Chapter V: Part 5

There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions. This came through the efforts of Bismarck, and it applies to all workmen with a salary not exceeding $500 a year. Alfred Krupp gave $250,000 to the workmen, the interest of which is used as a fund to encourage them to build their own houses and as a help for the needy. It is loaned to the workmen at a very small rate of interest.

Besides these benefits he established private schools the purpose of which is to qualify the children of the workmen to earn honest profitable livings. A fee of five cents a month is charged to each pupil, but if the child remains fifteen months, seventy-five cents is placed in the savings bank to his credit.

Krupp realized that a contented body of workmen brings about better results than unhappy ones, and he felt that his scheme was not only a philanthropic one but also a good business investment.

In the war of 1870 Krupp guns were used, and in this present war they have played a star role. The Kaiser sent his personal thanks to the house of Krupp for all that they have done for Germany. Frau Bertha is very proud of her works and also of the nickname of her howitzers: "Busy Berthas."

MUNICH IN WAR TIME.

No matter what you want to do in Germany if you are a foreigner, even a neutral, you have to go to the police. If you want to take a trip, the first thing that you do is to go to the police and ask them if you are allowed to go where you want to go, and then if you are allowed to go you must return to the police exactly twenty-four hours before you start and get your passport stamped.

Then you take your bread card, your butter card, your meat card and your potato card to the bread commission. They cut off tickets for as long as you are to be away, and in return they give you a traveling bread card, a little book with twenty tickets in it. Each ticket is good for either a roll or a piece of black bread, and for each week you receive forty tickets. In the hotels where you stop you receive a meat card on the days when meat is served.

As soon as you arrive at your destination you must go to the police and register. Here they write your whole history down on a field-gray card. One would think that it was an easy matter to slip away and the police would never know. This can be done very easily, but if you are caught you get in an awful muddle. Police come through the trains unexpectedly and ask to see your passport. If it is not in order you are liable to be imprisoned, and you must pay a fine for every day that you are not registered. Sensible people follow all the police rules. They are well advertised and one cannot fail to know them.

An American lady I know went from Berlin to Munich without registering at the police station. A man came through the train and asked her for her pass, and when he saw that it was not stamped she was ordered to report to the Munich police at once. When she got to Munich she forgot to go to the police for three days, and when she went there the good-natured Bavarian policeman let her off.

"I am so glad," she said, "I would not know what to wear if I went to jail.'"

It was in September, 1916, that I made my last trip to Munich. One seldom sees French prisoners in Berlin, but all the way from Berlin to Munich I saw them working in the fields. All of these prisoners had on blue coats and their famous bright red trousers. They made gay spots on the dull German landscapes.

Every little farm had geese, and every little town had its little garrison of soldiers, training. In some places the soldiers were out in the fields drilling. They were running, jumping and shooting.

The center of attraction of our whole train was a young sailor from the "Deutschland." He was a fine young fellow and he smiled at everybody. At every station he got out and bought something to eat. He seemed to have an endless appetite and a very long purse.

As one gets farther and farther into Bavaria, the wayside shrines begin to appear. They are everywhere along the roads and in the fields. At different places harvest workers could be seen gathered around the shrines in prayer.

When one is many, many miles away from Munich, one can see the two towers of the _Frauenkirche_, red towers with green tops. These towers are the symbol of Munich.

Outwardly, the only change that one can see in Munich is the substituting of soldiers for students, and it really spoils the place, for while the military spirit suits Berlin so well, it seems out of place with these more gentle southern people. The Bavarian uniforms are trimmed around the collar with a blue and white braid that looks like the edging on a child's petticoat. It is hard to understand how such artistic people could choose such a thing, but a Bavarian's artistic sense is in his mind and not in his dress. The Bavarian soldiers have a reputation all over Germany for being very fine warriors.

The loss of the old Prince Regent Luitpold meant much to these people, and his son can never hope to be as popular even if he did have to wait seventy years before he came to the throne. The Crown Prince Rupert is more popular than his father. He is nearly always with his troops at the front, and even when his eldest boy died, he felt that he could not get away. He said, "This is no time for a soldier not to be attending to his duty." His next son, Prince Albert, is now the heir to the throne. He is a beautiful little boy and is tremendously popular in Munich. The old Müncheners say that he is very much like what Ludwig II was when he was a boy.

Most things to eat are much more plentiful in Munich than in Berlin. For instance, a man can have a pint of milk every day and a woman can have more than that. Ham costs only seventy cents a pound without a card, and on meat days it can be bought in any of the restaurants. The meat portions in the Munich restaurants are one hundred and eighty grams while in Berlin they range from fifty to forty grams; and in Bavaria the price for the portion is no higher.

Vegetables and fruit are very plentiful, but butter and eggs are scarcer than in Berlin. One person gets only fifty grams of butter each week and one egg. In Berlin we generally got eighty grams of butter and never less than an egg and a half a week.

In Bavaria everything is divided among the people. For instance, if a man who lives in the country near Munich has a load of hay for sale, he brings that load of hay to Munich to what they call the central station. They have all kinds of central stations in Munich, for grain, for meat, for eggs, for vegetables, and for butter. The load of hay which the man brings is divided up and given out where it is most needed; he does not dare to sell the load of hay himself.

It is just the same with eggs. Suppose that you had a brother in the country, and he wanted to send you one hundred eggs to pack for the winter. He could not send you the eggs direct. He would have to send them first to the central station, and if eggs were plentiful that week, the central station would let you have the eggs; but if eggs were scarce and were needed elsewhere, you are given only a small part of the eggs. This plan is followed in everything. Even if you raise a pig, you cannot keep all the meat yourself, you must sell a part of it to your neighbor if he needs it.

The rolls in Munich are much better than in Berlin, and they seem to be made of entirely white flour. Cheese is very scarce in Berlin, but in Munich there is plenty of cheese, and it is very cheap. Pure coffee can be bought at a dollar a pound without a card, and although there is a sugar card the same as in Berlin, still all the restaurants and cafés serve pure sugar.

The price of beer has not been affected much by the war and beer that was twenty-eight pfennigs before the war is now thirty-four pfennigs, and the Hofbräu beer, or the beer made by the royal brewery, is thirty-two pfennigs. Fine malt beers such as Bock Beer and Märzen Beer are prohibited from being made, as they take too much malt and saccharine.

One evening when I was there we walked through the Mathazerbräu, the greatest beer hall in the world. The place was one mass of people drinking beer, soldiers and officers and women. Most of the guests brought their supper with them, and everybody was smoking. It was like walking through a thick fog, there was so much smoke.

We went to a lot of theaters, cafés and cabarets, and they were always full. Everywhere we went we had trouble in getting a seat. Everybody seemed to be having a very nice time. They were not hilarious, but they seemed to think that staying at home and moping would not help matters. The most astonishing part was the vast amount of money spent everywhere. Some cabarets only served champagne, and the spenders ordered it by the quart. No one got drunk in spite of the amount of fluid they poured into them.

The art show at the Glass Palace was on when I was there, but I did not find it as interesting as the great show I had seen there the year before the war. There were too many landscapes of a dull color. This did not interfere with the sale of the pictures, and one-tenth of them were marked sold.

One day I paid a visit to the studio of Herr Franz von Stuck. He was very cordial. He is a splendid, big, strong man. Lately he has built an addition to his house so that he can have more room for his work, and he has one of the finest studios I have ever seen. The first floor is for modeling, and the second floor is for painting. He said that it was very hard to get good models now as all the men of fine physique were in the war.

"Do you get the same amount of bread as an ordinary man?" I asked him.

"Exactly the same," he answered. "The poorest workingman in the streets gets the same as I. That is why our system is so splendid."

He hardly mentioned his work at all, indeed he seemed quite shy about it. On his table was a dish made of Brazilian butterflies. He picked it up and turned it so that it showed blue, then brown, and then green. "Isn't it beautiful!" he said enthusiastically, "Look at it now!"

I looked around the room at all his wonderful pictures. I thought of all the fame that was his and of all the honors that had been heaped at his feet, and yet there he was admiring a butterfly's wing. I had the feeling that a great man stood before me.

FROM BERLIN TO VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

You would naturally think that it would be a very easy matter to go from Berlin to Vienna in war time, because Germany and Austria are allies, and that it would be as easy as traveling around Germany; that all you would have to do would be to pack your trunk, go down to the station, buy your ticket and get on the train. Of course you must do all these things, but you must do a great many other things before you do that.

The first thing that you do is to go to the police where you are registered and get what they call a _Fragebogen_, which means a question sheet. You cannot get this sheet unless you have a letter from some important person or firm stating that it is necessary for you to go. Your reason must be a very good one.

You fill out your _Fragebogen_, the police look up your record and if it is found out to be all right, they put your letter of recommendation, your passport, the _Fragebogen_ and half a dozen pictures of yourself in an envelope and seal it. You take this sealed envelope to the main police station in the district in which you live. Here the package is opened by several different men in several different rooms, and finally, after many questions and much stamping, you are told to write your name across your picture which has been pasted on a card.

After you are through with the German police, you must have your pass viséd by the Austro-Hungarian consul. Here you must go to three different men and be "stamped" and the last man takes two more of your pictures and pastes them on a pink card. Then you pay four marks to another man who does some more stamping. After all these things are done, you go back to your local police and register that you are going away, and then, after showing your pass at the railway ticket office, you are allowed to buy your ticket to Vienna. This was what a neutral American had to do before we got into the war--now I doubt if an American could go to Vienna at all.

It is a sixteen hours' ride from Berlin to Vienna with a one hour's wait at Tetschen on the Austro-German frontier. Our first stop was at Dresden, and like all German stations it was full of soldiers. The ride from Dresden to Tetschen is very beautiful. It runs through the Saxon Switzerland, a lovely country with mountains, streams of water and little villages. How peaceful everything was! How quiet! It did not seem like a country that was taking part in a great war.

At noon we reached Tetschen, a cold, dismal looking place. First we had our baggage examined by both Austrian and German officials. These officials are all clever men. Some of them are dressed up to look like common soldiers, but they are all fine lawyers and criminal experts.

A soldier stood up on a box and said that any one who had any writing about him should give it up. In my stocking I had my money and a letter of introduction that I had brought from America and which I was going to use in Vienna. I understood perfectly well what the soldier said, but for some unknown reason or other I simply didn't feel like pulling the letter out of my stocking. This was madness on my part, for I had learned long ago that if you follow directions in Germany you don't get into trouble, and if you don't follow them, you are sure to get into a mess.

After this, we were taken through a gate where we gave up our passes and they were taken away to see if the picture corresponded with the one sent down by the German police. The men here had a dreadful time with my name. All Germans find my name a difficult one. One soldier here just insisted that my name was "Auley" without the "Mc," but finally another soldier gave him a poke and said that "Mc" was a title and that I was of royal blood.

Everybody who didn't have a German or an Austrian pass had to undress, and as soon as I got into the searching-room, I gave the woman who was to search me, the letter out of my stocking. She took it and gave it to some one. My heart was in my mouth, for I had no idea what they would do, and I knew if they did anything to me it would be my own fault for not following directions.

I got a very good searching, and I had to take off all my clothes, only when she told me to take off my shoes and I commenced to unlace one boot she said never mind that one, to take off the other one. I had hardly gotten dressed before there was a knock at the door of the dressing-room and some one said I was wanted. I put on my hat and went out, and there planked in front of the door with both legs spread out and a long sword at his side, was a good-looking little Saxon officer aged about twenty years.

He had a fierce look on his face as he demanded, "Why didn't you give this up in the other room?"

"I couldn't," I answered, "it was in my stocking. You couldn't expect me to take it out of my stocking before all those men, could you?"

Then we both laughed and I said, "I hope you will give it to me again."

"Of course I will," he answered.

I went with him to the commanding officer, but that man would not give me back the letter. I didn't care, I was so glad I hadn't been arrested. When we came back from Vienna, I was the only one of our party that had to undress. I never noticed it, but there was some kind of a mark on my pass, and as soon as the official saw it I had to undress. But this time I had nothing in my stocking. When they searched my trunk they took away from me all the post cards and photos of Vienna I had, and didn't give them back.

After leaving Tetschen, the train runs for hours through Bohemia. It does not touch at Prague but at a number of small picturesque towns such as Kolin and Znaim. The country is extensively cultivated and very fertile. The train was supposed to be an express train but it stopped at every little way-station.

At one station, a very beautifully dressed lady with a little girl got on the train. I thought that she must be the wife of some high official and I was surprised at her lovely clothes away out there in Bohemia. She sat next to me, and in a short time she began talking to the woman who sat across from her and who kept asking over and over if any one in the coupé knew when we got to Deutschbrod. The beautifully-dressed lady said that she knew for she was going there. And then she told the whole coupé about the place.

To my surprise she said that she was the wife of the apothecary at the Barracks at Deutschbrod. The Barracks is a city built since the war on the hills above the town. It was built by the Austrian government and is the home of the refugees of East Galicia whose homes were destroyed by the Russians. Most of these _Flüchtlinge_, as the Germans call them, are Polish and Russian Jews, but they have also two hundred Italians from near Görz.

The wife of the apothecary, who was a Hungarian woman, said that the refugees had everything they needed and that everything was free--clothes, food, wine, beer, doctor's service and medicine. She said that unless there was some contagious disease in the camp the people were allowed perfect freedom to go and come as they pleased. Most of the inmates have their own gardens and raise their own chickens.

It was dark when we came to the place, but the apothecary's wife pointed it out on a distant hill. It was like a great city, one mass of electric lights sparkling in the darkness. When I came back from Vienna I had a good look at it. It was a hillside town made up of new frame houses, mostly small houses laid out in regular rows separated by straight streets.

After Deutschbrod was passed, our compartment was empty except for a young Jewish woman who had been sitting quietly in the corner. After a while she leaned over to us and said, "You speak English. I can see it that you are Americans. I was once in New York." And then she told us that she was a refugee from East Galicia.

"It was terrible," she said in rather good English. "I was in America for a whole year. I saw Niagara Falls. Then shortly before the war broke out my mother wrote for me to come home. We had such a nice house, and such nice things in our house. They belonged to my ancestors. On the 4th of October we heard that the Russians were coming toward our village and that they were only forty kilometers away. We had already sent our best horses to the army. The ones left behind were sent to the village for the old people. My mother and father rode, and my husband and I walked or rather ran after them for two days as fast as we could. We hadn't time to take anything with us, and we had to leave even our glassware and silver behind. I had a new Persian lamb coat that I left hanging in the cupboard. We have never been able to go back to our homes since." She wept a little.

It was ten o'clock when we came to Vienna. We had a hard time getting a cab, and when we did get one it rattled over the stones as though it had no rubber on its wheels. The first thing we had to do the next morning was to go to the police, and it took us the whole morning until two o'clock in the afternoon to get registered. There were only two clerks and about fifty people waiting. We came in turns, and if any one tried to get in ahead of his turn the rest of us howled, "Wait your turn." One fat, important-looking foreigner tried to get into the clerk's room without waiting. Three men waiters jumped up and turned him out. This pleased the rest of us and we all giggled with glee.

VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

I had never realized the wonderfulness of the German food card system until I went to Vienna. In Germany you can buy at a reasonable price your allotted ration of food, and the poor people are just as well off as the rich, but in Vienna the rich people have everything and the poor people are in great need because of the lack of food regulations, and while there is an abundance of food it is so dear that the poor cannot afford to buy. And Vienna is not like Berlin--there are a great many poor people in Vienna.

For some time there has been a bread card in Vienna, and at the time of my visit, November 1916, the government was just beginning to take the food question in hand, and a few weeks before Christmas a coffee and a sugar card were issued. But the Austrians have not the gift for organization which the Germans have, and I heard that even six months later the food distribution was in a very poor state. I talked to many Austrians, and they all told me that they were anxious to have the entire German food card system established in Austria.

Austria is a great agricultural and wheat-raising country, and yet when I was there, there was very little bread in Vienna. The beautiful white Viennese bread had entirely disappeared, and a soggy brown stuff had taken its place. There was one kind called "Anker Bread" that was still very good, and the people stood in line to get it. And all this was not because flour was scarce but because of its poor distribution.

None of the restaurants are allowed to serve bread, even if you have a bread card you cannot get it, and the only place a stranger can get bread in Vienna is for breakfast at his hotel. People who eat in restaurants carry their bread with them, and generals and all sorts of high officials have little packages of bread concealed in their pockets which they slyly pull out at the table.

All the white flour is baked into cakes, and the Viennese cakes are as white and as wonderful as in their palmiest days. But the price! In a café a piece of cake of two thin layers costs one crown twenty-five hellers, about a quarter in our money.

In most German cities one person gets about a pound of meat a week, but in Vienna there is no meat card and you can buy as much meat as you like if you can afford to buy it. Every meat shop in Vienna is hanging full of meat--sausage, ham, pork, beef, chickens and geese. I went through the great Viennese market which is squares and squares long. Everywhere meat, meat, meat. I had forgotten that there was so much meat in the world. Stall after stall just loaded down with hams, but no bacon. Mostly young pigs. But no one was buying, only looking--like Till Eulenspiegel, as though the smell was enough. The hams were from one dollar to one dollar and sixty cents a pound, and the beef was even higher. Sausage was not so expensive, and geese were cheaper than in Germany.

I had never seen such an abundance of everything. Acres and acres of cabbages piled up as high as a house--great, hard-looking heads of a fresh green color. Then barrels and barrels of apples. Not such good apples as we have in America, but at such a fancy price! For thirty-two cents we got six little dried-up apples that we could hardly eat.

From the apple market we went to the onion market. Can you imagine a square as big as Union Square in New York where nothing but onions are sold? Well, they have that in Vienna. And the most wonderful onions! Small white ones, small red ones, big yellow ones and green ones! Onion peelings flew around everywhere, and do you know that they really smelled sweet? But the old women in back of the stalls did not look sweet, but as though they had stood among onions so long that they had become dried-up onions themselves.

They had no potatoes in the market, but the restaurants seemed to have plenty of them. Cheese was just beginning to be scarce, and one person could buy only a quarter of a pound at a time. We collected cheese to take back to Berlin with us, and we took turns going into the shops and buying a piece so that the clerks would not know that we were together. We collected a good many pounds and we got them safely over the frontier.

Eating in a restaurant in Vienna in war time is the most expensive thing of which I know. Small meat or deer orders were from eighty cents upward, and no potatoes go with this order. In Germany, you can get a piece of meat, two potatoes and a vegetable for thirty-two cents.

There seems to be plenty of milk and sugar in Vienna, but it is forbidden for any café to serve milk in coffee between the hours of two and seven o'clock, when every Viennese goes to a café to drink coffee. This restriction saves many gallons of milk. The coffee is real coffee and very good. You can have as many eggs as you like, very nicely cooked at fifteen cents an egg. Sugar is not served on the trains between Berlin and Vienna, but in a café they give you three lumps with a cup of coffee. Saccharine is served with tea.

The war has been very hard on the Austrians, and distress shows itself in the faces of the people you meet on the streets. They do not come of the sturdy stock that the Germans come from. They have always been a very religious people, and the war has made them more religious than ever, and now they are always burning candles before their favorite altar or saint's picture. The sacred picture in the Church of St. Stephen is always lighted by dozens of candles, and there is never a moment when the church is opened that some one is not kneeling before this picture, children, soldiers and old women with their empty market baskets. For the Catholic Viennese this picture is the center of everything, and in the war this inanimate object has played a big part. They pray to it to help the men in battle, to care for the wounded and to bless the souls of the dead. Centuries ago this picture was stolen by the Turks or some other kind of Pagan, and it is said that the eyes of the picture shed real tears until it was brought back and placed in a Christian church again. It stands on the ground on an easel, and people are allowed to touch the wire over it.

Small change is very scarce in Vienna, and they have torn the two-crown paper bills in two, and each half is good for a crown. They also use stamps for change as they do in Germany. Now they are making crowns and half-crowns of paper.

This winter is going to be terrible for the poor of Vienna, for last winter was bad enough. I really wonder what the people will do to get along.

SOLDIERS OF VIENNA.

I had been in Vienna, and each time I had thought that the most wonderful and exquisite things were the Viennese officers. They have always seemed to me like dainty paper dolls which had just stepped out of a fashion plate. I had imagined that in war time they would look less spick and span--but no indeed, they looked just the same, real war having made no difference.

The Austrian officer is of only one type. He is very tall, very slender and very graceful, and he is mostly rather dark than light. He has a small head and face, a straight nose, curved lips and a short but square chin. He may have eyes of any color, but he is clean shaven--a mustache is no longer the fashion. His nails are polished and his manners are delightful. He is generally well educated and very clever. But he does not look substantial. He seems to have no inner power.

The uniform of the Austrian army from the commonest soldiers to the highest official is away ahead of the German uniforms. The German uniforms have the tendency to make the men look wide and squatty, and the ugly little stiff flat caps of the Germans only emphasize this fact. The Austrian uniform on the other hand makes the men look tall and slender. The belt of the coat is high, and this makes the legs look longer, and the straight cap adds more to the height.

Most of the officers' coats are of field-gray color, but not all as in Germany. The artillery men, for instance, wear a coat of dark reddish brown that is very stunning in color. The Hussars wear a short gray coat of very heavy cloth and black trousers. Around their neck they wear a fur collar and over the fur a heavy gold braid is tied. Other officers wear white broadcloth uniforms, and although Vienna is by no means a clean city these white suits are always spotless. Most of the officers wear white kid gloves and their boots shine like a mirror. The streets of Vienna are full of these officers. One wonders who is at the front.

Nearly all the Austrian officers and many of the Viennese policemen wear corsets, and you can see the corsets displayed in the men's furnishings windows. They are not as long as a woman's corset and are generally made of fancy silk, yellow and black--the Austrian colors--preferred. All the officers wear such long swords that they drag on the ground.

They do not have shoulder straps to denote rank as they have in Germany, but stars on the collar are used instead. A single star made out of any kind of cloth denotes a common soldier; two stars an _Unteroffizier_, or a corporal; three stars a _Feldwebel_, or a sergeant; a silver star means a _Leutnant_, or a lieutenant; two silver stars an _Oberleutnant_, or a first lieutenant; three silver stars means a _Hauptmann_, or a captain; one gold star means a _Major_, and so on up the list.

All the uniforms are very practical and very well made. The overcoats of the common soldiers are lined all the way down, and the gray caps are not stiff but are made out of a soft cloth. The legs are bound in strips of heavy cloth which wind round and round.

All the common soldiers have their hats stuck full of fancy pins of all kinds, and the soldiers from Tyrol have _Edelweiss_ pins stuck in their hats, for that is the flower of the mountains. The Viennese Red Cross girls also wear many pins. They wear a gray suit and a hat that is trimmed with bright red and is very becoming.

If Vienna is full of officers the country around is full of common soldiers. I saw them from the train windows. Some of them were farming, others were fishing, and still others were walking along the country roads, perhaps going home on a furlough.

One day I went to the Central Cemetery in Vienna where Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Johann Strauss and Brahms lie buried in a little plot of ground. Just before you come to the cemetery there is a barracks. It had only a barbed wire fence around it and we could see into the place. It was made up of small frame houses and looked like a western mining town that had sprung up in a single night. Before the door of a house near the fence a soldier was doing a good-sized washing. He seemed to be very much worried for fear he was not getting the things clean. I am sure he was rubbing everything full of holes. When he saw us watching him, he first wiped the perspiration from his brow, then he laughed. "_Sehr schwer_," (very hard), he said sighing.

The Central Cemetery is so large that nearly every one who dies in Vienna is buried in it. When a funeral comes in at the gate the bells are tolled, and the funerals came in one after another the day I was there. The hearses of the soldiers were draped with the Austrian flag. People follow the hearse walking. An old woman dressed in black and with a black shawl tied over her head was holding on to the back of one of these soldier hearses. It seemed as though she could not bear to be parted from her dead. She was not weeping but had a strange grim look on her face, a face in which all hope was gone.

From the cemetery we went to the Prater to see the less dismal side of soldier life. The Prater is the great park of Vienna. It has splendid drives, but one end is like a Coney Island or a Luna Park. It is a very gay place even now in war time; there are merry-go-rounds, roller-coasters and all kinds of side shows. The crowd was very much mixed, but most of the men were soldiers, privates, and they looked like men from the country. I saw one old Austrian general getting on the loop-the-loop with a little boy. He was showing his grandson a good time.

Along the streets one could buy roasted peanuts, roasted chestnuts, roasted apples, and roasted potatoes. I bought a potato. It was served to me in a newspaper, and I had to eat the thing without the aid of a knife or a fork. It tasted fine to me.

One morning we went to the art gallery, but it was closed. Now it is open only one day a week. When we came out of the gallery a common soldier came up and spoke to us. He asked us what there was to see in Vienna. He said he only had until six o'clock that night, and he did not know what to go to see, as he had never been in Vienna before.

He was a young man with light hair and very gentle manners. He was dressed in field gray but I noticed something queer about him. All German and Austrian privates wear pieces of gray linen around their necks instead of collars, but this man had on a white collar with a black border. Was he a priest? He asked me a lot of questions as to whether this church or that church was open or not and then I said to him, "Are you a priest?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am the village priest of the little town of X.... I am a volunteer in this war, and now after a year I am returning on my first furlough to my little parish. My people will be very glad to see me, but in two weeks I must be back to the front again. An old man is taking my place. He was too old to go, but I am young and my country needed me." He walked along with us a little way and when he left us, he raised his hands over our heads and gave us his blessing.

The guard change in the court of the city palace in Vienna is a great spectacle. It takes about a half an hour and is much more elaborate than the one in Berlin. I can't begin to tell all that takes place. Soldiers stand in rows, then they come out and salute, and then they go back again. The officers must stand without moving, they don't seem to breathe, and this standing is so strenuous that three times in that half hour they must be relieved. When the Austrian flag is brought out all the men lift their hats and salute it with drawn swords. In between the military band plays, and when the playing is over a major comes out and congratulates the officers on their performance. It is like a piece on the stage.

The opera in Vienna is always crowded with soldiers, and they make a very gay assembly, officers with their gay uniforms and Viennese ladies in their low-necked gowns. The customs in Vienna are not the same as in America, and a real lady can take an officer to the theater or to dinner, paying his way.

One night we were seated in a restaurant when a first lieutenant, a tall fellow dressed in black and gold, came in with a lady. They sat down at the table next to us. He was very polite, hanging up her coat, taking a spot of dirt off her face, and then he read over the bill of fare and asked her what she wanted. They were not married to each other, for they used _Sie_ and not the familiar _Du_. He wanted her to have either roast duck or roast goose, but she said no, that they were too expensive, and she modestly took two "wienies" and some sauerkraut at sixty cents a plate. "What a considerate lady," I thought, "she doesn't want to be too hard on that poor officer." When the waiter came around I nearly fell over to see her foot the bill, and then she gave the officer five crowns to pay for the cab.

Another day I was in a shop buying cheese. A young lady came in with three officers--two artillery officers and a hussar. First she bought several dollars' worth of cakes, and then she bought each of the men a bottle of fancy liqueur. Her bill was over thirteen dollars. She carried the cakes and the bottle for the hussar, because he had on white gloves and had no pockets. It is a great thing to be a Viennese officer.

WOMEN WARRIORS.

Perhaps in no other war have there been so many women warriors as in this one. In Russia, in Galicia, in Hungary, in Serbia, and in Montenegro, countless women have gone out to fight. They have served in the trenches, in the mountain passes and on ships. They have suffered hardships the same as the men, enduring the cold, the wretched food and the strenuous work without a murmur. Each one of the women has had love of country and fireside in her heart, but in most cases it was love for her husband from whom she did not wish to be separated that sent her to the front.

The peasant women in these far eastern countries have always done the work of men. They have tilled the soil, built houses and made roads, and so it seems quite natural to them that they should fight. A number of Russian women soldiers have been taken prisoners, and it is impossible to tell them from men.

The German government does not permit her women to fight, but every now and then one of them disguises herself as a man and enlists, fighting for her country until she is found out. In France, a few women have done the same thing, and in England a regiment of "Riflewomen" has been formed, not for service on the front, but for home defense if it ever becomes necessary. In Serbia, early in the war, women formed a battalion known as the "Death's Head Battalion," and at that time they were very active. Some women in the Austrian, Hungarian and Russian armies have been made corporals and sergeants, and many of them have received decorations for valor.

The most famous woman warrior of the present war has been the Grand Duchess Augusta of Austria, wife of the Grand Duke Josef. Ever since Italy entered the war she has been at the head of her regiment on the Italian front. She dresses like a soldier, wears a helmet on her head, carries a sword and rides her horse like a man. The Grand Duke is very proud of her and does everything he can to encourage her activities.

Elizabeth Lorenz, also a Viennese, is the second famous woman warrior. She is the wife of the famous surgeon Dr. Adolf Lorenz, and she went to the front as her husband's assistant, driving a Red Cross wagon to and from the firing line. She was decorated by Franz Josef before he died.

Another Austrian to serve her country was a little twelve-year-old peasant girl, Rosa Zenoch, who, during the fighting at Rawaruska, carried water to the soldiers in the trenches. In the thick of the fray she stopped to give a drink to a wounded Hungarian soldier lying by the wayside. Some shrapnel burst around her and she was severely wounded. She was carried to the hospital train, but on the way to Vienna it was necessary to amputate her leg. When Franz Josef heard about her case he sent her a golden band set with diamonds, 10,000 crowns and a new leg.

In one Hungarian regiment the eighteen-year-old Anna Falacia served five months without any one knowing that she was a girl. Since Anna's mother died she and her twin brother had been inseparable, and when he was called to the colors, she dressed herself as a boy and went with him. During the storming of Belgrade the brother of Anna Falacia was shot and he fell dying at her feet. When she saw him lying there she burst into tears. They carried him away and she left her post and followed the bier. The sergeant called her back. "I am Anna Falacia," she cried, "I am a girl, and now that my brother is dead, I am going back."

A German woman who disguised herself as a man was Maria Balka. When the Russians invaded Memel in East Prussia they killed Max Balka. When his wife Maria saw what they had done, she swore that she would have revenge. She dressed as a man and enlisted. No one knew her. She was a good soldier and she rose from private to corporal and then to sergeant. She even won a band for being one of the five best shots in her regiment.

At Kowno, twenty thousand Russians were taken prisoners, and Maria Balka with two underofficers and ten men were ordered to take one thousand of them to Gumbinnen. There were no trains, and they had to march. The orders were strict--if a prisoner got out of line he was to be shot. It was no time for mercy.

In the village of Pilwiski they passed a hut. A Russian peasant woman was standing in the doorway. She had a baby in her arms. When she saw the men she rushed forward crying, "Peter! Peter Doroff!" A prisoner broke from the ranks and rushed into her arms, although he knew the order was death. Four German privates stopped and leveled their guns and waited the order from Maria Balka to fire. Maria Balka's face was all aflame; she would make at least one Russian suffer as she had suffered. It was her moment. But the Russian woman flung herself at Maria's feet.

"That is my husband," she pleaded, "Don't shoot him. He is all I have."

Maria's hand which had been raised to give the signal trembled and then fell at her side.

"March," she said to the surprised soldiers.

"You may keep him," she said to the terrified woman. When Maria reported at headquarters she explained what she had done, and she told them that she was a woman. The next day she went back to Memel. Her desire for revenge was dead.

One German woman, Anne Marie Reimer, the wife of a doctor in East Prussia, served seven months as the driver of an automobile truck, and the result of her experiences is a very interesting book _Seven Months on the East Front as a Driver_. In this book, she tells how she guided her automobile right up to the firing line. Once, when the fighting was very fierce she did not have her clothes off for four weeks. When the Kaiser came to review her regiment, she passed in review in front of him with the rest of the men. In February, 1915, she was taken with fever contracted by the exposure. Her husband brought her to Berlin. In her book she says that no one knows the unselfishness and the kindness of soldiers toward each other, and she thinks that war has an ennobling influence on the men.

The Russian prisoners in the German prison camp at Zossen went in a body to the German major and asked him to have a Russian prisoner, Nicholas Nisoff, removed from their barracks. He was possessed with the devil, they said, and he was trying to cast a spell over them. The major sent for Nicholas Nisoff, and he came pale and trembling.

"Nicholas Nisoff," said the major, "sit down and tell me what is the matter. What have you done that you are silent all day and cry out all night?"

It was below freezing in the major's barnlike office, but Nicholas had to wipe the perspiration from his brow as he staggered into a seat. He began in broken sentences.

"It happened in Galicia. In the morning we took two hundred Austrian and Hungarian prisoners. We shut them up in different places, and in one hut where thirty of them were, I was detailed on night watch. All night long I paced up and down before the cottage. It was very quiet, but at last I heard a noise. The window was slowly opened and some one jumped to the ground. "Halt!" I cried, "Halt! Or I will fire." The person did not stop, so I fired into the darkness. I took out my pocket lamp to see what kind of a Hungarian I had shot, and there on the ground a slender figure was lying. I looked again. I could not believe what I saw. It was a woman! Her cap had fallen off and her long yellow hair was streaming about her. I felt her heart. It had stopped beating. And I, Nicholas Nisoff, had killed a woman. And since that time I cannot sleep, and in the night she comes to me with her long hair streaming around, and pointing her finger at me she says, 'Nicholas Nisoff! Why did you shoot me?'"

When he had finished, Nicholas again wiped the sweat from his brow and the major wrote down something on a paper. The next day Nicholas was taken away and brought to Berlin where he was given employment on a railroad. He is much happier now, and it is only now and then that the ghost of the Hungarian woman comes to haunt him.

Helene Lichowitz! When they came for Ivan Lichowitz, Helene begged them not to take her husband. He was ill, she said. But it made no difference, and three weeks later he was in the trenches. Once he coughed so violently that he lost consciousness. But when he came to, Helene Lichowitz was bending over him.

"I have come to take care of you," she said. For three weeks they were together. Helene did the same work as a man, and most of Ivan's work too. On a bitter cold day last December there was a night attack by the Germans. The Russians were ordered to charge. Ivan stumbled along blindly, and Helene supported him when she thought that he was going to fall. When they had gone a little way, there was a great roar from the German side, followed by a volley of bullets, shells burst in the air.

In the evening the German ambulance men came to save what they could of the poor creatures lying there. Ivan was dead, but Helene was carried to a field hospital. The German doctor did everything he could to save her, but Helene Lichowitz did not want to live. She said her work was done. In three days she died, holding the hand of the tear-dimmed German doctor.

"Ivan Lichowitz!" she called in a low voice, "I come!"

HOW AMERICANS WERE TREATED IN GERMANY.

"Wilson Breaks with Germany!" So announced the _B. Z. am Mittag_ at noon on Sunday February 5, 1917. It was a very cold day, almost the coldest of that long cold winter. The chills were running up and down my spine in our cold apartment, but this headliner froze me stiff.

"Wilson Breaks with Germany." That is a typical German headliner. They never say "America" in the German papers, but always "Wilson," and it is Wilson that gets the blame for everything and never the American people.

The Monday after the break occurred the Americans flocked around the Embassy. We were all tremendously excited. Some were talking about "getting out" and others about "staying over." All were saying something, but most of us were saying "We will wait and see." When war was really declared, we took it much more calmly, we had grown used to emotion.

Our breaking off relations was taken very quietly by the German people. It was not flattering, and I felt that they should show a little horror and emotion that the greatest country in the world was against them. But the German people are sort of stunned in their emotions, and the only real emotion they have is the wish for peace. Peace is all they think about and long for.

When our Embassy went away all the Americans that remained behind went to the station to see them off. It was a slushy, snowy night. German policemen were everywhere and we had to show our passes to get out to the train. The platform was full of people, and the people who were going away were leaning from the train windows. Mr. and Mrs. Gerard had a little crowd around their window. I saw two men from the German Foreign Office in the crowd, Dr. Roediger and Herr Horstmann. Dr. Roediger was the clever young German who censored most of the articles of the American newspaper correspondents. His English was perfect.

When the train pulled out, there was a faint "Hurrah," and the people turned down the steps, embassyless and ambassadorless.

Right after the break Herr Zimmermann gave out that the Americans in Germany should be shown every courtesy, and that they should be treated as neutrals, and that any discourtesy should be reported to him at once.