BERLIN AND LONDON By JOSEPH W. GRIGG, Jr.

T0 be transported suddenly from war-time Germany to war-time Britain is an experience that brings home more convincingly than any propaganda how incomparably better off the British people are than the German people as the war nears the end of its third year.

It was through the entry of the United States into the war that I had the rare opportunity of being able to witness the conflict from both sides. For more than three years I was a staff corre- spondent in Berlin of one of the three big American news agencies.

On December iith, the day on which Hitler declared war on the United States, I was arrested, together with the fourteen other American correspondents in Berlin. Three days later we were allowed to join the staff of the American Embassy and spent the next five months in internment with them at Bad Nauheim in Western Germany. We were released and sent across the Franco- Spanish frontier on May 15th and arrived in Lisbon the following day to be exchanged for the German diplomats and journalists from the United States. The contrast between living conditions in Germany and Great Britain which I found when I arrived in London a few weeks ago was overwhelming. Germany has just passed through its grimmest winter since 1918. The food situation deteriorated markedly during the first four months of this year. The Germans froze in their homes because the catastrophic state of their transport system made' it impossible to bring coal to the big cities. Nerves became frayed. Grumbling, despondency and war- weariness increased on the home front.

Here I had half expected to find more or less the same conditions.

And, superficially, there is, in fact, much that Berlin and London have in common. People stumble around in the same black-out. There is no great difference in the basic rations. There are queues, propaganda posters, thin newspapers and uniforms everywhere. You meet some of the same war-time shortages and hear people grumbling about much the same sort of annoyances. But these are purely superficial likenesses. In everything of real importance there is no comparison between the two countries. Food, drink, general living conditions, morale and, above all. confidence in the outcome of the war—in all these Great Britain is so far ahead of Germany that there are times when someone coming direct from Germany finds it hard to remember that this is a country at war at all.

The most obvious difference between the two countries is in the food situation. There is absolutely no question that Britain is eating better than Germany. In Germany today practically every article of food is rationed, and ration coupons have to be given up. in restaurants as well. That means in practice that the average German gets considerably smaller rations than the Briton who eats at least one meal a day in restaurants or canteens. The potato crop froze

in Germany last winter, and potatoes were rationed for the firs time. Green vegetables of any sort were practically unobtainable and the average German family was living to a large extent turnips, red cabbage and sauerkraut. Bread in Germany is ration and the ration was cut during the winter—a particular hardship r working-class Germans owing to the potato shortage. The standar of the bread also deteriorated very noticeably. Today there is n white bread of any sort available, and the standard bread is heavy soggy and sour-tasting. Full milk is available only to expectant an nursing mothers and small children. Even skimmed milk is severe] rationed, and in winter is sometimes unobtainable altogether. 11 cheese ration is much smaller than in Great Britain. Since th beginning of the war the Germans have had no real coffee, tea o cooca and practically no chocolate. They have to drink ersatz colic made of roasted barley or rye and various types of herbal tea peppermint tea. An indication of how badly the Germans miss re coffee and tea is seen in that fact that the black market price of colic

now stands around La a pound and of tea around los.

Drink of all kinds has become even scarcer than in this coun The once-famous German beer is now so watered down that has practically no alcoholic content. Spirits have almost disappeare from sale altogether . Even Hock and Moselle wines have becom scarce and fantastically expensive. As far back as a year ago g Berlin restaurants were charging Lb() a bottle for 1937 vintage The tobacco situation is much worse than in this country. Afte months during which cigarettes were almost unobtainable a tobacc ration-card was introduced last December. The ration for men three -to four cigarettes a day and for women three every oils day. Women under 25 or over 55 are not entitled to a ration-car at all. The shortage of all kinds of consumer's goods has beco so severe during the past eighteen months that shop counters ax almost bare. There is a clothes-rationing card in Germany as • Great Britain, but the ration is frequently only theoretical, as it practically impossible to buy clothes. Women, for instance, at entitled to six pairs of stockings a year, but often spend mon searching the shops before they can find a pair. Mending-woo which also comes on the clothing card, is another thing that almost unobtainable. The clothes that can be bought are of b ersatz material that wears out quickly, particularly if it has to laundered with war-time soap-substitute. Shoes can only be boug with a special permit. Most German women now wear wood shoes with straw or canvas tops. Shop-windows well stocked wi good leather shoes which you see in England are a thing of past in Germany. Leather shoes are only obtainable after an offin has visited your house and searched the cupboards to confirm th the shoes really are urgently needed. In summer-time no perm for leather shoes are given at all.

Shortly after I arrived in London I went on a shopping expediti with a suburban housewife to discover the chief differences

shopping conditions between London and Berlin. I found th queues there are generally much longer than in London. There surprisingly little grumbling and bad temper compared with Berl British housewives sometimes complain about back-talk and manners on the part of shop• assistants. In Germany this h become so much of an open scandal that Dr. Gcebbels recently h to organise his "politeness competition" in an attempt to put stop to the rudeness of shop assistants, waiters and petty official probably to some extent a result of overwork and frayed nerv Among the articles I noticed one can buy here which have ch appeared almost altogether in Germany are shoe-laces, darning w leather soles, shaving cream and string.

Both Germany and Great Britain are suffering from labour sho ages—the inevitable repercussion of an all-out war effort. Germany the shortage is considerably more pronounced than in country. As a result, practically all building, for example, has stopped, except for the most urgent work approved by the State. clothing industry has almost ceased production for civilian purPns Owing to shortage of labour it takes at least six months to get suit cleaned—if the cleaners accept it at all—and about a year and half to get one made. Owing to shortage of labour, as well as save petrol, about 75 per cent, of the omnibuses in Berlin have taken off the streets. Taxis also have almost disappeared, and

persons on urgent official business or sick people on the way to hospital are allowed to take one at all. Infringements of these restrictions are severely punishable. The result is that the streets of Berlin are almost denuded of traffic today. There is no such thing as a traffic jam any more.

On the debit side of the balance there is London's bomb damage. Berlin has experienced about one hundred air-raid alarms since the beginning of the war. But with three or four exceptions none of the raids has been heavy, and the German capital still has to ex- perience its first genuine blitz. Such damage as was done in these raids—for example, the top-storeys of most of the north side of Unter den Linden were set on fire on the Thursday before Easter last year—has mostly been repaired, so that there is little to see of the results of air-attacks. The whole length of the broad East- West Axis, running through the Tiergarten to the heart of the city, has, however, been covered over with camouflage. netting as a precaution against the heavy raids that the Nazis fear are probably in store for Berlin in the future.

When I left Germany in the middle of May I had the impression of a country that was becoming increasingly gloomy, depressed and pessimistic. Hitler's failure to smash the Russians before last winter, the entry of the United States into the war, the dismissal of Brauchitsch, the winter wool-and-fur-collection for the Eastern Front, the ration cuts and, finally, Hitler's assumption of absolute powers over the lives and bodies of every German on April 26th this year— all these factors weighed on the spirits of a people that had expected a rapid goose-step to victory.

It is too early yet to say that the Germans are already defeatist. But next winter will be grimmer than the last, and the seeds of defeatism already are there. The opinion of the most competent foreign observers in Germany, nevertheless, up to two months ago , was that it is too early to hope for a crack-up in Germany next winter. The winter of 1943-44, however, unless Hitler can pull off a miracle, may see at least the beginnings of the internal collapse , of his Third Reich.