'Street Life, 1916' by Hans Larwin, a native of Vienna and painter of the war on multiple fronts, including the home front. A bread line, chiefly of women, waits along the shopfronts to buy bread. To the left, a policeman stands guard.
Hans LarwinStraßenbild 1916Street Life, 1916Reverse:Galerie Wiener Künstler Nr. 681.Gallery of Viennese Artists, No. 681.W.R.B. & Co, W. III.
"—The 29th [January, 1918]. To-day begins the restriction to ten ounces of bread. Queues have been lining up in front of bakeries for several days. They were laying in stores. There were brawls at Versailles. This sudden restriction is said to have been caused by the shortage in Italy. Italy was threatening to make peace unless she was supplied with flour. So supplies have been sent to her. . . .Stirring events, declares Longuet, are brewing in England. Glasgow is a seething hotbed of revolt. The London engineers, like the Clyde workmen, have demanded immediate peace negotiations."
Entries for January 29, 1918, from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. Corday wrote frequently about the luxury available in the French capital that was denied the less fortunate and the soldiers at the front. France and Great Britain propped up Italy after the destruction of its Second Army in the Battle of Caporetto, sending men and supplies. The Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, and the armistice and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk had raised hopes for peace across Europe, hopes dashed by Germany's refusal to evacuate occupied Russian territory. Glasgow, Scotland, had seen strikes early in the war. In January, 1918, workers had struck in Vienna and other cities in Austria-Hungary, and in Kiel, Berlin, and other cities in Germany.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 311, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1918-01-29, 1918, January, food, food line, bread line, bread, Italy, revolution, Glasgow, peace, Versailles, London
