The Note-Book of an Attache Part 14

VIENNA

_Vienna, Sat.u.r.day, December 19th._ I remained in Berlin only one day and started this morning for Vienna with dispatches, arriving late in the evening after an uneventful fourteen-hour journey.

_Sunday, December 20th._ I presented myself at the American Emba.s.sy this morning, delivered my dispatches, and had a conference with Mr.

Grant-Smith, the First Secretary. At luncheon I met Colonel Biddle, an officer in the Engineer Corps of the United States Army, who has recently arrived in Austria in order to go to the front as a military observer. The afternoon and evening I spent with Captain Briggs, Military Attache at the Emba.s.sy, studying and comparing the military methods of the eastern and western fronts. Captain Briggs has collected, with an energy and intelligence that can fairly be called amazing, an immense quant.i.ty of valuable military information relative to the operations and practices of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Serbian armies.

The Austrian army officers and privates suffer by comparison with the Germans. The soldiers one sees in the streets of Berlin are big, husky, strong, healthy creatures, with jowls hanging over their collars. The officers are clean-cut, keen-eyed, and in splendid health and training. Austria seems distraught and unready for emergencies, the people are not as keen for the war as the Germans and appear to be more indifferent as to its results. I am predicting that the end of the war will see j.a.pan, Italy, and Roumania gainers, and Belgium, Turkey, and Austria losers, while Germany and England will be approximately in the same positions as before the war. Russia has relatively little to gain or lose.

_Monday, December 21st._ I had a walk and talk with Amba.s.sador Penfield this morning; took luncheon with Mr. Grant-Smith and went afterward to the Emba.s.sy. Later in the afternoon I went with Count Colloredo von Mansfeld to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office and then called on the Countess Potatka to whom I had brought letters of introduction.

_Tuesday, December 22d._ After luncheon today Mr. Grant-Smith presented me to Wilhelm Prince zu Stollberg Wering Rode, Conseiller of the German Emba.s.sy in Vienna, who made an appointment with me for Thursday.

I am meeting many officials, American, German, and Austrian, but at present I cannot, without indiscretion, state just what they discuss.

I went today to the Wiener Bank Verein with Mr. Grant-Smith who wished to arrange some safe deposit boxes for the Emba.s.sy. The building is said to be the most beautiful bank building in the world, and I can easily believe it. Knowing my professional interest in architecture, Mr. Grant-Smith asked the Director to show me the building, which he most kindly did, taking me from top to bottom--a privilege I am told seldom granted to anyone, and for which I was very grateful.

Austria-Hungary is an extraordinary country. I doubt if anything like it exists in this our day and generation. The Emperor-King is everything. He could well say without exaggeration "L'etat c'est Moi!"

The common people really look upon the king as divine. Socialism and democracy do not exist,--the words seem to have no real meaning for his subjects; and Parliaments are but his dutiful servants.

Lese-majesty is almost unheard of because the idea of questioning the Emperor-King or anything he does would no more occur to his subjects than to doubt the Immaculate Conception would occur to a devout Catholic.

And what an extraordinary old man--what a relic of past ages this Emperor-King Franz Josef is! He ascended the throne at the epoch of our war with Mexico, he had reigned nearly two decades at the termination of our Civil War. He refutes and blights the theories of Dr. Osler. Two successive heirs to the throne have died or been killed off, but he "goes on forever." He is personally a very devout Catholic, but apparently has seldom or never allowed himself to be politically dictated to by the Vatican. When he learned of the recent ignominious defeat of his armies by the Serbians and of the retaking of Belgrade, the old man first burst into a furious rage and then sat down with elbows on the table, his head in his hands, and prayed for forgiveness and future successes.

In Austria's history one discovers no victories. She is an unusual and pliant State to survive so many defeats. One finds her the easy prey of Frederick the Great, the pet victim of Louis XIV., the foe against whom Napoleon made his first youthful efforts and the vanquished of his prime, the defeated foe of Napoleon III., the vanquished tyrant of Italy united, the loser in Prussia's Thirty Days' War of 1867, and now the gradual loser against Russia's wild, numberless hordes. She has already lost all of Galicia and stands with her back to the Carpathians and has been held off on equal terms by Serbia these four months past. A supine State, she is always defeated, and yet always remains and ever grows.

Austrian money is now greatly depreciated. In ordinary times one gets about 487 crowns for $100, while today one obtains 575. American money has at present the highest rate of exchange.

_Wednesday, December 23d._ This morning I had a most interesting interview with Count Szecsen, the Austrian ex-Amba.s.sador to France, and spent the afternoon in conference with Captain Briggs.

_Thursday, December 24th._ I made a verbal report to Prince zu Stollberg this morning on the situation of German subjects in France.

After luncheon I had a most interesting talk with Mr. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, of Mexican fame, who is Conseiller at the Emba.s.sy.

Later I went for a most delightful automobile ride with Amba.s.sador Penfield, who showed me the Prater, the Danube, the Basin, the Exposition Building, and the Ring. Afterward Mr. Thomas Hinckley, the second secretary, took me to see the Christmas tree in the American Hospital, all ready for tomorrow's fete for the wounded soldiers.

_Friday, December 25th._ It seems very triste to be way off next to Asia on Christmas Day, on the day when one most wants to be at home.

However, I had two Christmas feasts and a warm welcome into two American homes. I took luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Nelson O'Shaughnessy and dinner with Captain and Mrs. Briggs, enjoyable visits that made a happy day out of what would otherwise have been a very sad one.

In Vienna, as in Berlin, the fas.h.i.+onable hours are very late and one is more or less forced to follow them. Nothing happens before noon and evening entertainments end somewhere in the early morning hours.

_Sunday, December 27th._ This morning I was allowed by special permission to visit the Imperial Museum, which is closed to the public on account of the war. I took luncheon with Mr. Cardeza, Attache to the Emba.s.sy, and dined with Mr. O'Shaughnessy. The American diplomats in Vienna and Berlin generally have been very much isolated since the war began, and in each place the corps has become much like a big family whose members see a great deal of one another.

Count Berchtold, whom I have seen on several occasions, is a wiry man of medium height, always grave, intent and all-observing under a mask of stolidity. He never "talks" and seldom speaks. When he does he is terse and speaks out of one corner of his mouth as if reluctant to let the words escape. He is, however, noted for the most unfailing and perfect manners. It is said he can hear perfectly every separate conversation that may be carried on in any room where he happens to be present, and not only hears what is spoken but catches every little motion or hint of important matters. Such is the man whose hand struck the match that lit the long-prepared conflagration in which the total military casualties alone already far exceed five million.

_Monday, December 28th._ I went again to the Imperial Museum this morning and later took luncheon with the Count Colloredo von Mansfeld, to meet Conseiller Black Pasha of the Turkish Emba.s.sy. Conferences at the Emba.s.sy with Captain Briggs, Mr. Grant-Smith, and Mr. Hinckley.

The man who did as much to bring about this war as any single agency was the German Amba.s.sador to Vienna, Heinrich von Tschirski und Bogendorff.

I sent home today by cable our code-word "greetings" as a New Year's message. It goes through the Emba.s.sy here in Vienna and the State Department at Was.h.i.+ngton. It cost me eighteen crowns, but I know it will be worth many times that to my family, as it must be some weeks now since they have had news from me.

CHAPTER XI

HUNGARY

_Budapest, Tuesday, December 29th._ I left Vienna at nine o'clock this morning and reached Budapest at two. I had tea with Mrs. Gerard, who is in Budapest visiting her sister, Countess Sigray. I called at the home of Count Albert Apponyi to leave my card and letters of introduction. I dined with Mrs. Gerard and the Count and Countess Sigray.

The great Hungarian plain, bounded by the Carpathians on the east and by the Danube and the Save on the south has been inhabited by the Hungarian people for more than a thousand years. The inhabitants of this plain number about sixteen millions at the present time. They pride themselves upon the fact that they have maintained their national ent.i.ty since the Ninth Century, although they have stood alone and exposed in the middle of Europe, without any of the geographical advantages which accrue from a situation of insular isolation such as has been enjoyed by the English.

The world in general insists in thinking of Hungary as an Austrian province and in counting Austria-Hungary one country, whose name has been hyphenated with the sole purpose of inconveniencing conversation in foreign countries. As a matter of fact, Hungary and Austria are two distinct nations, inhabited by antagonistic races who speak different languages and hold different ideals. The Hungarians are of Magyar descent and speak a beautiful, musical language, while the Austrians are a mixture of many races whose common tongue is a borrowed, uncla.s.sical German. Each country has its own government, its own parliament, and its own cabinet officers. The Hungarian n.o.bility regard the Austrian n.o.bles as mere upstarts. Nothing is so displeasing to a Hungarian as to be called an Austrian, or to be told that Austrians and Hungarians are one and the same people.

Surrounded by three powerful enemies, the Turks, the Austrians, and the Slavs, they have not succeeded in continuously maintaining their liberty during the ten centuries of their existence as a nation. They came under the domination of the Turks during the sixteenth century, but under the leaders.h.i.+p of Prince Eugene they with the a.s.sistance of Austria succeeded in liberating themselves in 1716. In 1848 they were subjugated by Austria a.s.sisted by Russia and ever since that time have looked forward with confident antic.i.p.ation to the day when they may be strong enough to become again an independent nation. The diplomats, statesmen, and scholars of their n.o.ble families have labored so astutely and successfully towards this end, that the state of bondage which succeeded the conquest of 1848 has gradually and by successive moves been lightened, until today their relations with Austria may be approximated by the statement that Franz Josef, King of Hungary, happens to be at the same time Emperor of Austria, and that the two nations have a close defensive and offensive military alliance. In order to promote the efficiency of this alliance, their War and Foreign Relations ministries are united into single organizations.

There is one Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, but there are separate Ministers of Education, Agriculture, etc. History shows that the salvation of Hungary has often depended upon the ability of her leaders to play their three powerful neighbors against one another.

In the present war they are making use of alliances with Austria and Turkey, the two most decadent of their three historic enemies, in order to stem the onrush of Russia, their third and most powerful antagonist. They are a people ever faithful to their alliances even to the point of unselfishness.

_Thursday, December 31st._ Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen. The great Danube, deep, magnificent, and rapid--500 yards wide--flows by, with Buda on its right bank and Pest on its left. Great hills sheer out of the water and on them are the government buildings and the Royal Palace. The humbler structures cl.u.s.ter in the valleys between the hills. Most of the architecture of the town is very good and the worst of it is better than the average elsewhere. The river, spanned by four handsome bridges, is skirted on either side by drives and official buildings; museums and expensive hotels face these drives. The city is in every way very modern, with broad avenues, excellent street-car systems, and clean, well-lit streets.

_Friday, January 1, 1915._ I spent today in sightseeing,--the first day in several weeks that I have been free from social engagements. I took a guide from the hotel in order to waste no time and miss no sights that one ought to enjoy. We went to the public market, the Industrial Museum, the Art Museum, the public park, and the Cathedral.

My guide was a most convulsing person. He was supposed to speak "perfect English," but achieved some extraordinary effects. Would you know what "sinkim pork" might mean? He said, "everyone eats it on New Year's Day," and so I perceived it to be "sucking pig."