Alexander diary, 1917-1918 / Roy Alexander - Page 146
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[Page 146]
The walls of the Bahnhof were decorated with such contradictory placards as "England is to blame!
[Inserted] It was noteworthy that all these exhortations to the populases, whether asking them to hate, to endure, or sacrifice – all alike were directed to or through the stomach.
The German Soul, if it exists, is gastronomic.
When you get your ration-cards:
Remember England!
When your children cry for bread:
Remember England."
And alongside these would be a picture of a famine-queue in "starving London"!
We left Kiel at 2 pm. in one of the atrociously uncomfortable wooden boxes in which a benign government pens it's 3rd class passengers, changing to the luxury of a 2nd class carriage at Neumunster. The "beautiful" provinces of Schelswig-Holstein of which one reads seem to me quite undeserving of that adjective.
It may have been the day (a grey, drizzly day in late winter the trees are not yet in leaf.), but the whole countryside seemed inexpressibly dreary!