And
these hungering cries go up by millions: for a good many of the
departments in France do not produce sufficient grain for home
consumption, this being the case in fertile wheat departments, and
likewise in certain districts; cries also go up from the large and
small towns, while in each village numbers of peasants fast because
they have no land to provide them with food, or because they lack
strength, health, employment and wages. "For a fortnight past,"
writes a municipal body in Seine-et-Marne,[104] "at least two hundred
citizens in our commune are without bread, grain and flour; they have
had no other food than bran and vegetables. We see with sorrow
children deprived of nourishment, their nurses without milk, unable to
suckle them; old men falling down through inanition, and young men in
the fields too weak to stand up to their work." And other communes in
the district "are about in the same condition." The same spectacle is
visible throughout the Ile-de-France, Normandy, and in Picardy.
Around Dieppe, in the country,[105] entire communes support themselves
on herbs and bran. "Citizen representatives," write the
administrators, "we can no longer maintain ourselves.
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