VIENNA
During my first visit to Berlin travel by railway was almost
impossible, so slow, crowded, and irregular was the service at that
time. Now it has been completely restored, and, if anything, probably
better than it ever was, thanks to the small number of passengers. Even
dining and sleeping cars are obtainable on the principal lines.
In the train which took me from Berlin to Vienna the civilian
passengers were no more than half a dozen; all the other passengers
were officers and soldiers, mostly wounded Austrians returning to their
motherland. Some were very seriously injured and groaned continuously;
others had horrible wounds badly bandaged; some were disfigured; some
had had limbs amputated.
They begged from the other passengers a few coppers to buy fruits or
cigars, but hardly anybody took any notice of them. They were nearly
all cavalrymen, and, as is usual in Austrian regiments, were of
different nationalities. This explains the lack of fellowship among
them--the lack of a sentiment which generally so much sustains soldiers
of other nations.
At a frontier station we were able to buy some Austrian papers.
They gave us a sort of foretaste of life in Vienna. There was very
little news, but talk about wonderful victories in Galicia and Serbia
(official), followed by a long white space where a comment had been cut
out by the Censor.
Two hours before publication a complete proof of every Austrian
paper must be presented to the Censor. Anything not considered fit
for publication is cut away; consequently the paper is often much
ornamented with blank spaces.
The big station at Vienna presents a really astonishing sight. Wounded
soldiers and refugees are everywhere. Outside the station it is the
same--and it is the same in the large central streets, in the parks, in
the churches. Vienna is the first great town completely transformed by
the war that I have seen.
On the broad footways at the sides of the streets there are two
unending processions of tired, famished-looking refugees. Most of them
are from Galicia, but there are thousands also from other provinces of
the Empire.
The authorities do not know where to place them; they do not know what
to do. They make the refugees walk with all that they still possess on
their shoulders. Often a sack and an old chair or some other piece of
furniture will be carried about for days and days.
These people have the eyes of those who have seen the horrors of war
without knowing what it is all about, without asking or being able to
understand why their fields should be destroyed, their houses burned,
and their pacific existences overturned by the calamity. Vienna does
not know what to do with them.
The subscription list started for the refugees has not been successful,
and Vienna is invaded by an enormous number of women, children, and old
men, penniless, without clothes, and with no means of subsistence. It
is very difficult to suggest a solution to such a condition of things.
The Government has sent 60,000 to 70,000 of the fugitives to towns in
the west; but there the same phenomenon repeats itself on a smaller
scale.
The first effect of such a condition of things is the enormous increase
in the prices of foodstuffs. Milk, potatoes, meat, sugar, etc., are
double the usual price; eggs have become a food for the rich, and
bread, even of very bad quality, is expensive and scarce.
Special decrees have been issued with the purpose of restricting the
use of flour to no more than 50 per cent. in bread and 60 per cent. in
cakes, which are not allowed to be made, even in private houses, more
often than twice a week.
In the restaurants almost every dish has become more expensive, and
there are no more dinners at fixed prices.
Coal is a luxury, it being an absolute impossibility to get any from
the Westphalian mines. Gas has nearly doubled in price, and poor people
who could not pay their bills had it cut off immediately.
Most of the hotels are full of families of the Galician aristocracy.
These families seem to be living a very gay, frivolous, and expensive
life. Smart carriages and motor cars run about the streets that are
full of starving people; while ladies, in £1,000 furs, and gentlemen,
smoking half-sovereign cigars, lounge about the hotels. I have never in
my life seen a more insolent and less appropriate display of wealth.
The rich Galicians show no inclination to help the poorer refugees. "We
are refugees, too," they say.
Outside the stations I saw a crowd of people waiting for soldiers to
arrive. Having lost faith in what the newspapers say, and aching for
news, the population is trying to get it directly from those coming
from the front. Nearly all the decently dressed Viennese people wear
mourning and nearly all have the armlet of the Red Cross.
The number of wounded in Vienna is astonishing. All the schools, public
buildings, assembly rooms, most of the theatres and halls, and even
some of the pavilions which generally shelter picture shows and other
attractions, including the famous Circus, have been converted into
hospitals. All the Viennese are trying to nurse soldiers to the best of
their ability; but everything is scarce, from bandages to medicines,
from cotton wool to beds and litters.
A new calamity seems to be approaching now. Smallpox is breaking out in
the poorer quarters and is claiming many victims, especially amongst
the refugees. Another epidemic that is visiting Vienna is cholera. The
fact is being kept very dark by the authorities to avoid panic; but it
seems that during one week more than 500 lives were lost through the
terrible disease.
While taking my after-lunch coffee I was astonished to hear at my back
a conversation taking place in the Venetian dialect; two soldiers were
talking about the war, and their accents did not leave me in any doubt
as to their nationality. I went to them and, after a few minutes, won
their confidence and got them to talk.
They had been wounded in Serbia and had been sent back to Vienna to be
cured. Now they were well and were going back to the front again next
day. I shall never forget the two poor young fellows; one of them was
just twenty, the other about twenty-five; and both were natives of
Trieste.
They confirmed all that has been said about the system of the Austrian
officers, and added things which I should not have believed had I not
heard them from the victims of the atrocities themselves.
They told me that in the Austrian Army the word of reproach has been
substituted by a spit in the face or a stroke with a switch; the whip
and the revolver in the hands of officers at the back of their men
serves to send them forward. The hesitation of a second is punished
by a shot. The soldiers obey; but during the struggle there is always
a bullet for the brutal officer which does not come from the enemy's
lines, and which avenges the murdered private.
All sorts of tortures and insults are inflicted on the soldiers.
I could not find a word of consolation for the poor chaps who were
going back to such an infernal life. I shook hands with them and walked
away.
All the other soldiers--German or French, Russian or Serbian--are,
after all, fighting somebody they detest for the victory of their
Motherland; but these poor chaps, forced to give their lives for a
nation they detest, to fight men against whom they have no hate and who
could perhaps help them to get back their independence, are the most
pathetic figures of the whole war.
* * *
The Austrian war loan seems to have been an absolute failure. Nobody
wants to buy shares, and the few millions subscribed were taken by
Government employees, who were forced to do so. The high financial
world and the aristocracy have been very stingy; so now the Government
is trying to get at the small purses.
On the café table, at the post offices, and in the hotels numerous
pamphlets are to be found saying that everybody ought to subscribe at
least twenty-five crowns, not only as a contribution to the nation's
need, but also as an excellent investment. Nobody seems to be anxious
to make the excellent investment.
It is the middle class which is said to be suffering most under these
conditions, for they have no money in the bank, they hardly manage to
make any money at all at the present moment, and, at the same time,
they don't want to admit that they are in need of anything.
Vienna has, at the present moment, scores of families--well-dressed and
well-connected--who are starving at home, families which, before the
war, used to live up to their full income and generally above it, and
which, now the father is unemployed or at the front, are absolutely
penniless and too proud to accept anything from public charity.
But the Viennese is certainly one of the most light-hearted persons on
earth--the war is going badly, the town is full of starving people,
the empire is engaged in a dangerous adventure, the end of which he
does not take the trouble to prognosticate; but what does it matter? He
talks about the war to crack a joke on the subject; he sees and laughs
at the faults of his allies; he manages to have a good time as far as
possible. The few theatres left open are crowded, as well as the cafés,
the cabarets, and all other places of amusement.
About politics, or the conduct of the war, he does not care to talk.
The argument is sad and it is not even very safe to say exactly what
one thinks on the subject.
If anybody is heard talking pessimistically about the war he is
denounced to the authorities. A case is made against him, and the
imprudent chatterer is almost certain to be condemned. I know of a
man who got two months' imprisonment for having said that he did not
believe the newspapers.
* * *
Besides the hospitals fixed up in numerous picture-galleries,
theatres, university buildings and private houses, the Prater's
constructions given up to depôts, magazines, and aeroplane sheds,
and the complicated system arranged for the collection of money and
comforts for the troops, all of which have altered considerably the
general appearance of the city, the thing which astonished me most
was the activity of a society which bears the harmonious name of "K.
u. K. Oesterreich-Ungarischer-National-Sprachen-Gebrauchs-Verein,"
the nearest translation of which I can think of is "Society for the
exclusive use of the national language in the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Vienna is certainly one of the towns outside France which shows a
strong French character, and the language, as well as the life of the
whole city, bears evident marks of it. Well, this society wants to rid
the Viennese slang of French words, as well as of all words not in the
German dictionary. The first effects of this movement have been to make
numerous hotels, cafés, and cabarets change names, and the publication
of pamphlets, distributed freely all over the town, in which are full
lists of the _taboo_ words, as well as of the numerous French and
English Christian names which are quite usual in Vienna, and which, it
is requested, should now be given up.
However, the great majority of Viennese people laugh at this mania;
the Chauvinistic spirit is not very much developed in Vienna, and the
hatred of England, which is Berlin's strongest feeling, is hardly
noticeable here.
* * *