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Not even half a pound of bread a day (200 etti) and except for a few tins of stew (made in America) given out at the beginning of August,nothing else has appeared on the market, so I am told. Because of this terrible state of affairs, young girls are prostituting themselves to soldiers for food. Young Florentine girls are particularly lovely; delicate and slim, with small heads and flower-like faces. Venereal diseases are rampant in the army. A child of two needs more than half a pound of bread, if there is nothing else, so how can a working-man or woman thrive on this ration? Colonel X. says that the food question is to get worse, since the more territory captured from the Germans, the less food there will be to go round. He added that the Germans had taken away all the live-stock and the incoming Armies had trodden down the crops. If only we could help even in a small way, but as I have already said, our weekly American rations must help feed the household. I gave a little extra food to the new maid and this caused a rumpus in the kitchen. We hear harrowing tales: the cobbler down the street sheds tears over the shoes he is mending, for he has had nothing to eat for days, having given up his ration to his grandchildren, and the charwoman who was sent to take him a bit of bread, also shed tears, for says she 'Abbiamo tutti fame.'

October 7th We are feeling very indignant. The British Intelligence Corps has sent us to question a young Italian, tall and beautiful, with kinked hair. Now the Fascists had also a way of sending good-looking young men to question us, to tell us what to do and