the evening meal, but this was subsequently discontinued because of the shortage of supplies. An evening meal service was started at Frankfort in May last and is well patronised, some 2000 participants being served daily.

It may be useful to note the attitude of the German public towards the public kitchens that have been established for its benefit. The usual experience has been that people have begun by holding aloof from the public kitchens, partly from sheer inertia, but also from a desire to see who patronised the kitchens and how they fared. Hesitation on the latter score was speedily overcome by experience of the good value offered by the kitchens and the convenience of ready-cooked meals, but the breakingdown of false pride' has been a slower matter. A commentator on the Berlin system in October 1916, when the kitchens had been in operation for three months, states that the institution was still not so popular as was expected. The stigma of charity' still attached to the public meals; and many people thought it beneath their dignity to take advantage of them. Although they experienced great difficulties in obtaining provisions and often had to stand for a long time in the queues outside shops, many would starve rather than go for public meals. An enquiry made in August 1916 into the feeling in sixtyfour industrial districts showed that, except in cases of real destitution, public kitchens were unpopular among the majority of people. This feeling has, however, since then worn down. As the winter came on, all sentimental objections were swept away by the sheer difficulty of obtaining food at the shops; and the people's kitchens are now patronised regularly by people of all classes. In Munich, an enquiry was held on a particular day in November into the class of persons who used the kitchens and paid for their meals. Of 1100 persons, 20 were independent owners of businesses, 31 members of the liberal professions, 65 State and municipal officials, 40 persons without any occupation, 63 soldiers, and 632 working men and women.

Unless the food situation in this country becomes very much worse than it is at the present time, it is not to be expected that the patronage of public kitchens will reach anything like German dimensions. All the records go to show that the number of participants falls or rises

according as the food situation temporarily improves or worsens. Experience shows that the majority do not use the kitchens from unconstrained preference, but rather resort to them under the pressure of circumstances, from lack of means or from difficulty of obtaining food or of cooking it in the ordinary way at home. It is possible, however, that continued use of the kitchens under pressure of circumstances will in time weaken the force of custom and create a 'ready-cooked' habit in its place; and it is noticeable that, even when, in the spring, food has been comparatively abundant for a month or two, the kitchens have continued to supply a large, though reduced, number of meals.

The difficulty of attracting patronage to the public kitchen will be very largely overcome if proper means are taken to explain the system to those expected to make use of it. A simple leaflet, written by someone acquainted with the people as well as the system, should be printed and widely distributed. This leaflet should call attention to one or two salient and easily comprehensible advantages of the kitchens, such as the saving in time and in gas or fuel. It should make it perfectly clear that the kitchen is not a charity establishment, and that it simply gives value for money. At the same time it should be made equally clear that it is not intended to put money into the pocket of the State or anyone else. Such a leaflet, aided by the personal influence of individuals locally known and trusted, will bring in many of the more level-headed and intelligent at the start; and their experience, if satisfactory, will convert the rest.

The sole argument of any moment advanced against the principle of the public kitchen is that it is a communistic experiment' which must tend to break-up family life. The answer is, firstly, that the question is practical, not theoretical, concerned with conditions, not tendencies; secondly, that the private home has already been affected by the withdrawal of its menfolk for military service and its womenfolk for industrial employment; and thirdly, that the system as worked affects no part of the home except the oven, for the meals issued will not be consumed at the kitchens (the provision of dining facilities is not contemplated), but will be carried away and eaten wherever the meal would otherwise

have been consumed, at the place of employment, or at school.

In considering the whole question, it will be well to keep in mind not only the present but the future. On the one hand there is the possibility that the food situation may become worse, and that large numbers of dwellers in the great towns may find the difficulties of securing food so great as to be in real danger of semistarvation. Such a contingency may be too remote to require immediate consideration, but there can be no doubt that the establishment of a well-planned system of public kitchens would provide, perhaps, the best of all insurances against its occurrence. On the other hand, there is the certainty that the value of the system would not disappear with the war. It cannot be too often repeated that the two greatest difficulties in the way of good cooking and economical household expenditure are want of time and want of appliances. The harassed mother of many children, possessing few utensils and perhaps out at work for the greater part of the day, is driven perforce to the food which is easiest to procure and prepare, independent of economy or nutriment value. The ultimate remedy, no doubt, is a general raising of the standard of life, but in the meantime the public kitchen, supplying a varied, palatable and sustaining diet at a low price, would do much to make money go further and to avert the dangers of malnutrition, especially for women and children. The exceptional pressure of the present time affords a unique opportunity of introducing and popularising such establishments; and, if the opportunity is firmly seized and wisely handled, it will become the means of conferring a permanent benefit as well as of meeting an immediate crisis.

JOHN HILTON.

Art. 11.-ITALY AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS.

1. L'Italia d'oltre confine. By V. Gayda. Turin: Bocca, 1914.

2. La Dalmazia. By G. Prezzolini. Florence: Libreria della Voce, 1915.

3. Italiani e Slavi nel problema Adriatico. By C. Maranelli and G. Salvemini. Florence: Libreria della Voce, 1918.

4. La Dalmazia; sua italianità, suo valore per la libertà dell' Italia nell' Adriatico. By G. Dainelli and others. Genoa Formiggini, 1915.

5. Trieste e la sua fisiologia economica. By M. Alberti. Rome: Associazione fra le Società italiane pei azioni, 1916.

6. The Reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe. By V. R. Savic. Chapman & Hall, 1914.

7. La Question de l'Adriatique. By Charles Vellay. Paris: Chapelot, 1915.

8. Les Slaves de l'Adriatique et la route continentale de Constantinople. By Sir Arthur Evans. London: The Near East, 1916.

9. The Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy. By R. W. Seton-Watson. Constable, 1911.

10. L'Autriche et la Hongrie de demain. Les différentes nationalités d'après les langues parlées. By Arthur Chevrin. Paris: Berger Levrault, 1915.

The Question of the Southern Slavs.

THE crux of the Austrian problem-and of that of Europe-lies in the Venetia Giulia (region of Gorizia, Trieste, Istria), Slovenia (Carniola, Styria, Carinthia), Croatia-Slavonia, and Bohemia. Austria might lose Galicia, Transylvania, Bosnia, Dalmatia and the Trentino without ceasing to be a Great Power. She would be an Austria reduced to thirty-five million inhabitants (about as many as Italy contains), in which the Germans and Magyars would establish their predominance over the Czechs, Slovenes, Croatians and Italians, who would be reduced to a definite minority. She would be an Austria more than ever bound to Germany by the clear GermanMagyar majority, by the remembrance of their common

defeat, and by their common desire for restitution. And the greatest weight of this German-Austrian-Magyar system would press on the South, on Italy and on the Adriatic.

On the other hand, if Slovenia, Croatia and the Julian Veneto were taken from Austria-Hungary, and Slovenia and Croatia were free to unite with Serbia, while the Julian Veneto went to Italy, the Austrian Empire would be over and done with for ever. The Austrian Archduchy and the Kingdom of Hungary, the last remnants of the old Empire, would become inland States, like Switzerland or Bohemia. The union between Hungary and Austria would tend to grow looser if the neighbouring states should facilitate the trend of Hungarian commerce towards the Black Sea, the Egean and the Adriatic, and allow her the same favourable conditions of transit that Switzerland has received from Italy and France. An independent Bohemia would become possible, thanks to treaties and railway conventions, which would not only assure free transit to the whole of the Slovenian back-country for the port of Trieste, but would place the railway between Trieste and Bohemia in the hands of a joint administration in which the political and economic interests of an independent Bohemia would be consolidated, against every German attempt, with those of Trieste and Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia, the masters of the back-country between Trieste and Austria.

From the point of view of Italy's advantage, the new Slav State, with its north-west corner projecting between the Italian territory of the Julian Veneto and the Archduchy of Austria, would become a permanent obstacle to every fresh German attempt to reach the Adriatic. The Germans would not be able to conquer Trieste against Italy without at the same time cutting off Slovenia from the Slavs of the South. The new State would be, in short, a natural ally of Italy against Germany.

Furthermore, Italians ought never to forget that the Roman question-no matter how much less acute it is now than it was some years ago-has always been bound up with the ecclesiastical state policy of Austria. AustriaHungary is now the only State in Europe in which the Catholic hierarchy takes part in public administration and preserves many of the attributes of mediæval Vol. 229.-No. 454.

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