WHAT AMERICA IS DOING. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "
SPECTATOR."] Sia,—Do British people really understand what America is doing for the cause, not only by bravery in the battlefield, but also by self-denial at home? The enclosed extract is from a letter written by a woman in the Middle West, whose husband and two sons ar•e at the war. I hope you will print it.—I am, Sir, &c., A READER.
" And we are saving, too, to help. You can only buy two pounds of sugar now, and one of these must be brown. And all our flour is half barley or potato or something; and we are ordered not to have beef more than twice a week. Nor may a family of fife have more than six tons hard coal. Fact is, you can't pet any hard coal. I got three tons by ordering in April, but that is all. We can get soft coal, however, and I'm thankful America never saw anything like this before. Last winter, during the famine, to get any soft coal even you bad to get a police order for half-a-ton. Then a motor cop came and looked at your bin, and if you had more than a bushel you didn't get your coal till it—the bushel— was gone. Whole families lived in one room and shut up all the rest. We did, and we were considered lucky because I got a quarter- cord green wood for 7.85 dollars to help out my coal. Mary and I put a single bed in our kitchen by the cook-stove, and we ate, slept, and lived there all winter! And it was certainly cold. Often and often 20 below zero—commonly 10 or 12 below—and sometimes we'd open our oven-door and sit as far back as we could get, taking turns, into the oven to get warmed through. We slept in woollen bathrobes under four or five woollen blankets. And this winter, if the war isn't over, and my husband and boys home, I am going to do the same thing. Because in that case it may be harder than ever to get hard coal next year, so I will save that three tons. When the men come home they may be feeling 'poorly,' as we say down south, and that hard coal will warm all the house for them. Besides the coal shortage, and the fad that one pound of sugar was all we could buy, there were Mon- days when there was no work, to save coal for certain factories. You were not supposed to have meat on Tuesday or wheat on Wednesday. We got through that by only buying one loaf of bread a week, and seeing to it that when the meat was gone we didn't buy till day after to-morrow. And bow people did talk! You could hear all sorts of noises, but' the sense of the chorus was ' Certainly, anything to help ! ' Why, lots of families went to the movies every night to get warm ! "
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