Trouble in the Ruhr
Those British people who pressed for and obtained permission to send part of their own rations to Germany, must have spared some more of their apparently unbounded sympathy for the officials of the Control Commission and the Military Government, who have had to cope with riots and hostile demonstrations in the Ruhr in addition to all their other distasteful duties. The main German grievances seem to have been that the announced food rations have not always been honoured, that they have not been given sufficient responsibility for the conduct of their industries, and that nothing has been done to provide the British and American credits promised last November. These grievances have been expressed in mass demonstrations, mostly orderly but some violent, which, although not on as large a scale as was at first reported, give some evidence, both by their scale and the fact that they coincided with the Foreign Ministers' conference in Moscow, that the German genius for organ- isation has not altogether failed. Taken in conjunction with the news that British officials have been stoned, that British vehicles
used for the carriage of food have been overturned, that thefts of grain in transit from Hamburg and Bremen have been on a large scale, and that the collection of produce from the country (for which Germans are responsible) has been disappointing, sympathy is cer- tainly heavily hampered. British people who have not been without their own troubles this winter, who are paying out millions of pounds for the maintenance of order and a minimum standard of life in Germany, and whose Foreign Minister is at this time opposing the imposition of long-term control of the Ruhr by the Four Powers, may be pardoned for wondering whether the troubles of Western Germany can really be laid at their door.
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