Probably you are not worried with such problems as face us—what are fair and decent meals for the dead broke" hunger marchers? They have in a spirit of resentment put forward their own minimum menu_ as follows and have called on the Guardians to give it to them:—Breakfast—bacon and tea. Dinner—meat, vegetables and bread. Tea—tea, bread and butter and celery. Supper—some thing hot. They were apparently stirred to this demand by the meagre fare doled out to casuals and also to them, consisting of thin porridge; water made cocoa; potatoes and bread with margarine. There is certainly great bitterness about this question of food, but after all it is essential to be moderate. There are few working-class families even in employment which have three or four meals with meat a day and if the diet suggested by the marchers were adepted there would be a rush to London to participate. Probably most of the poorer homes only see meat once a day and even in the humbler Civil Service I believe it is true that many a man _breakfasts on bread and margarine, which has to carry him to lunch, when the diet is not much varied even then.
We are puzzled to know what is the minimum compatible with decent feeding which you can dole out to these men. If you were asked to suggest a menu which would be appropriate without being pauperizing, what would you say? It is one of those curious problems which face a civilized community unexpectedly and just now we have to solve it. Perhaps there is, after all, some use in life for American bacon. We have always wondered what it was.
AN OLD STYLE NEW YEAR, New Year's Eve fell on a Sunday this year, but if you candidly ask me whether it made any difference to the celebration I have to record very pained negative. Everyone went ''on the bust''—I believe that is the expression—as usual. The hotels all ran star dinners and shows, at anything from about £5 a head and you were lucky if you got off for as little as that. I fancy tips were generous this year, but the New Year card is evidently quite dead. Entertainments for the poor, especially the poor children, were on a large scale and at least it can be said that we did not overlook those less well off.
The absence of prohibition did not make our celebrations less desirable, Stimulants, except beer and whiskey—wine is much cheaper—were indulged in, I should say, on quite a large scale, but it is a long while since I have seen any intoxicated people in the streets or public resorts. It is all to the Rood, that the custom of heavy rinking with its obvious results has quite gone out of fashion. We are abstemious probably from necessity, since whiskey is dear fi and poor in quality, while the official returns indicate a vast slump in the consumption of beer, owing to the public inability to buy it. If prices remain as high as now, then we shal] have to take to wine drinking out of sheer self-defence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.