VIENNA TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 November 1919, Page 5

VIENNA TO-DAY.

A DOOMED CITY,

TRAGIC STORY OF LIFE THERE, MANY PEOPLE STARVING. By Telegraph. Assn.—Copyright. Received Nov. 9, 11.5 p.m. London, Nov. 8. Mr Phillip Gibbs, writing from Vienna, gives a tragic story of life in the capital, which he describes as a doomed city. By a strange freak of social psychology (die Austrians are crowding into the ,city of ten millions of people to which Austria has been reduced Two and a-half million are herded together in Vienna Every hotel is crowded, and people are sleeping in bathrooms and drawingrooms.

The vast majority are on the verge of' starvation. Children are scrofulous, though the American Relief Committee 'has provided twenty million meals 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 gaw the upper fifty gorging themselves prodigiously, regardless of cost, at restaurants, and jazziiig in dancing halls, while the rest are starving. Unless the Allies formulate a policy the Austrian people are doomed."—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. CONDITIONS BECOMING DESPERATE. BREAD AND MEAT SCARCE. Received Nov. 9, 5.5 p.m. Vienna, Nov. 6. The Reparation Sub-Commission has completed its sittings, and is issuing an interim report Sir William Goode, the British re> preventative, wires to Reuter to the effect that conditions in Vienna are well-nigh desperate, owing to the non-fulfilment of contracts by the Jugo-Slavs and the Czecho-Slovak Governments to deliver fopdstuffs and coal respectively. There are absolutely no reserves of bread, meat, or fats. The position is accentuated by delays of fooil trains owing to the shortage of coal,—Reuter.