DYING AUSTRIA (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER, 1919)
After spending two weeks at the mountain hotel in Berne I succeeded in
getting a passport for Vienna in August, 1919; but it was an Austrian
passport. A certain relaxation of the rules of the British Foreign
Office in favour of the representatives of the Press wishing to travel
in Austria was made in July of that year. For the future such people
were not required to have a British visum for a journey to Vienna. So I
was informed by several returned newspaper men who had taken no trouble
of this sort. Twice previously my earnest plea for the necessary visum
had been rejected, though Mr. Savery of the British Legation had met me
with the greatest civility and had made, I am sure, sincere efforts on
my behalf. I heartily rejoiced in the withdrawal of the regulation and
made my plans. I had a commission from a London newspaper to report the
Lucerne International, and secured a letter from the editor authorizing
me to proceed to Vienna on his behalf. Armed with this I proceeded to
the Austrian Legation to see what could be done.
Baron Haupt, the Austrian Minister, was exceedingly helpful. The
passport was at once prepared by his secretary. A permit from the Swiss
police to leave the country by a different frontier from the one by
which I entered was all I needed in addition, and this was granted
with the cordiality which the Swiss have invariably shown me whenever
I have made a request. I was very happy to be equipped at last for the
journey I had tried so often to take. I wanted intensely to discover
for myself if the painful stories of Vienna’s misery were really true.
I hoped I might find them grossly exaggerated.
It became rumoured in Berne that I was going to Vienna. Within half
an hour half a dozen people unknown to me came and begged me to take
parcels of food to their starving relations. The Swiss allowed a
maximum of only 8 kilos (about 20 lb.) of food to be taken out of
Switzerland by each traveller. It was necessary to protect their own
people from the famine which would have ensued if unlimited quantities
of food could have been carried away in this fashion. It was manifestly
impossible to oblige all those poor people. I took 8 kilos of food for
one family of whom I had heard and whose necessity was great. Several
times _en route_ attempts were made to relieve me of that box of food,
but I would allow nobody to touch it. I almost literally sat on it by
day and slept on it by night, and so contrived to bring it safely to
its destination. I picture now the grateful look of the man who took
the box from me with the air of receiving its weight in pure gold. It
was my first glimpse at the reality of life in Vienna.
But there were troubles in Berne before I got away. I wanted to travel
by the Entente express which touched at Basle on a particular date.
To my astonishment I learnt that it was necessary to get permission
from the French to board that train. Baron Haupt had received from
Dr. Renner in Paris a telegram to say that the Foreign Minister was
touching Basle on his way to Vienna with the Treaty of St. Germains in
his pocket on a particular date, and that there would be five empty
available places in his coach. The Austrian Minister offered me one
of these places. But I must first ask leave of the French! It seemed
utterly preposterous. The Austrians paid for the carriage. I was
prepared to pay for my ticket. The seats were unoccupied. What had the
French to do with it, if the Austrian Foreign Minister did not object
to me as a fellow-traveller?
However, this was the rule, and must be obeyed. I hied me to the
French Embassy feeling anything but pleased. I asked to see the First
Secretary. I saw three men in succession, not one of whom knew a word
of English, and told my story separately to each. I wanted to go to
Vienna to investigate the condition of the people, and in particular
the needs of the children, with a view to organizing relief. Where was
the harm in that?
Three grave men solemnly debated the matter with shrugs of the shoulder
and nods of the head, and finally decided to refuse permission. They
excused the discourtesy by saying that only soldiers and diplomats
travelled by that train, a statement which I knew to be untrue.
Incredible numbers of French traders seeking to sell soaps and scents
to the starving Viennese travelled regularly by the Entente trains. The
stories I heard in Vienna of the abuse of this quick service would fill
a book with scandalous tales. The result of this refusal was unpleasant
for me. I was obliged to take the slow train. Instead of the twenty
hours which the journey with the fast train would have occupied, I was
four days and three nights travelling from Berne to Vienna. The horror
of that journey is a recurring nightmare to this day!
It was not so much the physical discomfort I minded. I was prepared for
that in a measure. I had brought with me cheese and chocolate for the
journey. I dressed with the idea of having to curl up uncomfortably for
two nights in the train. I plaited my hair in two severe bands, which
I pinned tightly across my head, to present as neat an appearance as
might be in the complete absence of toilet facilities. I took with me
only a light suit-case, which I could carry with one hand, and the box
of food with the other. The masses of flowers which were the farewell
gift of the Hungarians had wilted in the heat before I reached Buchs.
I left them in the train. I anticipated, as I thought, every trouble.
But it was worse, far worse than my imagination had conceived.
The beginning was not so bad, although the inn at Buchs was far below
the standard of Swiss inns. My room was small and dirty, and at the
top of the building. The food was poor and badly served. Not till
noon of the day following did the laggard train move out of Buchs for
Feldkirch, the Austrian frontier town. There began the screaming and
quarrelling and pushing and swearing I was familiar with on other
frontiers, the stupid passport and Customs business which had delayed
us at Buchs.
There were about three hundred passengers for the journey. I observed
two women at the passport office, but I saw only one of them again. She
was a beautiful Viennese prostitute. She succeeded in getting herself
attached to a Spaniard who was travelling, a handsome, boisterous boy,
with a very fine tenor voice. The other was an elderly Englishwoman
married to an Austrian.
“Pardon me, madam,” I heard a thin voice say, as we struggled to get
into the passport office. “I see you have an English passport, and I
heard you say your name was Snowden. Do you by any chance know a Mr.
Philip Snowden, who lives in England?”
“I know him very well,” I said, smiling at her eager old face. “He is
my husband.”
Then followed warm handshaking and praiseful words about Mr. Philip
Snowden from this lonely old lady, whom the prick of poisoned war pens
had caused deeply to suffer. She loved her good Austrian husband; had
been very happy in Vienna; liked the merry, kind-hearted people, and
was very indignant over the extravagant falsehoods of the sensational
Press. She left as soon as she recovered her passport, and I never saw
her again. My name had not yet been called. A shrill scream from a
railway engine, a clatter of moving wheels, and the last half-dozen of
us saw the train move out without us, patiently waiting, still empty
handed.
I was the very last to be served, and, as a matter of fact, was never
called. Was there some mistake, I wondered? I grew cold as I thought of
the possible loss of my English passport. Only later did I realize that
only the Austrian one need have been handed in. I pushed past the young
Austrian soldier resting upon his rifle, and walked through the Customs
House into a tiny office. Nobody was there, but my open passport lay
upon the table. I folded it and walked out with it. Nobody hindered me.
I inquired for the next train. There was nothing till 8 o’clock. It was
then 3 in the afternoon--five hours to wait! I made my way to the hotel
garden and took a late lunch under the trees, sharing my Swiss cheese
with a Polish musician, who divided his tinned chicken with me. We
discussed the various operas in a droll mixture of French and English.
He had played often in Paris, and conducted at Covent Garden, and was
even then planning a return to London in the following spring. He
wished greatly to improve his English, which was really very bad. “Your
Engleesh it is très difficile. It have many meanings, one word. I speek
never”; and he flung out both arms with a despairing gesture which
nearly upset the slender garden chair on which he was sitting. He was
intensely poetical, emotional, sentimental. “Ah, madame,” he exclaimed
effusively, “a scene like this, the blue skies of Italy, soft music,
and you--Mignon--pairfect!” And he hummed a strain from the old opera
of Thomas, alternately singing and sighing until the going down of the
sun, and the slow incoming of our shabby little train.
Picture a long length of incredibly dingy railway carriages with most
of the windows broken, the leather straps cut away, the stuffing
protruding from the torn cushions, the plumbing out of order, no
lighting and no heating. Contemplate massed numbers of people of all
nationalities, dirty, tired, quarrelsome, packing the carriages
and crowding the corridors, filling the air with oaths and odours
of unimaginable filthiness. Think of our being turned out of these
carriages twice in one night, and groping our way along the railway
lines in the pitch black darkness to find other carriages equally
repulsive in other trains equally disreputable; a screaming babel of
tongues with not a word of English deafening the ears; dragging heavy
suit-cases and thrusting and elbowing with the rest of the unruly
throng in the mad rush for a seat!
Eight of us found our way into one first-class carriage. It was dark,
and we could not discover our companions. One man produced a piece
of candle which he stuck on the table with a little melted wax. This
supplied us with a dim light for several hours. After that we sat in
the dark, the men roaring out comic songs to help keep up their spirits
and while away the long tedious hours. The company this time included
the Spaniard and his newly attached lady, two Poles, one Czech, one
Hungarian, and a Frenchman, besides myself. French was the language
used by all.
During two full days and nights we suffered every conceivable torture
from dirt and discomfort. Offensive small creatures bit our arms and
legs. We could not wash except by running out of the train when it
stopped and dipping our hands in the water from the station fountain.
Three hundred persons moved with the same desire would have reduced
almost to zero the chances of any one. We were afraid to miss the
train or lose our places, and stayed where we were. In addition to
all this, the women found it wiser to stay awake during the night to
save themselves from the unwelcome attentions of amorous men, unable
to conceive that any business other than one could take a woman alone
to Vienna in such circumstances and at such a time. This particularly
disagreeable experience I do not forget I owe to the wanton discourtesy
of French officials.
* * * * *
A curious incident took place when we were within a few miles of
Vienna. The train stopped and a number of soldiers fully armed
entered the train and insisted on examining the baggage of all those
passengers who had not come from beyond the frontier. I observed a
similar opening of bags whenever afterwards I was in the Vienna railway
station. These were the soldiers of the Volkswehr attempting in this
extra-constitutional way to stop profiteering in food. Thousands of
people, unable to live on the ration when they _could_ get it and
generally unable to get it, were obliged to go into the country in
search of food. To pay the reluctant peasants who produced it they took
their jewels, their clothes, their household furnishings. The more they
had the more food they could buy in this way. The supply was thereby
reduced for the ordinary market. The poor suffered frightfully. The
peasants preferred to sell in this fashion because the Government’s
fixed price for food was very considerably below the world market-price
for their products. Some of these purchasers of their stocks were
gamblers in food who sold to the big hotels for fabulous prices. The
people’s army determined to stop this. I learnt their method. It was
certainly irregular. Was it effective? There were various opinions. It
was frequently told me that the corruption had simply been transferred
from one set of people to another, and that the wives and families of
the soldiers of the people’s army profited at the expense of the poor
of every other class. Upon one thing those in authority were agreed,
that to prohibit the Volkswehr from acting in this way would mean
rioting and civil war, and possibly a Bolshevik revolution!
Crime, corruption, and dishonesty are the awful first-fruits of famine
in all the countries of Central Europe. It is the calamity that the
best people everywhere most lament. German students must fasten their
caps and coats to their pegs with chains. Boots and shoes must not
be left outside hotel doors in Poland. Sheets and blankets have
been stolen off the hotel beds in Vienna. Railway trucks disappear
regularly in Rumania and Russia. Bribery is the order of the day.
Railway officials, hotel porters, policemen, soldiers, school teachers,
University professors, legislators, generals, cabinet ministers,
ambassadors--there is nobody in that part of the world who cannot be
tempted, and very few, I am told, who do not fall. Complacent English
readers need not sniff superiorly. What would they do, if they saw
their wives and children starving, and the wages for a month’s hard
work not enough to buy them shoes?
An Austrian friend of mine told me of his brother’s experience on the
frontiers of two Balkan states. This brother sent sixty truck-loads of
goods from one country to the other. When he arrived in a passenger
train at the frontier station he saw his sixty trucks, some of them
broken open, standing in a siding. There were many trucks besides
his own. As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but railway
trucks, a wilderness of trucks, thousands upon thousands, halted for no
reason that was apparent.
He made his way to the station official, and anxiously inquired about
it. “When will my trucks be sent on?” he asked, with much concern. “It
is most important that they should go without delay.” The stationmaster
grinned unsympathetically, and pointed to the forest of railway wagons
stretching before them. “You want _your_ trucks sent at once! Look you
there. All those trucks came before yours. They must go before yours.”
And he prepared to walk away. “But I cannot stay here for months,”
replied the man in dismay. “I have very important work waiting for me.
And the people in my city are badly in need of those things. If they
stay here the peasants will steal everything. I beg you to send them
out at once.” But he argued in vain. The official was obdurate. Seeing
that what he suspected was inevitable, the baffled trader drew out his
pocket-book and asked the official to name his price. And he actually
handed over to this corrupt servant of the public a sum which in the
money of the country at pre-war values would work out at the rate of
£100 for each of his sixty trucks! For this payment the goods were
dispatched within a week.
Here is one little picture of Central and Eastern Europe which tells
its story plainly. These bribes are not really paid by the trader.
They are added to the price of the goods. The wretched consumers pay.
The workless proletarian and poor peasant are the exploited; but the
breaking point always comes. It will come in all the countries if
international action to restore life to its normal basis be not taken
in time. And that way revolution and Bolshevism lie.
* * * * *
At 6 o’clock on the fourth morning after leaving Berne I came to
Vienna. The cabman who drove me to the Hotel Bristol, a mile away,
charged 100 crowns. In pre-war values that would have been about £4. In
present day values it is about 1s. 3d.! My room at the best hotel in
Vienna cost 28 crowns a day. Before the war that was a guinea. To-day
it is about 2d.! The meals at the Bristol were very ordinary, but the
minimum decent meal cost about 150 crowns. Once that sum counted as
£6. Now it is less than 2s.! The value of Austrian money has declined
almost to vanishing point through the war and the peace.
I arrived at the Hotel Bristol before anybody except the night-porter
was astir. He sleepily informed me that he could not give me a room
until the secretary arrived. I had wired a week before and engaged the
influence of President Seitz in addition; but the porter knew nothing
about this. I sat in the hotel vestibule more than half asleep and
feeling as though driven from home, when the secretary arrived, and
from that moment all was well. The President had made secure for me a
room in that crowded and popular guest-house, once the rendezvous of
princes, now the abode of Entente Commissioners and the profiteers of
all nations.
The traveller in the broken countries of Europe, enemy or allied, will
see little of the real life and condition of the people if he live at
the big hotels. This is true at any time, but more unfortunately true
now; for the lazy and the prejudiced come home from their trips to
write letters to the newspapers which give totally wrong impressions,
and are meant to discourage every proposal to alleviate suffering. The
same is true of every country in Europe which has been engaged in the
war, the allied only less than the others. Perhaps Austria has suffered
most; unless it be Russia. The country round is scoured to buy food for
the big hotels. Even so the evidences of real poverty in the hotels
were abundant in the patched and darned bed linen, the scanty blankets,
the paper table-covers, and the entire absence of hot water, which was
a luxury undreamt of at the time of my visit. Then, a cake of soap was
a present of most conspicuous value to a friend in Vienna!
Fat cunning rogues ate (and still eat) plentifully of the food which in
_their_ real money they could buy more cheaply in Vienna than at home.
No thought of the starving poor whose supplies they were lessening
afflicted these gorging and guzzling adventurers, as busy with the
pickings of profit as unclean birds tearing the last shreds of flesh
off the bones of a corpse. Allied Commissioners by the hundred if not
the thousand, with little or nothing to do, paid for by this starving
little nation, were eating their heads off when I was in Vienna, whilst
half-famished leaders of the proletariat struggled to keep down the
spectre of revolution which the sight of so much abundance in the
midst of starvation continuously tempted and provoked. I soon found
it impossible to eat in the comparative luxury of the Bristol Hotel,
and discovered a cheap quiet restaurant where well-conducted Austrians
passed away the hours of their enforced idleness. Even there it was
painful to eat. To be watched by dozens of pairs of envious eyes with
every mouthful of the simple food one ate filled one with cold horror
at the thought of what it implied, a slowly dying city of 2¹⁄₄ millions
of people. For the rest of my time in Vienna I contrived to share my
meals with strangers whenever it was possible to do so without hurting
their pride. And I found that pride is a plant which rarely survives
where hunger and cold have starved the soil for several years.
What sad sights were there for the observant in the streets and cafés
of the once gay city of Vienna! The postman who delivered the letters
at the hotel was dressed in rags. The porters at the railway stations
were in worn cotton uniforms, and were glad of tips in the form of
hard-boiled eggs and cigarettes. Uniformed officers sold roses in the
cafés. Delicate women in faded finery begged with their children at
street corners. Grass was growing in the principal streets. The shops
were empty of customers. There was no roar and rush of traffic. The
one-time beautiful horses of the Ringstrasse looked thin and limp.
Frequently they dropped dead in the streets, of hunger.
I climbed a hill outside the city, and from the many hundreds of
chimneys of mill and factory no smoke was rising. At the Labour
Exchanges many thousands of men and women stood in long lines to
receive their out-of-work pay. I moved amongst them, speaking English,
and heard no bitter word, saw no hard look from these gentle people who
have been so grievously wronged by their own and other exploiters. In
every one of the hundred one-roomed dwellings I visited were pitiful
babes, small, misshapen or idiotic through the lack of proper food.
Consumptive mothers dragged themselves about the rooms tearful about
the lack of milk, which their plentiful paper money could not buy
because there was none to sell. Gallant doctors struggled in clinic
and hospital with puny children covered with running sores, with
practically no medicines, no soap, no disinfectants. But for the
magnificent help given by the American Relief Commission, the Society
of Friends, and the Save the Children Fund, the coming generation
would have dwindled out of existence and the problem of Vienna solved
itself without the aid of the dilatory politicians of Paris by the
simple process of the extermination of its population. As it is tens
of thousands of child lives and old lives have been ended by famine
and the diseases of famine; whilst over a long period the number of
suicides from hunger and despair amounted to scores in every week.
* * * * *
The first call I made in Vienna was upon Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas
Cunninghame, at the headquarters of the British Military Mission in the
Metternichstrasse. Sir Thomas is a tall Scotsman, buoyant, kindly and
of progressive sympathies. He is slightly deaf, but spares no effort
to try to understand his visitor’s needs. He gave me generously of his
time, to put me in the way of understanding Austria’s problems. His
sympathy for the unhappy people he had been appointed to watch over was
very real, and the universal regard in which I discovered him to be
held appeared to be thoroughly deserved.
I believe I have not erred in judgment in having formed the opinion
that, so far as the higher officials are concerned, the British
Missions in Europe, with one or two exceptions, have behaved with a
consideration and a courtesy towards the people in whose territories
they were planted which did them great personal credit and advanced
the real interests of their country in a remarkable degree. Wherever I
went, in Berlin, Vienna, Riga, Reval, I heard the men of our Missions
spoken of in terms of the highest praise. Unlike the French and Italian
officers of rank, the British officers frequently attended the opera
and other public places in plain clothes, or at least without their
orders. There was no swanking about the streets by the younger British
officers. Rarely was there an ugly and tasteless demonstration of their
position as the representatives of the conquering Powers, irritating
and humiliating to the conquered, as in Wiesbaden, where, at a certain
time, all business must cease and people stop and hats come off to pay
tribute to the French flag, under pain of heavy penalties if it is not
done. I have seen for myself the strutting about the streets and cafés
of Allied officers, provocative of scenes like the one in the Hôtel
Adlon where Prince Joachim got himself into trouble; but seldom did I
hear of British officers of the higher grade behaving with the swagger
and bluster of the man who tries to maintain his dignity by standing
on it; and who never succeeds! The comparative liking for the English
in spite of the Peace Treaties and the growing hatred of France all
over Europe is due in no small measure to the better manners of British
officials and the greater sense of responsibility of the men brought
up in the British tradition for those placed in their care. _Noblesse
oblige._
The one criticism of Sir Thomas Cunninghame which I heard very mildly
expressed by a man who had a genuine liking for him was, that he
showed too great a fondness for the Hungarian aristocracy. This it was
suggested weakened his usefulness to the new-born Austrian democracy.
The Hungarian aristocrats are charming people to meet in a
drawing-room. They are handsome and clever and full of friendliness;
but cruel as the grave when their passions are aroused and credulous
as babies where their material interests are affected. The vilest
murderer in the service of the Revolution, the pervert and madman
Szamuely, was more than equalled in ferocity and blood-thirstiness by
certain delicate Hungarian ladies I know with the best blood of Hungary
in their veins. It needed a hard grip upon principle to turn from
denouncing the Red Terror and hear the White Terrorists declare what
they would do when they got back into power, and not determine to be
silent in a contest where both sides justify the cruellest reprisals.
Looking on the poverty and misery of the masses of Austria and Hungary,
a flood of deep anger came over me as I thought of the Hungarian in
Berne who could think of nothing but the loss of her clothes and jewels
and in particular of a pair of beautiful white boots.
“I would kill every Bolshevik if I could have my way; and they
shouldn’t die an easy death either. I would roast them in front of a
slow fire. Think of what those dirty Jews have done to some of our best
men. And all my clothes and jewels gone! I don’t know what on earth we
shall do. We have scarcely a penny in the world. Summer is coming and
I haven’t a decent thing to stand up in. My beautiful white boots are
in Budapest. They are perfect dreams! And to think that those awful
Bolsheviks have got them. Some horrid little Jewess is pulling them on
to her ugly feet this very minute, I am positive. I could weep my eyes
out. You have no idea how nice they are. The leather is perfect; and
they come half-way to my knees. They are the smartest things ever seen.
Oh, my poor boots!”
After the counter-revolution I saw her and asked if she had recovered
her belongings. “Every stick, my dear. It is wonderful. See my boots?”
And she stuck out two beautifully shod feet for me to see, her eyes
sparkling with pleasure. “They hadn’t touched a thing. I shall sell the
jewels in America. They will bring in a handsome sum.”
“Well, you at any rate will be able to speak well of the Hungarian
Bolsheviks?” I asked.
“No, indeed. They are all filthy Jews, and they have behaved like
savages. Do you know they hanged tiny little babies for the fun of the
thing and old----”
“Stop, for Heaven’s sake,” I cried. “Don’t talk like that if you
want to be taken seriously. It is too silly. You cannot prove what
you say, and I, who am not a Bolshevik, know that what you say is not
true. If you talk like that the only effect will be that you will make
Bolsheviks by the dozen.”
* * * * *
Concerning Entente officials and the counter-revolution, all I can say
is this: That it is widely believed by responsible persons that there
is some mysterious relationship which does not blend with the general
tone of the Hungarian Peace Treaty. Hungary has all this time been
permitted to keep troops far in excess of the numbers laid down in
the Treaty. The anti-democratic policy of the present Hungarian White
Government has received no rebuke from the Allied Governments. The
guarantees made to the Social-Democratic Government which succeeded
Bela Kun were openly flouted. Only the strong agitation by democrats
in England saved the lives of Professor Agoston and his colleagues,
guaranteed by the British representative in Vienna; and these men
are still in shameful imprisonment. And whether it is the fear of
France that the union of Austria with Germany has become menacing
through the attempt to make it impossible by denying to Austria the
right of self-determination in the Peace Treaty, and the hope that
the restoration of a Magyar ruler under French protection would
counterbalance such an evil, or whether personal matters and the
obligations of friendship enter into the calculation at all, it is
quite certain that the tendencies towards a restoration of the old
order are receiving encouragement from some amazing quarters. In all
this the public suspicion rests rather upon France than upon Great
Britain. The utmost of which Great Britain is accused is weakness
in following, and indecision in the failure to grapple with, the
Imperialists of France.
* * * * *
The union of Austria with Germany was the declared policy of the
Social Democratic Party which took the reins of government after the
abdication of the Emperor Charles. Dr. Otto Bauer, the Socialist
Foreign Minister, proclaimed this policy from the housetops, thereby
alienating the Allies, who demanded and secured his resignation in
favour of the more tactful and diplomatic Renner. When I questioned
Frau Freundlich, one of the women members of the Austrian Parliament,
on the unwisdom of so outspoken a declaration of policy at such a time,
with the nerves of France still atwitter with fright, she replied
that open diplomacy was more honest and straightforward than secret
diplomacy, and that the Socialists meant to carry out this principle of
theirs regardless of consequences. I could only agree with the first
part of her remark, adding to my words of approval that, even so,
there was a time to speak and a time to be silent, and that this noble
recklessness of consequences might be justified in a Party or a person
but was doubtful wisdom on the part of a Government whose people needed
food from the foe to keep them alive! Like Kurt Eisner and his passion
for free speech, the Social Democrats of Austria would permit of no
compromise in the matter of the Party programme.
I met Dr. Otto Bauer at the house of my friend Madame Zuckerkandl. We
were quaintly assorted guests. There was the grave and dignified City
Councillor Dr. Schwartz-Hiller, whose care of little Jewish refugees
from Galicia deserves the highest praise. There was the wife of an
impoverished ex-diplomat, who had spent many years in China and who
was starving on a pension of almost nothing a month; there was Baron
Hennet, the charming and able young diplomat whom I had met in Berne,
known in England for his informed interest in agricultural matters and
his advocacy of Free Trade; and finally there was Dr. Bauer.
He is a man of medium height, with a handsome young face, inclined to
roundness, and the dark hair and brilliant eyes of the Jewish race.
He is justly reputed one of the ablest men in the European Socialist
Movement. Common report had it at one time that he is a Bolshevik;
but his enemies did that for him! I inquired about him at the British
Mission and they denied this story. I asked Dr. Bauer directly if he
believed in Bolshevism and received a smiling but unequivocal reply in
the negative. At the time of our talk he was helping to edit the great
Socialist newspaper, the _Arbeiter Zeitung_, in the absence of the
regular editor, Dr. Austerlitz, who was lying ill. His influence was
much feared by the French. And his policy appears to-day to be likely
to succeed in spite of the prohibition of the Peace Treaty, which
forbids for all time the union with Germany unless with the unanimous
approval of the League of Nations. If the Allies had determined on
an act which would help the Austrians to achieve their desires they
could not have done better than make it a point in the Treaty. The
manifest injustice of refusing to Austria what is granted in theory
to every other country in the world, the right to determine its own
form of government, has united with the Social Democrats thousands of
Austrians who had previously opposed this political proposal. Now it
is clear from the Tyrol plebiscite of 97 per cent. in favour of the
union that the policy has become national and must sooner or later be
successful. The language of the Austrians is German. There appears to
be little hope of substantial co-operation with the succession states
for a very long time to come. The Austrians are ill-disposed to the
eternal spoon-feeding of the Allies, which must mean expensive and
irregular meals, with a constant threat of the withdrawal of supplies
if something does not please the nurses. To the overwhelming majority
of the six millions of Austria’s population the only means of living
appears to be union with Germany, with a people speaking the same
language and a country lying on their border.
But at the time of my visit to Austria there was a considerable
difference of opinion in Vienna on the subject of the best future
political arrangement for Austria. A number of people formerly of
power and influence expressed hostility to the idea of union with
Germany. They dreaded the merging of Austrian individuality in that of
the stronger partner. They contemplated with real distress the future
of their beautiful Vienna as a second-class city on the frontier of
civilization instead of the sun and centre of culture which it had
been. Some positively disliked the Prussian association because of its
disciplined militarism. A few with the spirit of the flunkey desired to
please the Allies. Others recognized the danger of flouting the Allies.
Of the various alternatives to the proposed union there were two which
received noteworthy support, that which suggested union with the mild
regime of a Bavaria independent of Prussia, and that which advocated
what was called a Danubian Federation which should comprise the old
states, and possibly Bavaria. The economic dependence of the states
comprising the former Austro-Hungarian Empire was becoming clearer
with every day that passed. The natural advantages as a clearing-house
for trade and commerce of Vienna, in the centre of the system, as
well as its amazing cultural facilities, provided every reason in
common sense for a proposal of this sort. But hostile to the idea
were those in Austria who would have welcomed an economic union apart
from a political union, but who were unable to see how the one could
be achieved without the other eventually following. The new states,
particularly Czecho-Slovakia, jealous of any proposal which might
restore to Vienna the importance they were determined to attach to
Prague, pursued a policy of self-interest which menaced the very
existence of Austria as an independent state, and looked askance at
any idea of economic union between themselves and their ancient enemy.
Anti-German feeling there was too pronounced for any other than the
most individualistic action. Pro-German feeling in German-Austria
favoured the union with Germany. The propaganda for the federation
was conducted chiefly by agents abroad, and as I have already shown,
a succession of events has made the proposal for union with Germany,
originally the proposal of a party, a matter of united national policy.
* * * * *
Apart from its foreign policy the political problem of Austria appeared
to be presenting itself along the line of peasant versus town worker.
This is more or less true of every country in Europe. The peasants
hated the city of Vienna. They had to maintain the two and a quarter
millions of its population and got no adequate return for this in
manufactured goods. The city could not manufacture for lack of raw
materials and coal. The peasants disliked the “Red” Government because
it fixed the price of foodstuffs in the interests of the poor of the
towns careless of the reduced profits of the peasants. They disliked
the towns because they were irreligious and full of the hated Jews. All
these causes worked (and are working all over Central Europe and in
Russia) at the time I was in Vienna.
“I very much fear,” said Otto Bauer to me, “that the social problem of
Europe for a generation or more will be the town against the country.
And which will win?” The victory of the country seems imminent. It has
conquered in Bavaria and, in a measure, in Austria. It will conquer
in Russia. And the victory of the country in European politics does
not mean maypoles and flowers and flowing beer and fat living for
everybody. It means, at present, the reign of ignorance and bigotry and
superstition and individualism, and the decline of all the things which
make for a cultivated civilization.
* * * * *
The second party in the state then, the first at the present moment,
was the Christian Socialist. How they got the name I have not yet
learnt. There is no means of proving that they are not Christian; but
they are certainly not Socialists! I imagine they came by the name for
a certain historic interest in schemes of municipalization, but their
chief leaders are big capitalists, and their chief supporters the small
shopkeepers of the cities and the peasant farmers of the country. They
approximate to the old Liberals of the Manchester school in England.
Free trade is an important plank in their programme. Their efforts in
1919 were being directed against the decontrol of food, and Mr. Julius
Meinl’s theses on the subject have appeared in English in certain
journals devoted to a similar policy. Dr. Redlich, the eminent writer,
whose book on the British Constitution is regarded as the authoritative
work upon the subject in much the same way as Lord Bryce’s volume on
the American Constitution is said to be the last word on that subject,
is another gifted leader of this now dominant party. So far the
moderation of its course has saved the country from the reaction that a
too-swift swing of the pendulum almost invariably produces.
* * * * *
Amongst the women friends I made in Vienna one stands out with
peculiar interest. She is the lady to whom I have already referred,
Frau Zuckerkandl, the widow of a very eminent Austrian physician, and
one of the most delightful women it is possible to meet anywhere.
I saw her first in her dainty flat, dressed in a fluttering loose
robe of diaphanous silky material, a fairy figure with heaped-up
masses of bright hair and rather tired blue eyes. Less than fifteen
minutes sufficed to teach each of us that there were intellectual and
spiritual bonds between us that made friendship ripe at the first
contact. Both of us are devotees of good music. Both passionately
admire the drama. Both recognize in art the living spirit of a true
and lasting internationalism. Both feel the service of the oppressed
to be a glorious privilege. Only twice or thrice in one’s life comes a
friendship so rare and precious as I felt and feel this to be.
Frau Zuckerkandl’s father was the editor and proprietor of a great
newspaper. She is a writer of merit, and was the musical critic for a
Viennese journal. We visited the Opera together several times. This
marvellous people, half-famished and almost wholly despairing, crowded
the Opera House night by night, to revel at the feast of song which
was the only rich banquet left them, and the last table they would
willingly leave. “We can live without bread, but not without roses.”
My friend is related by marriage to the great Clemenceau. Her sister is
the wife of “The Tiger’s” brother. I think it was she who told me the
story that was afloat in Europe at that time of how, when Clemenceau
was charged by some of his insatiable fellow-countrymen with having
made a peace bad for France, he replied: “But how could I do better,
with a fool on one side who thought he was Napoleon, and a damned fool
on the other who thought he was Jesus Christ?”
* * * * *
Another good story which was going the round of the Vienna cafés
deserves to be repeated. In one of the cafés, years before the war, a
young Jew sat sipping his coffee day by day. Nobody was in the least
interested in him, and he was distinguished for nothing except a shabby
dress and a wild mop of tangled hair. His name was Trotsky.
In those days everybody was talking about the Russian Revolution. Many
were fearful of it. The Vienna Foreign Office was constantly being
warned about its coming, and worried to death about the consequences
upon Vienna of its coming.
Exasperated beyond endurance by the endless fears of his colleagues,
and full of contempt for them, one of the higher officials exclaimed:
“But what nonsense is this talk of a Russian Revolution; who is to make
the revolution? There is nobody. Perhaps”--and here came a gesture of
superb contempt--“Mr. Trotsky of the Café Centrale!”
* * * * *
A trip to Semmering was one of the excursions which consoled one a
little for the desolate spectacle of empty markets and idle factories,
of a disintegrating civic life. Semmering is a four hours’ motor
drive from Vienna, beautifully placed near the Styrian frontier. It
is a health resort full at that time of rich refugees. At a simple
guest-house on the slope of one of the hills President Seitz and
his wife, with a few members of his Cabinet, recuperated during the
week-ends for the arduous duties of the week. His secretary took me
out there for the day. We were again a curiously mixed group. The
overworked and courteous secretary was a baron of the old regime.
Professor Leon Kellner, hearty in manner and ruddy of complexion, the
famous Shakespearean scholar, was there; Otto Grockney, Minister for
Education, gravely peering through spectacles at the new-comer; and Dr.
Seitz.
Of this first President of the Socialist Republic of Austria, Karl
Seitz, I have written before. He is a kind, amiable, benevolent,
distinguished-looking man with a keen sense of humour. Someone
hearing him thus praised exclaimed: “But what else do you expect
from a President of Austria?” Looking at this polite and suave man
of the world, every inch a president, it is with difficulty that
one realizes that he was once on a time the fiercest leader of the
Socialist Opposition in the turbulent Austrian Parliament. He started
his career as an elementary school-teacher, became the fire-brand of
the Lower Austrian Diet and ended as the President! He is a speaker
of very great eloquence and power. He was always well liked, even by
his opponents, and is extremely popular. Very few of the new type of
potentate have the heart, the mind, the manners so ready to fit the new
position.
* * * * *
Dr. Max Winter, the kind-hearted Vice-Burgermeister of Vienna, is the
man to whom I owe most of my acquaintance with the civic life of the
city. Day after day he or his secretary or his son, who had been a
prisoner of war in England, took me out to see in particular what was
being done for the children. Dr. Winter is always spoken of as “the
children’s Mayor,” for the children are his very serious concern.
In his company I saw the public feeding centres of the Americans,
the clinics supervised by the Friends, the children’s hospitals so
sadly lacking funds, the open-air play-centres in the public parks,
and the country schools. The houses of rich nobles who have fled and
the palaces of the ex-Kaiser were used for this purpose. There was a
particularly attractive little hospital and feeding centre in a corner
of the Schönbrunn Palace for those children whose parents could afford
to contribute a little towards their keep, I think two crowns a day,
worth at that time about one penny. At the holiday camps in the parks
the children ran about all day in bathing suits, and very brown and
jolly they looked with the exposure to the sun and the regular, if
scarcely sufficient, food. “Freundschaft! Freundschaft!” they cried,
running to kiss my hand after the custom of the country. Sometimes
they sang their little songs and danced their pretty dances. Beautiful
brown-eyed Viennese children dancing in paper dresses, and crowned with
wood flowers in the Wiener Wald! I see them now in the mind’s eye,
waving their thin arms and smiling sweetly, with not a thought of the
bitter, cruel thing which is robbing them of health and life in their
innocent young hearts.
After a sad excursion one day to the market, where little girls of
twelve lay all night with their baskets waiting for the opening of the
butcher’s shop, and the scramble for the ration of meat for the family
dinner, I found waiting for me in the hotel about twenty women and one
child all robed in deep black. They had come with a petition. It was to
ask me to help them to get their husbands out of Russia, prisoners of
war there. Some had not been heard of for four years. Terrible stories
of their sufferings had come through. The women were frantic with
grief. They had been to the Mayor; he could do nothing. They had been
to the Government; the Government had made promises but done nothing.
They had been to the Allied Missions and had been sent away empty. They
were beginning to believe that the Government and the Allies were in
concert to keep the men in Russia because of their fear of Bolshevist
infection--afraid that the men had become converts. Someone had
suggested that perhaps I could help. They begged with quivering lips
that I would do something. Suddenly the child, a little fair-haired
thing, sprang from her mother’s side, and falling on her knees at my
feet, clasped her tiny hands and said in lisped English: “Dear kind
English lady, do bring my daddy back to me.” The women burst into
tears, such a sobbing and a wailing as would have melted a stone. It
was deeply painful. What could I do? I promised to interest the women’s
organizations of England and the Labour Party, and immediately wrote
to both. Alas! when the relief came, thousands, tens of thousands, had
died in exile, destroyed by hunger and disease.
* * * * *
The journey back to Berne was much quicker and more comfortable.
By special permission I returned by the children’s train. Six
hundred small victims of the famine came every six or seven weeks to
hospitable Switzerland; I travelled with one train load. I can add
nothing to the description of the sufferers I have already given;
but I can add a word of praise of the Swiss. They have raised for
themselves a lasting monument in the affections of the Austrian people,
and have set an example of practical internationalism which should
shame all those whose faith in blockades and tariffs and embargoes
and prohibitions is not yet dead. But for the Swiss and the Americans
Austria’s plight would have been beyond hope, and the world would be
the poorer by the loss of one of the most cultivated, artistic and
lovable races which have contributed to the happiness and elevation of
mankind. Very late in the day the men of Paris have moved towards the
relief of Vienna. Perhaps it is not quite too late to save the remnant.
But the martyrs have been many, and the agony long.