AUSTRIA INTERNALLY.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1919, Page 1

AUSTRIA INTERNALLY.

fAUSTIt ALIAN & N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION] ..VIENNA CONDITIONS. (Received This Dav at 8 a.m.) LONDON, Nov. 6. Mr Phiiilp Gibbs writing froin Vienna tells a tragic story of life in the capital, which he describes as a doomed city. By a strange freak of social psychology, the Austrians are crowding into the city. Of six million people, to which Austria has been reduced, 2J millions are herded together in Vienna.

Every hotel is crowded, and people are sleeping in bathrooms and drawing rooms. A vast majority are on the verge •of starvation. Children are seroffulous, though the American relief Committee has provided 20 million mteals for starving children in five months, an astounding achievement. The British Mission is also doing splendid work in bringing supplies. Vienna is now without industries and Treasury notes are hardly better than waste paper. Mr Gibbs adds “Yet the desire for mad gaiety and luxury would deceive the superficial observer who only saw the upper fifty thousand who are gorging thfemselves prodigiously, regardless of the cost at the restaurants and jazzing in dancing halls, while the rest arc starving. Unless the Allies formulate a policy, the Austrian people are doomed.

VIENNA WITHOUT FOOD. VIENNA, November 6. The Allied (Repatriation sub-Com-mit tee here have completed their sittings and are issuing their interim report.

■Sir William Goode, the British representative, wires to Reuter to the effect that the conditions in Vienna to-day ar e well-night desperate. This is owing to the non-fulfilment of their contracts by the Jugo-siav and Czechoslovak Governments to deliver foodstuffs and coal respectively. “There are,” lie says, “absolutely no reserves of bread meat or fats. The position is accentuated by the delays of the food trainsj owing to a shortage of coal.”