RICH GERMANS ABROAD.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—For the sake of fair play I would remind those who , find foreign hotels crowded with extravagant Germans that our country also provides its quota of War profiteers, who will shortly be en evidence in Scotland and our English watering- places. They, too, to English War victims, are anything but a pleasant sight. More than half the Germans now travelling abroad are there because they can live abroad for less than a quarter of what it costs them to live at home. Did not Dutch, Scandinavians and Swiss flood Germany during the past two years and empty her shops, while here people were literally starving ?
The recent inflation and deflation of German money had the unfortunate effect of destroying the people's instinct for thrift—they were compelled to spend all, or it became worth- less in their hands. This also weakened their sense of the 'value of money. (Only those who lived through it can have any conception of the confusion caused.) I see children 'here buying poor oranges and bananas for the equivalent of threepence-halfpenny apiece, but if I want to see the actual deprivations of the better classes I have to look for it—not very far—and I find it as acute as ever. Nevertheless, my residence of nearly two years among the Germans has con- vinced me of this nation's wonderful recuperative powers. 'Germany will pay her War debts very soon after France has withdrawn from the Ruhr.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ANNETTE M. B. MEAKIN.
7 Ludwig Strasse, Freiburg, Baden.
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