CONDITIONS IN AUSTRIA.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 August 1919, Page 7

CONDITIONS IN AUSTRIA.

IN}-TCTION AND DESPAIR. NEW ZEALANDER'S TOUR. WELLINGTON, Aug. 15. An interesting account of his experiences in Austria isgiven by Mr Frank Levin, of Wellington, who served as a sergeant in the New Zealand Field Artillery. During his leave he journey to Italy, and also visited the Austro-Italian battlefields of the I-‘iave, Carso, and Assiago. Concern~ ing 'Austria.fs plight he says:—-

“Having at last pentrated well into Central Austria 130-fiered my temperary assistance to one of the many excellent allied Red Cross commissions. Our relief train started off, its merciful purpose being to assist the distracted and hyngry populace. As our train travelled across‘ great lengths of Austrian territory, stopping Occasionally for a few hours ill some of the more important towns, we realised their plight more fully than ever by reason of the pictures of poverty seen in succession, each being an eloquent reminder of what these people have had to endure during the war. Everything had fallen into almost horrifying disrepair even the trains in which we travelled were entirely without windows or lighting of any kind. Poverty and hunger confronted one at every turn, and worst of all the people seemed to have surrendered all hope, all ambition, and to be lost in a -miasma of inaction a.nd despair. They appeared merely to be waiting for their destiny, whatever it might ‘be, to descend upon them.

“The streets of each town that WC visited were dirty, and rows of shops were shuttered and closed, whilst apathetic crowds stood idly about, and virtually no business seemed afoot. At e\‘ery railway station and in the railway yards were a great quantity" of rolling stock, engines being very noticeable, but these, together with freight and passenger cars, were as all things else idle, and simply left to rot in the sun. There were numbers of fair-sized towns before we finally reached our destination where we were to hand out supplies to the people, and a-.-, each place along the route we made halts sufiiciently long enough to find lsure evidence that with small variaition the same apathy and despair was ‘unfortunately only too faithfully reipeatedf’