'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
"— The 15th. Dinner with the Abbé Wetterlé. According to a letter from Mulhouse, living is difficult there. There is a shortage of many commodities. A single rabbit costs nine marks. Milk is distributed by drug stores and allowed only for new-born children."
Entry from June 15, 1916 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government. Mulhouse was a city in Alsace, part of Germany, and immediately behind the front lines. The British blockade of Germany made life increasingly difficult, and rationing was imposed.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 174, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1916-06-15, 1915, June, food riots, rationing, food line, ration card,
