AFTER THE STORM.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1920, Page 12

AFTER THE STORM.

(By Phillip Gibbs, in the London Daily Chronicle).

LIFE IN VIENNA. 1 . i A CITY OP TRAGEDY.

Vienna was a gay old city. Its people loved music, laughter, and the luxury of life. They cultivated the arts and welcomed taient from all the world, so that great musicians, painters, poets, and builders found recognition here, and were received with honor. They had the finest medical school in tii3 world. It was the Paris of Middle Europe, with traditions of culture and power a thousand years old in history, and built magnificently under the Hapsbnrgs, with splendid palaces, parks, churches, monu-

ments, and boulevards. . . . '.Che buildings stand, as evidence of that former grandeur, but a change has happened in fw. - by the death of what un~- <r> (Ire ti.ef'- .

in the Hofourg, where the Hapsburg Emperora surrounded themselves with treasures, a British Mission has its offices, witli other Allied Missions, which, under the name of "Reparation" Committees, are suggesting ways and means to keep the people of Vienna alive—and finding the task difficult.

The Palace of the Belvedere belonged to tie Archduke Franz Ferdinand—he who was murdered at Serajevo, where the spark lit the powder magazine which spread flame and fury through Europe on a day of August in 1014. Now it is a soup kitchen for starving children fed by American relief; and when, I went there 1100 of those little ones were having their first \meal of the day—the only meal for most of them — and saying "Gruss Gott" before they dipped their spoons. i The broad boulevards of Vienna are still thronged by people with their heads .bent to-day against the driving blizzard of snow. The cafes and restaurants are crowded with people who come for warmth, light, music, and smuggled food, for which they pay great prices. FOREIGN VULTURES. Many of these people are foreigners— Czechs, and Slovaks, and Croats, and Serbians, and Italians —who come Tike vultures to feed on the corpse of Austrian finance, changing their own money into four, five, or ten times the number of Austrian kronen.

Others are Viennese profiteers who gathered much bulk of paper money while the old empire was dying, and now are eating it up in a prodigal way, shrugglitig their shoulders at the future •while they fill their stomachs. Others are middie-class folk, who, after a breakfast of corn coffee and blacfe bread, a mid-day meal of cabbage sotip. and a dinner of boiled cabbage, snd other graenstuff, come hungry into the gilded rooms of these restaurants to linger over a cup of coffee with a glass of water, while they listen for hours to light music, and, under the glitter of 'tin chandeliers, jet a little warmth for their bodies and rouls.

Outside, in the thickly-populated districts. beyond the boulevards, in small; mUldle-class homes -and workmen's -tcne-1 ments. there is no kind of pretence :at gaiety, no "camouflage" of misery. There is poverty, naked -and cold. , [ Vienna is a city of tragedy—the most' tragic city in Europe this side of Russia.ij Before I came to 'Vienna 1 bad read, ■horrildf! tilings about, the conditions of the cii.y, and believed thoy might be exaggerated by -philanthropic, humanitar'ian people, anxious to arouse emdtion ;for the sake o'f their funds. Now "I know'by personal 'investigation Ihrtt. far from exaggerating, it is 'impossible to 'convey to the outside world :unythmg like the extent and depth of •misery into -tfliich the Viennese have '{alien. 'lt is "impossible "for -mo, after -fill -my 'investigations—autl'l 'have been diligent —*to know how these people of Vienna rtvi aisle to liVe. Frankly, I eanadt -im•'dcrstanU how, in such conditions, they .keep body -and soul together. Lortk ftt -a 'few simflle, appalling fa<!ts,i UK I havo found them. Thcro arc 100,000 men rout of-work-in 1 "Vienna at the present time, drawing■from five to 15 kronen (equal t(, 2-Jd to TJfl o'f our money, according to .the present -rate -o'f exchange).. Thcro are (1000 'homeless families. There are 2,1500,"000 people, of -whom 2(000i000 at least live without meat, butter, milk, or any kind of Int. Eigltty-'three per -cent, of the children r.uffer from Tickets, so badly bulbosheaded, that many are deformed. 'No children over one -year of -age -get ; any allowance of m'illc. Children -under' .one year of age are -allowed -one litre of ja'ilk per •day ; but, as .a rule, do jiof. •get more than "half a lite. The broad -ration for «ach -person Is tfro pounds -a -week. "Ho potatoes can be obtained "by the' gwat mass of -people, and those who get them smuggle them. In a cold climate (with snow already in the streets of Vienna) the people are Miserably dad 5n cotton clothes, and many children are barelegged, so that one «ees them shivering in the streets, blue to the. lips -with cold. There is no coal for factories or dwel- ■ ling-houses. The middle classes are worse off than th" artisan class, so that, whereas the mechanic gets 300 kronen a week, the professor, teacher, clerk, journalist, and small professional man gets no more than 150-250 kronen a week. These figures do not mean much until one knows the purchasing power of the krone. Then they mean black poverty, daily hunger, hopelessness. EMACIATED BABIES. I spoke to a medical officer in charge of itn infant welfare centre. He had been showing me the emaciated condition of the babies brought, in by half-starved mothers, who were buying tins of condensed milk and cocoa supplied at a cheap rate by the Society of Friends, who are doing very noble work in Vienna. He pointed out the babies suffering frpm eczema, rickets, scrofula, and then suddenly he began to tell me about his own condition of life. "I earn SCO kronen a wtfek," he said, "and I have to keep up the appearance of a gentleman. "To get, this old suit of mine turned cost COO kronen. A new suit is beyond my means altogether. It costs 2000 kronen. A shirt costs 120 kronen, a vair of boots 400. "I cannot afford to buy meat at H kronen for a veal cutlet," or I'd kronen for a pork chop. I never eat moat. Potatoes are beyond my means, at seven jkronen for. two pounds. I live mainly lon cabbage soup and bread. 1' To-day I met a woman worse than that. Her husband is out of work, «uui gats 10 kronen a day (.a little more

than ad in our money) and ihe lias a child three years old, whom I saw, wizened, pallid, monkey-like. For the child she bought one tin of condensed milk and one of jocoa, and they cost six kronen each, or more than one day's pay. I did not ask her how she lived. I could only guess how Boon she would die.

In the tenement houses there are thousands of women like that, halfstarved, but not quite starved, with babies who flourish —some of them — while they are fed at the breasts (others have rickets at three months old) and then wither and weaken and stay stunted, or die, because they can get no. milk or fat.

The people of Vienna are not without friends who, for humanity's sake, are devoting themselves to the relief of all this suffering. They are friends who were once counted n« their enemies. Since I have been in this city I have come in touch with the members of our own British Mission, under Sir William Goodc, which !m - done most admirable work by facilitating the transport of foodstuffs in, Austria, Ifungary, Serbia, and other distressed countries by supplying largo stocks of food at cost price to the Governments of these States, and by supporting the work of relief agencies. ADMIRABLE—BUT INADEQUATE. I have also seen the work of the American Relief Committee, which is magnificently organised, and of enormous help, and I have been in touch with, the Society of Friends, and seen tho devotion, the courage, and the ability with which Dr. Hilda Clarke and her assistants are securing milk and food for poor mothers and babies. All that is splendid as philanthropy, but the scale of the work that these people are doing is in itself a revelation of the mass of misery surrounding and overwhelming their efforts, and of the doom of a people which can fee postponed a little, but not averted, by this charity. The American Child-Relief Committee, directed by a yoiing naval lieutenant niimed Stockton, with three other colleagues—all fine men—is enormous in I its scope and enterprise. j It has csta,bli-.hed feeding eantres and distributing centres in Vienna and out-1 side districts for starving children between the ages of five and fifteen. In Vienna it is feeding 100,000 children, and another 100 ( 000 in other, parts. It has already supplied 20 million meals to these liungry mouths of Auutria. That is wonderful, and I hr.ve seen few things more touching than the battalions of little ones who come for th"ir midday dinner in the American centres. There is the gratitude of dumb animals in their eyes for this gift of food!, and they cat silently and earnestly as they sit together on the long wooden ■benches. Many of them had an unhealthy color. Many of them were very -tliin. They were ill-clad and cold. NO EVENING MEAL. A Teport of food conditions in one district of Vienna—the worst perhaps—shows than 8 per cent. Of the children ea.t nothing at all outside the, American Relief supplies of one meal a dayEighty 'per cent, have blbdk coffee n. the morning, and iibout iia.lf than -number cat a -small slice of brend. Jn the evenings 20 per cent, "have -no men! of any kind; 15 per cent. "have black coffee; and 10 per cent, have a slicß of bread. 'The Test liavc cabbage soup. '

That 5s not .enough for "health, Humph ; ! : it is enough For life, until these iindor- j nourished cliildron develop tuberntiloHißand any disease that is on the prowl. ■■ The American Relief Committee, the Society of Frionds. all kinds of 'hospital 'funds aikl philanthropic works allevitrte tlio suffering, but do not cure the evil condition!; by which it is caused, and—' nt tlie hast—only touch the otlge of the j ■general inimenjiiy of destitution that is! in tliis city, where, 'in the show places,| the haunts of liwirjc, there !in music.' feasting, and gaiety. All tliis charitable work Ms "but a sop, given to half-starved multitudes, while! their state becomes more desperate, and) their'chanee of recovery more uiililcely. ! '"A TjTMTfTiESS TTKUNU;" ] Vienna, -'to recover, -nee'ds -coal 'for her; lactones, so that, the people may worfe and produce manufactured articles in •exchange for food- "With lior money; 'fading away to •nothing in purchase power, she can 'buy ;ncither .coal .nor raw' material In any case, there Tan 'lie no recovery, in a city of 2t million people isolated' from rail the natural resources and flow, -of -wealth which created 'so 'great a 'Capital ' "A -man -who Ims liad "his .legs tut WIT. 'catirrot -walk;" I was told 'by an Austrian man -of letters. "We hare "had our legs cut off. We areTnit a limbless trunk." 'Charity is good kind. But Vicima ■asks for more than charity. She asks for a 'broad salieme of rescue "by the jyreat Powers oT Europe -willing to give her long credit lor -money and raw material, st> that she may regain some "kind of vitality. It is the hopelessness of the people, fy'igh and Jow, in Government offices, an 3 ■drawing-rooms, and slums, that 3a the worst of all. Before this I hare never seen ft city that -was hopeless—and it is not good to see, unless we are those who lick our I lips ibecause vengeance is sweeti