, assisted by prisoners of war, are employed. The great bulk of the labor, however, is done by women and children, whose wages render them independent of other assistance. Over 6,000 women and children are employed at this one establishment in Orléans, and of these 4,500 are able to work in their own homes. During August no less than $85,000 was paid out in wages. Two hundred and thirty different articles of clothing and equipment are dealt with in this factory, and each day a train of thirty trucks, which in Winter is increased to forty-five, arrives loaded with the soiled linen, torn and worn-out clothes of the army. The linen is washed, repaired, and returned. The clothes are sorted and disinfected. Boots still worth mending are repaired. Those that are not are taken to pieces, and any sound leather that remains is used to form the uppers of the wooden-soled trench boots. Fragments of leather are converted into bootlaces, and waste pieces not utilizable for other purposes are transformed into buttons for prisoners of war. Five hundred good pairs of boots leave the workshops every day. Whenever possible uniforms are mended and cleaned until they look like new. Repairs to soldiers' overcoats alone represent a saving to the country of between $2,500 and $3,000 a day. Uniforms that are past repair are unpicked and the woolen cloth utilized for many purposes, the smallest fragments being used to make the little round collar badges which distinguish the different companies in the battalion. All cotton waste is sent to the explosives factories. Socks, buttons, blankets, and sheepskin coats are all sorted and renewed. There is even a workship for dealing with metal objects, such as helmets, water bottles, and the like. Every day 2,000 cartridge pouches are turned out as good as new at a cost of a few centimes, as against 4 francs for the new article. The repairing of sheepskins alone shows a daily saving of $1,600. Each day 8,000 pairs of slippers are made from pieces of old clothes, representing a value of $3,200, while 300 knapsacks, which would cost 24 francs each if bought new, are turned out every day at a cost of 60 centimes each. There is a special workshop for women who have from time to time an unoccupied hour, though they are unable to give up the whole of their time. They can come into this workshop at any time they like and can work as long as they like. They are paid so much an hour, and are paid on the spot. War Museums in France OTH the French and the British are BOTH establishing temporary war museums near the front in France, preparatory to the creation of a great permanent war museum after the struggle is over. They illustrate the variety of implements in modern warfare and emphasize episodes in the immediate present which, no doubt, will be invested with reverence for the future historian. In one of the temporary museums back of the British front may be seen the carved oak table from shelled Arras used by Sir Douglas Haig at his headquarters throughout the battle of the Somme. There are other memorials of Sir Douglas Haig. There is the First Corps headquarters flag which he carried in the Mons retreat, his first flag as commander of the First Army, and souvenirs of the Marne and the early Belgian campaigns. There is a British Red Ensign from Verdun, the gift of the commandant of the citadel, which was suspended in that fortress during the German attack last year; the Union Jack which the Warwicks brought into Péronne and placed in the Grand Place, together with their crest and motto painted on a wooden panel. There are several other flags of great interest-of which one must not forget to mention the first tanks flagthe first Portuguese flag in the trenches, the first American flag to fly in France after the declaration of war by the President, on the Hotel de Ville, Paris. There are German flags, too, as, for instance, a large one unearthed in the Hotel de Ville at Péronne, another from Beaumont Hamel. But, in the matter of flags, the pride of place is naturally assigned to the great Union Jack unfurled in the early days of August, 1914, from the Hotel de Ville at Boulogne, to greet Great Britain's arriving troops, the first modern British banner to be officially flown in France. special circumstances of valor. There are dozens of enemy rifles, inscribed with the names of villages in the Somme or Arras region where hand-to-hand conflicts were waged. "One could write a long chapter on these rifles alone," says an English reporter, from the first brought back from a dead German in the great retreat to one wrenched from the hands of a Bavarian giant at St. Julien only the other day-not until he had slain several of our men. German material is here in profusion-shells of every calibre, shellcases and basket carriers, flammenwerfer, bombs, axes, knives, pistols, wirecutters, and a unique collection of trench clubs, including one with a flexible handle and a heavy steel head positively devilish in its ingenuity. There are also to be seen a series of gas alarm gongs, a German field telephone with a history, and a German bicycle on which an adventurous obche rode up to our lines at the Menin Gates, Ypres. Scattered through this museum are life-size figures attired in enemy uniforms and modeled and colored by a Colonel who is also a Royal Academician. In one case the head and body armor has been scoured and burnished so that the white steel glitters and makes the figure look like a representation of a mediaeval warrior. Over his shoulders he carries a crossbow which discharged grenades in the Winter of 1914-15, and behind him is one of our own catapults which saw service at Neuve Chapelle. "Then there are the enemy proclamations on the walls, enemy prints depicting our soldiers, enemy maps captured on the battlefields and sometimes stained with blood, German officers' notebooks and sketchbooks, German trench signs and street signs-one bears the legend,' Nach Verdun,' another Nach Vimy -sometimes portentous, occasionally poetical." John Galsworthy's Pen Picture of War Victims in France The English novelist John Galsworthy, in the course of his labors for the French Wounded Emergency Fund, wrote to an American friend this description of the pitiful struggle of the people whose homes have been destroyed by the war: N our way home from Noyon we passed through a small place completely destroyed, and to our surprise saw an old woman bending over a washtub. We got out of the car and picked our way through high grass, barbed wire, and stones. The poor old body-70 years old-had crept back seven weeks before to look for her home, and, finding it in ruins, had taken up quarters in the next-door cottage, where one room was watertight, and in which she had a few things the soldiers billeted in a near hamlet had given her. She was the sole occupant of the place, and began to cry bitterly directly we spoke to her. She had taken a door from another ruined house and propped it up against the one she had adopted, which had none. Of course there was no glass in the windows, and the stone flooring was entirely broken up. She had planted a few potatoes, carrots, and beans, which were coming up. She could neither read nor write, and had heard no news of her only relativesa son and his wife-he a soldier in the hospital. Saucepans, cups, knives, or plates did not exist. She made her little fire on a few bricks with bits of wood out of the dugouts and trenches near by. In her garden with a mass of barbed wire and weeds were growing some currants and gooseberries, which she insisted on picking for us, and her poor old brown face quite cheered up when we told her we would come back with some things and give her a helping hand to tidy up her little hovel. We visited Omiecourt-there is nobody living there at present, but plenty longing to come back if somebody will help them. We also investigated Hynecourt-lePetit, where we found ten people, (population before the war 150,) three of them men. One, a dark-brown, cheery old peasant, was the Mayor! They had all been driven out by the Germans a year ago, and his wife and child were still unheard of. They ran from the ruins, dragging their children and greeting us with outstretched arms. One room in that place was watertight-and in it they were all sleeping; some on wooden beds made with trench wood, covered with hay, and some on the floor. And so the story runs everywhere. Practically the whole population of this desert, who have trickled back by twos and threes since the Germans drove them out and burned their villages, is without living accommodation. To enable the land to bear crops next year the peasants must return to these destroyed villages this Winter. There are perhaps from two to thirty houses or rooms in each village, according to its size and condition, which can be temporarily repaired if help can be secured. The Government (French) can do nothing at present. The first thing to do is to make a few watertight rooms with tarpaulin roofing, and there must be garden and farm tools, (all burned by the Germans,) cement, cooking utensils, clothing, beds, bedding, (all ruthlessly destroyed by the Germans,) food and farmyard stock, such as chickens and rabbits, in order that the former inhabitants may return. There is nothing but the bricks and the dust left behind by the Germans. You see small children playing among all this, and until these were clothed by outside help many of them were found naked immediately after the Germans retreated. Of this huge scar on the face of France we are asked to heal a tiny portion and to make again a living thing out of death; to give back some sort of future to a few hundreds of poor souls utterly deprived. One can only grasp it in terms of our own countryside. Each one knows some country village; let him or her think of that without a tree, without a wall standing, with every means of livelihood cut off, without beasts or birds, save the rats and the crows; a mass of rubble and rusty wire, deep holes, and unexploded shells. Let him imagine that this goes on mile after mile, village after village, county after county. Let him fancy the villagers he knows-little shop-folk, cobbler, postman, blacksmith, laborers, their wives, daughters, mothers, the children he sees daily going to school-all killed, captives, or dispersed, bereaved of each other, robbed and ruined, without a place to set foot, shelter from the night, stick, stone, or penny left, as naked of subsistence as the day they were born. Let him picture the old folk, fit only for care of others, living like that old woman near Noyon! Broken homes, broken hearts, broken lives! There are hundreds of these villages out there, thousands upon thousands of homeless, hopeless, ruined folk. Bronze Plaques to Mark the Sites of German Atrocities The devastated City of Senlis, which was partly burned by the Germans, commemorated the third anniversary of the event by attaching to its walls three large bronze plaques, one of which bears this inscription: On Sept. 2, 1914, by order, the German soldiers, with torches and incendiary bombs, set fire to the City of Senlis. One hundred and ten houses were entirely destroyed. Another is erected near the hospital against which the Germans turned their guns: On Sept. 2, 1914, after having, in contempt of all law and humanity, thrown before their troops many innocent civillans, women and little children, the Germans turned their machine guns upon the hospital, riddling with bullets the rooms crowded with sick and wounded. On that day German bullets killed fifteen members of the civil population, and no gesture of protest or defense was offered to justify this barbarism. |