"My children may get some bad manners from the neighbors with whom I
have to leave them," she said. "But those I can correct later on. Right
now I must try to get them sufficient and good food, so that their
bodies will not suffer."
In that kind of a woman patriotism is hard to kill, as I had ample
opportunity to observe.
At Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of the Baroness
Wangenheim, widow of the late Baron Wangenheim, then ambassador at the
Sublime Porte. Hearing that I was in Berlin, the baroness invited me to
have tea with her.
Tea is a highly socialized function, anyway, but this one was to be the
limit in that respect. The repast--I will call it that--was taken in one
of the best appointed _salons_ I ever laid eyes on. Taste and wealth
were blended into a splendid whole.
The maid came in and placed upon the fine marquetry taboret a heavy old
silver tray. On the tray stood, in glorious array, as fine a porcelain
tea service as one would care to own.
But we had neither milk nor lemon for the tea. We sweetened it with
saccharine. There was no butter for the war-bread, so we ate it with a
little prune jam. At the bottom of a cut-glass jar reposed a few
crackers. I surmised that they were ancient, and feared, moreover, that
the one I might be persuaded to take could not so easily be replaced. So
I declined the biscuit, and, to make the baroness understand, offered
her one of my bread coupons for the slice of bread I had eaten. This she
declined, saying that the day was yet long and that I might need the
bread voucher before it was over.
"I am no better off than others here," the baroness explained to me in
reply to a question. "I receive from the authorities the same number of
food cards everybody gets, and my servants must stand in line like all
others. The only things I can buy now in the open market are fish and
vegetables. But that is as it should be. Why should I and my children
get more food than others get?"
I admitted that I could not see why she should be so favored. Still,
there was something incongruous about it all. I had been the guest of
the baroness in the great ambassadorial palace on the Boulevard Ayas
Pasha in Pera, and found it hard to believe that the woman who had then
dwelt in nothing less than regal state was now reduced to the necessity
of taking war-bread with her tea--even when she had visitors.
"If this keeps up much longer the race will suffer," she said, after a
while. "I am beginning to fear for the children. We adults can stand
this, of course. But the children...."
The baroness has two small girls, and to change her thoughts I directed
the conversation to Oriental carpets and lace.
Her patriotism, too, is of the lasting sort.
But the very same evening I saw something different. The name won't
matter.
I had accepted an invitation to dinner. It was a good dinner--war or
peace. Its _pièce de résistance_ was a whole broiled ham, which, as my
hostess admitted, had cost in the clandestine market some one hundred
and forty marks, roughly twenty-five dollars at the rate of exchange
then in force. There was bread enough and side dishes galore. It was
also a meatless day.
The ham was one of several which had found the household in question
through the channels of illicit trade, which even the strenuous efforts
of the Prussian government had not been able to close as yet. The family
had the necessary cash, and in order to indulge in former habits as
fully as possible, it was using that cash freely.
After living for several days in plenty at the Palads in Copenhagen, and
ascertaining that _paling_--eel--was still in favor with the Dutch of
The Hague, I returned to Vienna. Gone once more were the days of wheat
bread and butter.
One rainy afternoon I was contemplating the leafless trees on the Ring
through the windows of the Café Sacher when two bodies of mounted police
hove into view on the bridle path, as if they were really in a great
hurry. I smelled a food riot, rushed down-stairs, caught a taxi on the
wing, and sped after the equestrian minions of the law. Police and
observer pulled up in the Josephstadt in the very center of a food
disturbance.
The riot had already cooled down to the level of billingsgate. Several
hundred women stood about listening to the epithets which a smaller
group was flinging at a badly mussed-up storekeeper, who seemed greatly
concerned about his windows, which had been broken by somebody.
The police mingled with the crowd. What had happened? Nothing very much,
said the storekeeper. That remark fanned the flame of indignation which
was swaying the women. Nothing much, eh? They had stood since high noon
in line for butter and fat. Up to an hour ago the door of the shop had
been closed. When finally it was opened the shopkeeper had announced
that he had supplies only for about fifty fat coupons. Those who were
nearest his door would be served and the others could go home.
But somehow the crowd had learned that the man had received that morning
from the Food Central enough fat to serve them all with the amount
prescribed by the food cards. They refused to go away. Then the
storekeeper, in the manner which is typically Viennese, grew
sarcastically abusive. Before he had gone very far the women were upon
him. Others invaded the store, found the place empty, and then vented
their wrath on the fixtures and windows.
I was greatly interested in what the police would do with the rioters.
But, instead of hauling the ringleaders to headquarters, they told them
to go home and refrain in future from taking the law into their own
hands. Within ten minutes the riot resolved itself into good-natured
bantering between the agents of the law and the women, and the incident
was closed, except for the shopkeeper, who in court failed to clear up
what he had done with the supplies of butter and fat that had been
assigned him for distribution. He lost his license to trade, and was
fined besides.
Talking with several women, I discovered that none of them held the
government responsible. The "beast" of a dealer was to blame for it all.
This view was held largely because the police had gone to work in a most
considerate manner, according to the instructions issued by an anxious
government.
In a previous food riot, in the Nineteenth Municipal District, the
gendarmes had been less prudent, with the result that the women turned
on them and disfigured with their finger-nails many a masculine face--my
visage included, because I had the misfortune of being mistaken for a
detective. A muscular _Hausmeisterin_--janitress--set upon me with much
vigor. Before I could explain, I was somewhat mussed up, though I could
have ended the offensive by proper counter measures. It is best to
attend such affairs in the Austrian equivalent for overalls.
Some weeks before, the Austrian premier, Count Stürgkh, had been shot to
death by a radical socialist named Adler. In his statements Adler said
that he had done this because of his belief that so long as Stürgkh was
at the helm of the Austrian ship of state nothing would be done to solve
the food situation.
There is no doubt that Adler had thoroughly surveyed the field of public
subsistence. It is also a fact that he did the Austrian government a
great service by killing the premier. The right and wrong of the case
need not occupy us here. I am merely concerned with practical effects.
Count Stürgkh was an easy-going politician of a reactionary type. He
gave no attention of an intelligent sort to the food problem, and did
nothing to check the avarice of the food sharks, even when that avarice
went far beyond the mark put up by the war-loan scheme. His inertia led
during the first months of the war to much waste and later to
regulations that could not have been more advantageous to the private
interests of the food speculators had they been made for them expressly.
No statesman was ever carried to his grave with fewer regrets. In the
Austrian government offices a sigh of relief was heard when it became
known that Adler had shot the premier.
A revolution could not have been averted in Austria had Stürgkh
continued at his post much longer. At first he was attacked only by the
_Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung_, a socialist daily controlled by the father of
Adler, who, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of the publication,
is a member of the Austrian Reichsrath and the leader of the Austrian
Socialist party. But later other papers began to object to Stürgkh's
_dolce far niente_ official life, among them the rather conservative
_Neue Freie Presse_. Others joined. Ultimately the premier saw himself
deserted even by the _Fremdenblatt_, the semi-official organ of the
government.
Though charged with incompetency by some and with worse by others, Count
Stürgkh refused to resign. Emperor Francis Joseph was staying his hands
and this made futile all endeavor to remove the count from his high
office. The old emperor thought he was doing the best by his people, and
had it not been that the Austrians respected this opinion more than they
should have done, trouble would have swept the country.
A new era dawned after Count Stürgkh's death. But his successors found
little they could put in order. The larder was empty. Premier Körber
tried hard to give the people more food. But the food was no longer to
be had.
The loyalty of the Austrian people to their government was given the
fire test in those days. Now and then it seemed that the crisis had
come. It never came, however.
Other trips to the fronts presented a new aspect of the food situation.
It was an odd one at that. The men who had formerly complained that
their wives and children were not getting enough to eat had in the
course of time grown indifferent to this. It was nothing unusual to have
men return to the front before their furloughs had expired. At the front
there were no food problems. The commissary solved them all. At home the
man heard nothing but complaints and usually ate up what his children
needed. Little by little the Central Power troops were infected with the
spirit of the mercenary of old. Life at the front had its risks, but it
also removed one from the sphere of daily cares. The great war-tiredness
was making room for indifference and many of the men had truly become
adventurers. So long as the _Goulaschkanone_ shot the regular meals
every day all was well. The military commissaries had succeeded by means
of the stomach in making the man at the front content with his lot. Food
conditions in the rear always offered a good argument, inarticulate but
eloquent, nevertheless, why the man in the trenches should think he was
well off. In the case of the many husbands and fathers no mean degree
of indifference and callousness was required before this frame of mind
was possible. But the war had taken care of that. War hardly ever
improves the individual. Out of sight, out of mind!
It was the craving stomach of the civil population that caused the
several Central European governments most concern.
In the past, newspapers had been very careful when discussing the food
question. They might hint at governmental inefficiency and
double-dealing, but they could not afford to be specific. The censors
saw to that. When the food situation was nearing its worst the several
governments, to the surprise of many, relaxed political censorship
sufficiently so that newspapers could say whatever they pleased on food
questions. First came sane criticism and then a veritable flood of
abuse.
But that was what the authorities wanted. Hard words break no bones, and
their use is the only known antidote for revolution. Abuse was in the
first place a fine safety valve, and then it gave the authorities a
chance to defend themselves. To-day some paper would print an article in
which, to the satisfaction of the reader, it was shown that this or that
had been badly managed, and to-morrow the food authorities came back
with a refutation that usually left a balance in favor of the
government. The thing was adroitly done and served well to pull the wool
over the eyes of the public.
Free discussion of the food problem was the order of the day. The light
was let in on many things, and for the first time since the outbreak of
the war the food shark had to take to cover. The governments let it be
known that, while it was all very convenient to blame the authorities
for everything, it would be just as well if the public began to
understand that it had a share of responsibility. Informers grew like
toadstools after a warm rain in June. The courts worked overtime and the
jails were soon filled. The food situation was such that the lesser fry
of the speculators had to be sacrificed to the wrath of the population.
The big men continued, however, and pennies were now to be mobilized
through the medium of commodities. It was no longer safe to squeeze the
public by means of its stomach if patriotism was to remain an asset of
the warring governments. The masses had been mulcted of their last by
this method. Others were to supply the money needed for the war.
I feel justified in saying that the craving stomach of the Central
states would have served the Allied governments in good stead in the
fall of 1916 had their militaro-political objectives been less extensive
and far-reaching. The degree of hunger, however, was always counteracted
by the statements of the Allied politicians that nothing but a complete
reduction of Germany and Austria-Hungary would satisfy them. I noticed
that such announcements generally had as a result a further tightening
of the belts. Nor could anybody remain blind to the fact that the lean
man is a more dangerous adversary than the sleek citizen. Discipline of
the stomach is the first step in discipline of the mind. There is a
certain joy in asceticism and the consciousness that eating to live has
many advantages over living to eat.
The Central Power governments did not lose sight of this truth.