Word: ersatz
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...slick French newcomer last week joined the ranks of America's refugee publications. Title: Tricolor. Descent: from London's La France Libre, blitz-born champion of French resistance. Contents: literary appreciations of the French underground; elegant patter on a Paris midinette's chic triumph over her ersatz clothes; letters of Marcel Proust; essays on Vichy doubletalk, wartime Paris, Painter Pierre Bonnard. Editor: André Labarthe, brilliant ex-physicist, intellectual foe of Vichy, onetime friend of Charles de Gaulle, former Giraud minister, now an OWIer...
...shoemakers have only shaky hopes of selling many ersatz shoes. Plastics are already short. There are not even enough plastic shoes to ration. Wood for heels, failles for uppers, fiberboard for inner-soles, and even the cements that hold them together, are also on the critical list. And the shoe industry, with average wages of $29 a week v. $52 in war industries, is suffering from acute manpower shortage: in December, it had 26,000 (13%) less workers than a year...
Less Chichi. Nonetheless, most of the chichi left in shoes is in ersatz materials-a red fabric rose or composition cherries at the toe of a plain leather pump, multicolored raffia beach sandals, bright wooden clogs, etc. The only frivolous style note in 1944 women's shoes is the high ankle strap (see cut, p. 82). The real style is the "classic" day shoe that can go anywhere and keep going...
Other papers, like the New York Daily News, have tested an "ersatz" newsprint made partially from old newspapers, either de-inked or not. There are hitches to this too: 1) most old newspapers now go into the manufacture of cardboard cartons; 2) door-to-door collection would be ineffectual and discouragingly difficult; 3) the operation is expensive...
...sometimes begged for contents of Red Cross parcels from home. Apart from such gifts, prisoners thought that they fared about as Germans did. British Private Richard Welsh of Yorkshire gave the most telling account: "A lot of us suffered from dysentery and stomach trouble owing to the poor food. Ersatz coffee tasted like burnt wood. We were given mint tea which was generally used for shaving. . . . We were given 'tub fat' which was like axle grease, to put on our bread." Private Alexander Mitchell of Dunfermline said: "Our average daily menu was a half-pint of herb...