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Bohemia, on the other hand, has had repeated fires and explosions in armament and munitions plants. Last month 200 workers were arrested in Pilsen alone. The Germans tried replacing Czechs with Po lish and Jewish workers, but sabotage continued. The latest labor law requires all Czech men between 16 and 70 to work where their employers send them. Some 80,000 have been sent to Germany. There are no native universities running in Bohemia. The building of Czech schools has been forbidden. Under a decree issued last September, heating has been forbidden in all private houses, business offices, hotels, restaurants, schools and prisons. All food is rationed. Recently in a Prague cinema house was shown a trailer of a picture called The 1,000-Year Reich. The last caption read: "Here for one week, ending Thursday." Audiences flocked to the thea tre to cheer the caption.
France, occupied and unoccupied, looked forward only to cold, hunger and disease. Meat, butter, cheese, eggs, sugar, coffee and chocolate are hard or impossible to get. Most of the French have so far been able to get enough to eat, but severe penalties for wasting bread were decreed by Vichy last week. Idleness haunts the French and the work of reconstruction lags for lack of money. Sabotage and law lessness are increasing. Last week Vichy revealed that four people were wounded and 123 arrested in Armistice Day riots in Paris. Sixteen German guards have been killed or badly wounded in the past four weeks in the Basque country alone.
The Starvation of Prisoners. Last week the Germans shoveled 3,000,000 dead rats out of the Maginot Line. Prisoners of war did the work. The Germans still hold 1,500,000 French prisoners of war as hos tages, feed them on bread and soup. The soup is so thin that as long as there was grass the prisoners in some camps made their own soup out of it. British prisoners are better fed because the British hold many German prisoners. British prisoners in Germany are well housed, given good medical care, but there is a shortage of warm clothing and food. Sample menu:
bread and coffee for breakfast, soup and potatoes for lunch, soup and potatoes and maybe bread for supper. Sometimes there is sausage. In Poland prisoners in concentration camps get little to eat, work 16 hours a day. Last week there were reports of cholera in Polish concentration camps.
The Lucky Ones. Switzerland has enough food, but fuel is short. Sweden is moderately well off. Spain has been on the verge of starvation so long that pellagra is a common disease, but Spain may fare better this winter (see p. 39). In the Balkans, where food is usually plentiful, it will not be so plentiful this winter be cause of German demands.