Europe's Harvest

Last week found Europe's peasants repairing machines, mending carts, sharpening scythes. In southern France, Italy, Russia, a decisive harvest began. A peasant army hundreds of thousands strong, strung out on a vast peaceful front from Siberia through France, was advancing by successive mobilizations as yellowing grainfields quickly ripened northward. To war-anxious Europe this peaceful mobilization meant a kind of armistice. For while peasants in uniform fight Europe's wars, they could hardly be set to fighting until they had got in the grain. And since even modern mechanized armies still travel on their stomachs, no nation could well afford to risk losing its grain supply by attacking another nation during harvest. Though Nazis defied this law of Europe's military history by keeping close to 2,000,000 men under arms as the harvest began, few Believed even Germany would risk a crisis until September when its own essential crops are in.

>Sturdy French Algerian and Tunisian farmer in one of Rome's old granaries had their crops gathered, their barns bursting with a big wheat surplus before harvest began in France. There it was three weeks late because last autumn's freezes killed out 25% of the winter wheat which then had to be resown. Adequate snowfalls and spring rains helped, but the French wheat crop will be well under last year's, though ample for French needs even had 268,000,000 bushels not been carried over. The great French need was not wheat but field-hands to reap it. France, which relies on about 500,000 migratory laborers and their families from Belgium, Poland and Czecho-Slovakia to gather its crops, this year expected Germany to hire away the Belgians while Czechs and Poles would be kept at home.

> In Italy all last week Benito Mussolini's self-flown, trimotored airplane zoomed down from the sky into the busy countryside as II Duce kept a weather eye on the vital 5,400,000-hectare wheat harvest now in full swing. High winds, heavy rains and floods in May kept the wheat crop close to last year's figure of 293,600,000 bushels though 4% more land was seeded. Quality was poor, too, and favorable weather would be needed even to equal official forecasts. Though in southern Italy recovery from rain and rust was quick, around Bologna 75% of the wheat was so dashed that machines could not be used and peasants were bringing out their sickles for a slow, back-breaking harvest by hand.

Once more Italian peasants seemed to be out of luck. Last year the Government mixed wheat flour with so much corn there was not enough left for polenta (corn meal mush) without which life for an Italian peasant is not worth living. Polenta-less peasants raised such a howl that this year Il Duce ordered mixing to stop. But cold wet weather reduced the Italian corn crop to less than last year's 121,110,000 bushels. The fruit crop too (which in orange-and-olive-growing Italy is important) is poor and late.

>Very different were crops in Hungary where peasants were waiting to declare Peter-Paul Day, their traditional day of harvest. They expected to cut 96,000,000 bushels of wheat, 35,000,000 bushels of rye from Hungary's immensely fertile Alfoeld (plains). Well might Nazis, who take about 60% of Hungary's exported wheat, look pleased.

> Pleased too were peasants in Rumania where mild warm spring rains (in contrast to most of Europe's cold wet spring) plumped the grain heads for the second bumper Rumanian wheat crop in two years.

> In Russia, whose modern industrial towns are still only islands in a green sea of wheat and rye, Uzbegs, Georgians, Crimeans, Ukrainians and Russians prepared to march upon the 40,000,000 acres of grain. Despite insufficient snowfalls, which hurt winter wheat, wheat and rye crops though poor in quality were about average in yield. This year for the first time half of Russia's grain was to be harvested by combine, but as by June 11 Pravda and Izvestia reported, only 46% of the combines had received needed repairs. Spare parts were missing, experienced mechanics and drivers lacking, while in certain districts old machinery had not been repaired at all. A repetition of last year's inability to harvest vast areas, including one section of 500,000 acres, threatened. In addition, peculiar weather conditions in some regions caused winter and spring wheat to ripen at the same time, made a doubly heavy harvest. But if Russians (with only half as many horses as before the Revolution) could overcome their combine difficulties, there seemed no reason why their harvest should be worse than last year's.

> In Germany last week the harvest, which is expected to be better than average, had hardly begun. But 60,000 Czechs, 45,000 Slovaks were brought into the Reich to gather it. Italy promised to send 37,000 katzelmacher (cat-eaters, so called because Bavarians suppose starving Italian field-hands steal and stew German cats). Every German woman was urged to go out on the land, help gather in the crops. It was estimated that at least 500,000 women of 60 years or more are doing farm labor in the Reich. Members of the Hitler Youth movement were commanded to volunteer their services. By drafting students, women, aliens, Nazis, with every available laborer under arms or building fortifications east or west, still hoped to gather in their vitally necessary harvest.

Paradoxically, while the world's granaries began to bulge, wheat-growers were threatened with ruin as prices slumped. Paradoxically, the peaceful drudgery of thousands of Europe's peasants could bring them and it nearer the verge of war.

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