17 SEPTEMBER 1932, Page 15

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I was very glad

to see Sir William Arbuthnot Lane's letter in your issue of September 3rd. I have been three weeks in Germany and Austria and have heard much about the plight of the necessitous middle classes. I believe that if good, light beer were not so cheap in these countries even more poverty-stricken people would be suffering seriously from starvation than at present.

In Vienna I chanced to get into conversation with two very shabbily dressed women and found that they were highly educated and had travelled much in the good days hang ago. One of them ate a small roll and the other two rolls without butter, this was their supper. But they each had a glass of light beer which completed the scanty meal and made all the difference. - The poor rentiers who have nothing but forty-five marks per month to live on per person, would be worse off without the nutritious national beverage. This sum is given by the. State to those who had small personal incomes from money invested in State funds and now lost. It is reduced per head when two or more of a family live together, so feeding must be scanty in any case.—I am, Sir, &c.,