Cooper, Ethel – July 1916
2.7.16
My dear Emmie,
We scarcely dare to hope yet, but our offensive looks well as far as we can gather… It almost seems as if the tide were turning at last.
And the food question gets worse and worse – there were new potatoes promised weeks ago, but they have not appeared yet…
A great announcement has appeared calling on the people to bring their gold and jewels for the country
– they will be bought and paid for at a fixed rate. I am told that if people do not di it now voluntarily, they will shortly be compelled to.
9.7.16
My dear Emmie,
Some weeks make ne feel that there is no use at all in writing – they are just filled up with looking for food, getting it ready and then washing up…
The rain pours down unceasingly, fruit and vegetables are just four time the price that I have ever known them at this season, and the crops are half under water. It can’t be anything but a poor harvest in spite of the Kaiser’s twaddle about ‘our great Ally in Heaven’.
Instead of writing all this rubbish, I ought to be darning – we have had no proper soap for months, and the substitutes are principally soda, and are simply disastrous to the house linen. My pillowcases, for instance, look more like sieves than anything else, and the towels are beyond description, but one must darn them together, for there is practically no calico or linen to be had.
23.7.16
My dear Emmie,
… The report of peace before the winter has sprung into life again – in 1914 it was the Kaiser’s ‘You will celebrate Christmas in the Fatherland and in your own houses’. In 1915 it was ‘Before the last autumn leaves have fallen, you will be back in Germany again.’ And now I have just met an old professor who was at the Foreign Office this week and was assured officially that the peace was coming before the winter.
30.7.15
My dear Emmie,
…on the 1st [of next month] all sorts of new laws and regulations come in, among other the postage being nearly doubled!… we can buy nothing without a permit, and that permit has to be got each time you buy anything – also you have to give a list of the dresses, underclothes, stocking, house linen and so on, that you possess, so that the officials may decide whether it is necessary for you to have any more!!… What we shall look like in a few months, I can’t quite picture, for there is also a new regulation to control the amount of material you may use in your clothes…
This is the last letter of the second year – it seems like an eternity.
