The chief reason for this was that food had become more and more _Ersatz_—substitute articles, ranging all the way from “something almost as good” to the mere shadow of what it pretended to be. “We have become an _Ersatz_ nation,” wailed the German press, “and have lost in consequence many of our good qualities. _Ersatz_ butter, _Ersatz_ bread, _Ersatz_ jam, _Ersatz_ clothing—everything is becoming _Ersatz_.” A firm down the river went so far as to announce an _Ersatz_ meat, called “Fino,” which was apparently about as satisfactory as the _Ersatz_ beer which the new kink in the Constitution is forcing upon Americans at home. Nor was the substitution confined to food articles, though in other things the lack was more nearly amusing than serious. Prisoners taken in our last drives nearly all wore _Ersatz_ shirts, made of paper. Envelopes bought in Germany fell quickly apart because of the _Ersatz_ paste that failed to do its duty. Painters labored with _Ersatz_ daubing material because the linseed-oil their trade requires had become _Ersatz_ lard for cooking purposes. Rubber seemed to be the most conspicuous scarcity, at least in the occupied regions. Bicycle tires showed a curious ingenuity; suspenders got their stretch from the weave of the cloth; galoshes were rarely seen. Leather, on the other hand, seemed to be more plentiful than we had been led to believe, though it was high in price. The cobbler paid twenty-five marks a pound for his materials, and must have a leather-ticket to get them; real shoes that cost seven to eight marks before the war ran now as high as seventy. A tolerable suit of civilian clothing, of which there was no scarcity in shop-windows, sold for three or four hundred marks, no more at our exchange than it would have cost on Broadway, though neither the material, color, nor make would have satisfied the fastidious Broadway stroller. After the military stores of field-gray cloth were released this became a favorite material, not merely for men’s wear, but for women’s cloaks and children’s outer garments. Paper was decidedly cheaper than in France; the newspapers considerably larger. The thousand and one articles of every-day life showed no extraordinary scarcity nor anything like the prices of France, far less self-supporting than Germany in these matters. Nor was the miscalled “luxury tax”—never collected, of course, of Americans after the first few exemplary punishments—anything like as irksome as that decreed on the banks of the Seine. That the burden of government on the mass of the people was anything but light, however, was demonstrated by the testimony of a workman in our provost court that he earned an average of seventy-five marks a week and paid one hundred and twenty-five marks a month in taxes!