Austro-Hungarians in Cetinje
When the Austro-Hungarian troops entered Cetinje there was already serious famine:
The children in the streets were begging bread from the passing soldiers, who shared their tiny brown loaves with the hungry little children, and the military authorities at the barracks were besieged from the morning till late in the evening by the starving population.
There were some fifty or sixty well-to-do better class families, who had been in Government positions before, or prominent business people, who suffered as terribly as their poorer brethren. Among those who went begging for bread to headquarters were wives of ex-Ministers and women who were ladies-in-waiting at the Royal Court only a few weeks previously. For their children’s sake they were all ready to beg for something to eat.
It must be admitted that the military authorities put the soldiers on quarter rations and distributed all the available food among the suffering population. The bad condition of the roads and the consequent lack of supplies in the army itself made it impossible for them to do more.—(Daily News, February 21, 1916.)
On quarter rations—that is worth remembering.