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employment is increasing daily. The unemployed organise demonstrations and demand work—but get none. The bourgeoisie displays increased nervousness and arrest those who take part in demonstrations. The bourgeoisie trembles with fear when a group of such persons—however small—appears in the streets. The bourgeoisie knows that the atmosphere is charged with electricity, so much so that a small group can grow into a large street demonstration and cause serious conflict.
Even the most skilled workers are now in a worse condition than they were during the war. Housing conditions are desperately bad, houses are out of repair, there is extreme overcrowding, rent goes up all the time, as there is no restraint on the landlords. The price of necessaries is always rising. The working men's children are in extremely bad conditions. All our delegates observed that there were hardly any children to be seen in the streets, for they are herded in cellars and tenements. They are unable to show themselves because their clothes and boots are worn out and have come to an impossible state. The workers suffer great hardship economically, and only in those works, which are of special use to the Allies, where articles necessary to France are produced, do the manufacturers, with the aid of the French capitalists, do something to better the conditions of the workers.
Such is the general state of affairs.
The mad luxury in the towns which is indulged in by a handful of people, the negligible minority of profiteers, emphasises still more the glaring inequality and poverty of the rest of the population, who form by far the greater part of it.
I remember we arrived in Berlin late at night. The famous "Friedrichstrasse" and the streets which run into it are very animated and full of people. But who are "these" people. None but profiteers, sons of nobles, Allied officers and other people who are out for a high life. This is an old familiar sight of the street life in rich European cities. There are women cynically selling themselves in the streets, immaculate dandies with dull faces buying these women with incredible cynicism in the sight of all. They do it as simply as if they were buying a cane or a bottle of champagne. The sight is revolting. We
