To most of the 130,000,000 U. S. citizens mid-December is a time to make themselves comfortable for the winter: a time to muffle up in warmer clothing, to eat more warming food, to use more fuel, to read more and listen more to the radio, to look out for colds, and (for 25,000,000 of them) to put anti-freeze in the radiator of the car. Many U. S. citizens go traveling at this time of year, on warm trains across State and national borders; a few of them even go to warmer countries, with no more papers than passports and certificates of health. Even the underprivileged third-of-the-nation has a modicum of heat, light, food and clothing.
In Europe this winter no ordinary citizen will travel far in his own country except toward war or exile: coal is scarce. Few will have enough heat. Fewer still will eat enough food, for Europe's food supply is reduced 15% by blockade, another 15% by poor harvests. Not one in a thousand will drive his own car when and where he pleases or read uncensored news or listen to unpropagandized broadcasts. Comfortable clothing will be a luxury. Many will die of influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhus or cholera. Of Europe's 525,000,000 people, some millions, probably never to be counted, will starve. In this second year of World War II Europe will live in the Dark Ages: in bleak despair from dawn to dusk, in blackness from dusk to dawn.
Joys of the Victors. Germany will fare better than most of the rest of the continent, chiefly because Germany has systematically stripped conquered countries of food and other resources, paying with occupation marks of little value. German soldiers get double rations. But even with all the food taken from Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries and France, the average German eats what in the U. S. would not be considered good prison fare. Sample menu: for breakfast, ersatz coffee and bread; for lunch, soup, a hot dish, meat three days a week; for supper, open sandwiches. Last week, German fishermen were ordered to attend to business, to fish the streams and lakes leased by the Reich's Amateur Fishermen's Association with nets and eel baskets instead of with rod and fly.
In Germany gasoline is allowed only to persons with important business; taxis are not permitted to take passengers on pleasure missions. Berlin's shop windows are full of beautiful goods marked "Not for Sale." Berliners have money, but cannot buy many things they want, such as bicycles, precision instruments, gold objects, cameras, radios, gasoline, clothing. (Each German man is allowed one overcoat, must turn in his old one when buying the new.) And so they buy theatre and concert tickets, books, champagne, and the handsome ladies who frequent the Taverne and Jockey Clubs.
The average worker in Germany works ten hours a day for six days a week. He makes 130 marks a month ($52), spends half of it for taxes, rent, lottery chances and the automobile he has been promised some day. He drinks beer, sometimes made out of barley or sugar beets. He worships Hitler. But last week from some where in Germany was broadcast a mes sage to the Italian people: "You have the revolutionary arms in your hands.
Use them against the Hitler system and thereby for the deliverance of Europe."