The Key West Citizen Newspaper, December 16, 1947, Page 7

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1947 AP-Newsteatures A den, a garage is linked to the house by N EXPANSIVE house designed bythe technical’ office of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, Washington, D. C., to circumvent high building casts for the small family. The basic unit provides adequate space for living room, kitchen, bath and small bedrooms. As the family grows and addi tions can be afforded the original living room becomes a'dining room, a small bedroom becomes a +a breezeWay. The skitcHes and plan show how it’s done. This is.one of six plans proposed in a booket, “Planning the Expansible House.” available at 20 cents per copy from the Superintendent of Documnets, U, 8. Govt.. Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. JHOMES FOR AMERICANS| i ; Garaat i i i ' i "Sie Transit Gloria Mundi (Continued From Page Six) i ed as a preventive against in-. fection in the American, British! and French zones—for all were! affected in some degree, and it is| possible that a low caloric diet| makes Germans susceptible to} . infection anyway. But the ‘fact’ remains that the epidemic broke’ out in the Russian zone, which} has by be me qarnest number of! cases, and which was no: 1 hier cies | it sprayed General Clay, in-an effort to bring order out of the present! German chaos, and to rebuild the! American zone on a sound and democratic basis, has obtained the services of outstanding Amer-; ican’ businessmen who today are! surveying the German economy | on a. business basis, with the aim} of developing a program. And thengais deep ey among all top’ Bracket milita: ‘government } officials, both civilian and mili- tary, to build a new and demo-! cratic Germany, one which is| sound economically.and not a threat aaginst the peace of Eu- rope. e ele One reason for fear of Russia and preference for democracy, is the influence of prisoners of war recently repatriated from Russia. According to one American of-! ficer in military government in} Hesse, the Russians have so far} released no able bodied men. “Those who do come back,” he said, “the weak, crippled or em- aciated and unable to work, when they. return to their home prov- ince, on our zone, they are im-| mediately hospitalized in an ef-| fort to restore their health. And) it’s not uncommon to hear a story like this: “One German was taken pris-| oner at Stalingrad. » Later, with) about 100,000 others, he was put; into a labor camp inf Ryssia. He is one of 3,000 of that group who survived.” eee German sabotage of occupation efforts takes several forms. Aside from frequent thefts of anything left unguarded, there are minor indications of resentment such as the deliberate slashing of an au- tomobile tire on the car of an American military government official. Together with his fam- ily, on a trip to an official con- ference, he had stopped at a way- side inn for lunch. On returning to the car, they found a round hole about an inch in diameter cut into a new tire, all the way through the tube. In an effort to bring about freedom of the press ,as we know it, the American military gov- ernment in Hesse has assisted competent Germans to develop new ‘newspapers. They have been helped in obtaining machin- ery and plant space for this pur- pose, assisted in design and make up, with the one limitation that no newspaper be a party organ. To this end the American author- ities have even prepared “style books” outlining the need for complete, accurate reporting of all the news, the editorials sign- ed by the writer to indicate that | the idea expressed is one man's | opinion. But frequently rumors and.innuendoes, designed to em- barrass the new German govern- ment, creep into print—tales, for example, that the police have steeling rabbits for food. When such ‘stories are caught in fre- quent “spot checks” of the news- papers, the American authorities A similar condition exists in kreuz for 20 cigarettes!” issue a reprimand, and if the ; Practice continues the newspa- province of Hesse, for example, per Owner may be forced out of j business. But the practice con- | tinues in a small degree despite the efforts’ of the Americans to show that false publication and embarrassment of German pub- lic officials serves only to injure the German people themselves and to retard their program of reconstruction. o ence American. businessmen, a great many of whom are visiting Ger- many, from time -to” time ex- | press surprise at the “amazing vitality of German industry.” Most of them expressed the view that the German. economic. and industrial - situation” will im- prove rapidly once raw. ma- terials, food:for the workers and lreduction of current trade .re- strictions can be obtained. As it is now, in order to get'the flight of refugees from ,the Taw materials,. parts, ete., average German industry. design- ed to produce one ieglap Laberd evident when’ it. is considered u sary to engage that the maximum production in several Other Kinds of manv- | in ‘Hesse will support two mil- facturing as well—to provide | jion people, while the present barter’ materials and products, in} population is over four million uct, finds i order to’’obtain the necessary. parts and materials for its prin- cipal, operation. For example, a- manufacturer | jack of adequate farm labor, plus of electric motors may find that | this summer's drought have com- before he can get wire, it may| bined: to reduce farm produc- be necessary for him to supply } tion to about 60 per cent of nor- shoe’ leather or potatoes to his source of supply. So he starts “sideline” businesses to provide the barter materials required. Yet industrial efficiency as we know it, and as the Germans un- derstand it are two different things—despite the. fact that German industry was and poten- tially is the most efficient in Eu- rope. The average American worker worker has had a better education, and although his job may, require one specialized op- eration, most of our mechanics are able to handle several kinds of industrial jobs. About three per cent of the German . young people went beyond the grade in school, during the Nazi regime. The other9_7 per cent for the most part were appren- ticed not merely to one trade, but to one branch of that trade. So while an electric appliance service man in the States can handle almost anything from a refrigerator to a radio or a vacuum cleaner, the German service man is a specialist. He may be an electrician, thermo- dynamic expert or a refrigeration specialist—but he is not all three. At the same time, the Ger- man has immense capacity for careful, painstaking work and is a competent craftsman. An ex- ample gf this can be found in the restoration of printing plants in Germany. With the removal of machine tools and shortages of raw ma- terials, the only way the Ger- mans could rebuild their print- ing plants was to rebuild ma- chines -wrecked and even burn- ed in Allied air raids. This has meant digging machines out of the rubble, cleaning every part, and even making new parts by hand, for no machine tools are available. I have seen machines as intricate as the linotype, the monotype and automatic presses, built up and restored from what we would consider useless scrap machines in the States. That kind of work requires infinite patience and genuine craftsman’s skill. The Germans have it. - ———— re [agriculture. The farms in the jare small by our standards—the average being around 20 acres. ;The land is farmed intensively, iheavily fertilized and every available bit of ground is used for cultivation. Plowing, cultivat- ing. and harvesting are’ done by most primitive methods—ancient | plows pulled by oxen, hoeing the weeds by hand, cutting the grain by hand scythe. Yet the produc- tion per acre is about 1-3 higher than in the States, The present ‘agricultural situa- 'tion is complicated by the loss | of many. able farm hands during the war (as one American mili- tary government official put it, “Most of the best of their young mén “are ‘néw buried somewhere out near -Stalingrad:”) ‘and. ‘the heavy increase of population. The. latter’ has been caused’ by Russia _nzone into the American zone.) The sizeof the problem is and growing at the rate of 500 or more per day. “What makes it worse is that mal. Generally speaking, however, Germans do not look ill fed, al- though you see no fat people over here and they are shabbily clothed. (It’s not unusual, for ex- ample, to see a German office girl on the . Kurfurstendamm, what remains of Berlin’s Fifth Avenue, wearing a street dress made over from an_ evening gown). And there is evident fear and despondency in their bear- ing. Yet American civilians who were here just after the war and have since returned are quick to point out that in spite of present difficulties, the Ger- man ‘people are much better off than they were two years ago. From my own observation, I think they are much better off than the Italians, the Finns and the Poles, but below the stand- ward of most of Western Eu- rope. The depths to which they have sunk, after all the false grandeur of the Nazi regime, may be sug- gested by one experience. Don Ostrander of CARE, an of- ficial photographer, and I were coming out of the ruins of the once magnificent Reich Chan- cellery in Berlin. One of Hitler’s greatest monuments, it was a handsome building, richly orna- mented on the inside with rose marble—now being removed } from the debris by the Rus: sians. A smali crowd of boys had trailed us all the way through, trying to sell photographs, post | cards, picture albums, etc., for cigarettes. As we stepped out to; the car, two boys, perhaps 10 or 11 years old, came up and held out German medals. “They are absolutely authen- tic.” declared the German photographer, “no question about it.” For the Ritterkreuz—a_ Ger- man iron cross ornamented with silver and once one of Germany's most cherished ' decorations, the | boy wanted 20 cigarettes. | The photographer signed, his eyes far, far away. “Sic transit gloria mundi,” he exclaimed, “as the Latins used to say. 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