famous lines of Solovyof: 'O Russia, what sort of an East will you be,
the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?'"
"It looks rather like the East of Xerxes," said the old man. "But you
believe differently----"
And he smiled indulgently.
I could not say whether he spoke sincerely or out of the depths of
personal and national humiliation.
I suppose it is hard for those who are not Russians to realize what has
happened in Russia. Propaganda has discredited news. The western
world thinks of Russia as the same country with a change of government.
The colossal fact of the complete removal of the upper crust of Russia
is not realized.
A third group of _deracinés_ whom I came across in Serbia was an
_artel_ of Rostof engineers. I met a family I had known in Russia.
Last time I had seen them it was one evening with their children
scampering round a tall Christmas tree on which all the candles were
lighted. They were comfortable and capable people, and proud in their
way of what they could do and of what they possessed. Now, with all
the other engineers of the Vladikavsky Railway, they had fled from the
"terror" and were giving their services for the reconstruction of
Serbia.
Serbia did not particularly want them, and was not ready for their
grand schemes.
"You can't start anything in this country," said Engineer N----
regretfully. "Every one wants to make money out of it. The
administration lives on the enterprise of the people. We have
presented the Government with a complete plan for the reorganization of
the Serbian railroads. We have brought the treasury of the Vladikavsky
Railway with us, so we have a little capital, and given the authority
we could make a gigantic improvement in Jugo-Slavia. But all we have
been able to do so far is to arrange a few services of motor transport
to places not reached by railway."
My friends were in a poor little wooden hut on the outskirts of
Belgrade, very courageous and very sad, and their children, once petted
and even pettish, were now grown and serious and facing life earnestly
for themselves and for their parents' sake.
A great chance for Serbia lay in the use of these Russian engineers.
And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in
Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally
inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their
fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem
to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people,
more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference
between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of
Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian
speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of
world destiny.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VII. FROM BUDAPEST
The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an
ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent,"
says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits.
She has sore limbs and inflamed parts--in fact, a hopeless case," says
a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if
her young daughter Hungary survives her?"
"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I
hazarded.
"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother
Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look
after her."
The best train for Budapest leaves Belgrade at ten o'clock at night.
From the capital of Serbia to the neighbouring capital of Hungary is
only two hundred miles, formerly five or six hours' journey in a fast
train without hindrance or anxiety. In a state of good health, to go
from one main artery of Europe to another ought to be almost as quick
and as easy as thought. But now it is labour. No facilities are made
by Serbia for Hungary or Hungary for Serbia. International trains with
sleeping cars carefully avoid what are known as ex-enemy capitals. In
this night-train from Belgrade all the arrangements are discouraging
and fatiguing. First, second, and third class carriages are the same,
all wood, but some are marked "1" and others "2" and others "3." There
are no lights in the train, and it is very crowded. You crawl all
night through the ex-Austrian territory now part of Serbia. At four in
the morning you arrive at Subotitsa and wait six hours. You wait in a
queue and show passports to Serbian police; you take your baggage
through the Serbian _douane_ and it is searched for articles liable to
export duty. You send a "D" telegram to Budapest to reserve a room at
a hotel. For this "D" telegram you pay two or three times the ordinary
charge in order that it may have precedence of telegrams not marked
"D." Some time after ten in the morning you get into the Serbian
frontier train which takes you ten kilometres and deposits you in a
Hungarian no-man's land. Hungarian gendarmes collect the passports of
the passengers. You stand on a shelterless platform and wait for the
Hungarian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres further and
deposits you at the station of Szeged. Here you congregate like lost
souls in Hades and wait and suffer. They say those suffer most who
continue to have hope in that region. The hopeful clamour and push and
mortify themselves, whilst highly indifferent and laconic Magyars
chuckle among themselves and throw ink across an inky table asking
foreigners in Hungarian their mother's maiden name and their natal
town. The officials have adopted the principle of the division of
labour--one makes out a form, another fills it in, a third franks it
with a rubber stamp, a fourth registers details, and a fifth signs the
visa. Strange to say, this seems to multiply the time by five rather
than divide it by five. And most people know that the train for
Budapest will leave at the scheduled hour, leaving half the passengers
to wait all day at Szeged for another train. After passports, there is
a violent onslaught on your baggage by the customs officials. When
they are convinced that you are carrying nothing dutiable you have to
get a cab and make a hundred-crown journey across Szeged to another
train. You wait in a long queue for a ticket. Heaven help you if you
have baggage to register or re-register. It cannot be registered
through from Belgrade. As for the train, the passengers seem to be
hanging from the roofs of the carriages like bats. It is like a
seaside excursion express, and if you are lucky enough to get a place
you find there is only half a back to your seat.
A Hungarian diplomat, anxious that I should see his country in a good
light, helped me considerably on this journey, and I caught the train.
I had the doubtful pleasure of reflecting that at least half of my
fellow-passengers were still languishing at the first Szeged station,
victims of the division of labour and the verification of passports.
"I do hope you get a hotel after all this," said the diplomat. "For my
part, I wired to an actress," he added, with a knowing smile. "She
knows how to get a room when others cannot."
We arrived in Budapest about 11 p.m. The "D" telegram, alas, was
languishing far behind. It was delivered next day about noon. Knowing
the expensive folly of taking a cab and trying to find a hotel I made a
midnight exploration of the capital of Hungary on foot, all sleeping,
all apparently dead and without a spark of night life. There were no
trains, no flocking crowds, but only occasional pedestrians and the
accidental clatter of a horse-cab now and then. And the Danube rolled
through the stillness silently. I fell in with a late-going working
man coming off a day shift. He piloted me to the "Ritz," home of
Allied Commissions and delegates of all kinds. That there should be a
room there was unlikely enough, but it was possible to persuade the
clerk to telephone to various obscure establishments on the "other side
of the river." It is always obscure on the other side of the river.
At last a hotel was found and located, and when the cabman had brought
my things from the station and one asked timidly: "How much?" one
received a characteristic reply.
"A thousand crowns," said the unblushing cabby--rather more than the
cost of a ticket for the whole journey from Belgrade to Budapest.
I saw next day that I must report to the police within twenty-four
hours of arrival, and also within twenty-four hours of departure. Such
is modern travel in Europe, and I felt rather amused when the question
was put to me, "Are you travelling for pleasure or on business?"
Serbia and Hungary are not on good terms. The Hungarians will not
forgive the loss to Serbia of territory over which they claim to have
ruled for a thousand years. Hungary will not forgive the Czechs or the
Roumanians either. They have been mightily despoiled by the nations.
Roumania has doubled her original territory at old Hungary's expense.
Czechoslovakia holds Pressburg, the ancient capital and coronation-city
of the Hungarian kings, and calls it Bratislavl. "They might as well
have called it New York," says a Magyar contemptuously. There is
nothing soft or relenting about the Magyars. They are quite
implacable, and they are a fighting people. There is no good will. On
the contrary, there is definite ill-will on the part of Hungary towards
her neighbours. Austria is soft towards the new nations which have
arisen on the ruins of her empire, but Hungary is hard.
To the Serb, the enmity of the Magyar is disconcerting. By crossing
the Danube, Serbia has become genuinely part of Europe; she has turned
her back on the Balkans and the eternal strife on barren empty hills.
The new Serbia can afford to forget and forgive Bulgaria, now a remote
sort of country. She can retort to Greece concerning Salonica--We have
no need of that port now, for we no longer aspire to be a power on the
Aegean, we are a Central-European people. Jugo-Slavia is not a Balkan
country. She is ashamed of the Balkans and of the Balkan past. She
will loyally look to Geneva or any other capital of the League of
Nations. She will cling to the centre. All seems well. Perhaps
Bulgaria will cease to be an enemy, and Greece will cease to be a
rival. Serbia moves northward, but in the North she comes face to face
with a worse potential enemy than either--the Magyar. Serbia becomes
conscious of a European destiny, but Hungary avers that a large stretch
of Hungarian territory has been torn from Europe and is being
Balkanized, despoiled of the old comfort and civilization of the
Austro-Hungarian State and made dirty and inefficient by Slavs.
Every one blames some one else in this part of the world. There are
bugs in the railway-carriages--the German soldiers brought them; they
were not there before. The trains go slowly--the Hungarian engine
drivers have ruined all the locomotives by making big fires with little
water in the boilers; contractors seem to take bribes--these are
Hungarians, "They'd sell their souls for a dinar." "Look, look," says
a Magyar officer, pointing to the dirt on Subotitsa station. "You
never could see that in the old days. I used to be here with my
regiment. It was as pretty and clean a place as you could find in
Hungary."
Nearing the frontier you pass in review a very sad sight, and that is,
several hundred locomotives rusted to their very depths and eaten out
with bad weather and neglect. "These are the locomotives we
surrendered to the Serbs after the Armistice," says a Hungarian. "The
Serbs could not use them. They have no engineers--no shops for their
repair. We wouldn't have minded if the engines were used, but it makes
us sick to think of such waste."
On the other hand, perhaps, the Hungarians in their malice surrendered
the engines with their boilers burnt out and with other vital defects.
One side or the other, or both, is to blame. But whatever the judgment
might be, the engines remain in their rust--these useful iron servants
of humanity have perished. They are symbols of a spoliatory peace.
Serbia discourages travel to Hungary. Hungary for her part bristles
with spears. Above the passport window on the Danube quay at Budapest
you read:
I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD.
I BELIEVE IN GOD'S ETERNAL JUSTICE.
I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF HUNGARY.
--a dangerous creed.
Dr. M----, first assistant at the University of Vienna, now made a
Czech subject against his will, put the matter well: "Bismarck was a
man of genius, but he made a great mistake in taking Alsace and
Lorraine. And Clemenceau was a great man, greater for instance than
Lloyd George; I treated him for twelve years, I know his character
well, but he outdid Bismarck by making a whole series of
Alsace-Lorraines in Europe. It means a century of wars to put it
right."
"There would be war now," said Von K----, an ex-Captain of the 3rd
Hussars. "But we shudder to take the responsibility of plunging Europe
once more into the bath of blood."
The 3rd Hussars is called the Dead Regiment now. It was reduced to
five officers and a hundred and thirty-seven men in the war. It was
resolved not to recruit for it again, but to leave it as it was left,
and it paraded before the King at Budapest in its original formation,
showing all the gaps. "It was tremendously impressive," said the
Captain--"one man here, two there, three only on the right wing. Many
of us who had come through all that hell with dry eyes wept like
children in the parade.
"We often receive letters from our people in Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia
and Jugo-Slavia, saying 'Why do you not come over and protect us?'" he
went on. "If we marched into the stolen territories, the local
populations would all rise in our favour. The time will come, but it
is not yet. The last word has not been said."
That conversation was at the beginning of April, and Karl was actually
in Budapest endeavouring in a clumsy way to follow the example of
Constantine in Greece and resume monarchical sway. Budapest for a day
was all agog with rumour and whispered conversations. Karl was
popular, but his failure was sensed by the populace. He had come
inopportunely, despite the fact that the great powers seemed not
unfavourable. France, by many accounts, had given secret countenance
to the return of the Hapsburg, Karl being known as Francophile in
policy. "Present us with a _fait accompli_," Briand was reported to
have said to Karl, "and we will not oppose your return to power."
Evidently part of France favoured the adventure and was not a little
annoyed at its failure. As an allied power with Italy and England she
had to show a forbidding front to Karl, but as "Le Figaro" said, "_Ce
n'est pas sur le Danube que nous menacent des perils mortels, c'est sur
le Rhin._" The Allies, however, as they are called, had little power
to help or stop ex-Kaiser Karl. It was the little States that stopped
him--the Petite Entente of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-slavia and
Roumania, and of these powers chiefly the Czech.
As long ago as January Karl's attempt to return was anticipated by the
Czechs. They used it as the motive for making a ring round the hostile
State. Hungary was the potential enemy of the three States which had
taken over ex-Hungarian territory. Hungary, moreover, had had her
terrible moment of Bolshevism and had got over it, she had become
nationalistic again and had reorganized her army on national lines. To
any one of the new States surrounding her she would be a formidable
enemy. Hungary, however, would stand little chance against three
combined. So with great zest the new combination was formed.
Certainly the warmest national friendship in the Near East to-day is
that between Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, and it has been called
into being by the common danger of the Magyar.
Budapest is a handsome city with grand bridges spanning the bending
Danube. The fashionable part climbs upwards on crags to the higher
light, and the Danube flashes upward. The modern city is a first-class
aggregation of business houses, cafés, and places of pleasure. There
is pavement comfort. The people are well dressed, despite losses and
troubles. The smooth pates of business men abound, and the knobbly
skulls of the Balkans are fewer. The women are in fashion, and as in
the rest of Central and Western Europe, wear bunches of artificial
grapes hanging from one side of their hats. You see no grapes and
hanging ribbons in Belgrade and Sofia. They will come there next year
or in 1923. The Hungarian women are broad-faced and broad-bosomed, and
talk more than they smile. City madam in elegant attire with
languorous half-shut eyes and Hungarian drawl is a man's darling.
Flesh-coloured stockings greatly abound. One is, however, strongly
advised not to judge of Hungary by the people who spend four or five
hours of the day sitting in the cafés of Budapest. The poor parts of
the city present a different spectacle. Here there are great numbers
of crooked-legged spindly children, war-products evidently. The slums
are nothing like so bad as those of London or Chicago--only the
children are less boisterous, less vital, and seem to have been
underfed all their lives. The new babies look much better than the
children of four or five. Food is more abundant now, and a great deal
of relief work is done at the schools. But it is doubtful if any
philanthropic efforts can restore the war-children. Budapest has a bad
streak left in her town-population by the war, and it is visible.
Cotton goods are very expensive, and many of the poor children seem
inadequately dressed. The price of cotton is dependent upon much
speculation and bad business between the American cotton plantation and
the obscure worker in Hungary. It is a curious anomaly that Americans
should burn cotton-bales in the Southern States to keep up the price,
and that the American Red Cross on the other hand should in Europe
distribute free garments to those who cannot pay the world-price thus
attained.
The exchange is very low, five crowns to a penny, three hundred to a
dollar. For a thousand crowns a week you can live--you can live in one
room and keep body and soul together. For two thousand crowns a week
you can live at a second-class hotel with board and lodging. An
ordinary dinner with a glass of beer costs a hundred crowns. You can
also get a seat at the back of the stalls in a theatre for that amount.
There is a luxury-tax of ten per cent on all you buy at cafés and
restaurants, on perfumery, and like objects. This, no doubt, brings in
a large amount to the national exchequer if it is efficiently
collected. The wages and salaries of all trades and professions are in
a continual hurdle-race, vaulting cost of living and the rate of
exchange. There are thousands of _nouveaux riches_, and there are
thousands of ex-rich and gentry in decay. One feels that Hungary,
however, is a rich country even as she stands to-day, and that the
people have sterling qualities which make for the recuperation of the
new State. There is still a love of work in the country, and that is
comparatively a rare virtue in modern Europe. The working class, as in
Germany, feels that it lost the war and cannot expect extra fine
conditions. The Hungarian working man outworks and therefore
undersells or can undersell the English working man. The nation whose
working men are ready to do most work is the most fortunate in 1921.
If Hungary can avoid indemnities and export taxes she is likely to do
well. The Government will no doubt undergo many changes, and most
people believe that the King is bound to come back. By popular vote he
probably would--just as Constantine did in the Greek elections. But
external opposition is too great. If Czechs and Serbs quarrelled it
would be different. International animosity and the general ill-will
militate most against the peaceful development of the new Hungary.
Budapest no doubt will always win friends for the country of which it
is the capital. Capitals can be of enormous service to states in the
matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive
buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country
itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance
to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap
to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest will help Hungary enormously.
What a glamour there is upon Budapest in the evening, with myriads of
lights on each side of the gliding Danube. Formerly one arrived under
the grand bridges in a house-boat at night and came alongside the stone
quays, and without passports or customs walked up into one of the
gayest and brightest cities of Europe. But now the Danube, mother of
mighty countries, is enchanted and enthralled. When will she be
disenchanted again?
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VIII. FROM VIENNA
At Budapest you begin to suspect that you are in Europe; at Vienna you
are sure of it--with its great array of fine shops, full of elegancies
and delectable grandeur which leave Paris and New York in the shade.
The whole press of Europe seems to have "written up" Vienna as "the
ruined city" and "the end of a great capital," and even at
Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the
eyes, the fiction held that Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore
agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization running
smoothly--a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the
cafés, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first
glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working
class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat
of a myth.
Vienna is not like Petrograd where the thousands of eyes of the Nevski
Prospect have been put out and squads of dead shops stare at one from
smashed windows and gutted interiors. And it is not a vast
caravanserai for sufferers like Constantinople. Something, however, is
wrong and has been wrong and will be worse, and this something has
power to strike the imagination of every one who visits the great city
of Vienna. It is perhaps the contrast of luxury on the one hand and
black bread on the other, and the almost fabulous descent of the crown.
Wrangel's officers use hundred-rouble notes for shaving-papers, and
Americans in Vienna behave as unceremoniously with crowns. The lower
denominations of the rouble are much cheaper than the price of paper,
and the Austrian crown is going that way.[1]
This depreciation of the currency strikes the mind of the visitor to
Vienna, and from it he deduces the general ruin of the country. He
sees the shabby condition into which imperial palaces and State houses
are falling, and talks with the aristocratic or cultured _nouveau
pauvre_ carrying his lunch of sausage and black bread to a gloomy
apartment at the back of a fourth floor, and he feels the calamity that
has fallen upon Austria. Austria with a nominal 2800 crowns to the
pound sterling cannot last. How then about Poland with 4000 marks to
the pound--an Allied country with a close understanding with France?
But nobody in Vienna can understand how Poland lives.
The true inwardness of Vienna's calamity seems to lie in the fact that
she is the capital of a very badly governed country. Much could
obviously be done in little Austria by an honest, intelligent, and
industrious administrative staff. But they prefer to stand in the way
and beg, the giant Vienna and the dwarf Austria, staggering the
imagination of pilgrims, and whining for alms to passers-by.
By all accounts there is not even the will to govern well and make the
new Austria into a going concern. Hence arises the economic problem of
Austria, which is certainly grave. Here is a State which persistently
refuses to live on its income, and prints off paper money to make up
its deficiency. A highly expensive bureaucracy five times as large as
is needed for little Austria pays itself first, and as for the rest of
the population the devil can take the hindmost. The money-printing
press works night and day. No loans, no foreign dole, will stop the
operation of this machinery; what is necessary is a change of heart.