Dearborn independent. [volume], February 21, 1920, Page 7, Image 7

About Dearborn independent. [volume] (Dearborn, Mich.) 1901-1927

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7
Once Paris ' Rival; Now Hungry and Cold
Something of the Tragedy of Vienna, Told
by a Traveler Through That City of Sadness
Manchester, ting . I . h., 19JU.
Oes to Vienna nowadays with thc feeling
kvever bad conditions are, they cannot be
k as they are painted All over Europe
tlu. dirg I Vienna i sun : tlu- lament of a broken
city, th i,f hungr) children, tlu- ceaseless pleading
0f a : less people. The rest of the world stands
with the kind oi reverence which makes
, from a Kreat grief. It seemi theatrical.
link rdone somehow, until one has been there.
1 r( Vienna early in December, when a spell
0 COm 1 warm weather had eased tile tension
sihtl hind me, at the end of a two days1 railway
Paris debonair, lovely and buoyant, with
jur . its healed and the pin pricks of industrial
strik- hurting her calm. Vienna is very con-
fans, once her rival in gaiety. When you
come ' ' from there, she asks yon wistfully how
Paris 'king an(l 'l she is laughing again. You have
t,, re I) ' Paris i as gay as ever, but you ko on to
(ell p aiming Vienna that not Paris or London
,,r ,i' " place is more beautiful than she.
Vf 1 first 'lay or two, when the grandeur of
Vieni had time to obliterate the more facile im
pressi Paris, tin city definitely takes its place in
.i- the queen of European capitals. She is
almost rwhelmingly beautiful. There is nothing
small oi awdry in the design of her. Every building
seems l a palace, with art in the finish of each
exqun letail I did not see a house that looked
cheaply built r garish: even the poorest parts of the
city ha a l certain dignity and a purity of line in their
construct r Often there is a shop quite an ordinary
shop witli wonderful inlaid work over the doorway,
or a i monplace dwelling house with its entrance
guarded b beautifully carved stone figures. All through
the cit) is struck by the love and care that has gone
t tin hioning of it. The contrasts in it are tar
less ma i d than in London, say, or Paris; there are no
abrupt descents in grandeur from important buildings
to trivial The Cathedral is a glorious thing, but s,.
on a SI .ile. ate half a dozen other churches. The
palace ' ihi ex-emperor, the town hall, opera house,
and the Mouses of Parliament are splendidly dupli
cated i d over again in miniature.
Part i the wonder of Vienna is due just now to tin
terrible Hon of the city: her beauty is enhanced,
a- it w by the tears iu her eyes. All the factories
r lack of fuel and raw material, and this
makes ,: ity amazingly clean. There is very little
'' days, and so the wide Streets seem even
Wider tl they are. About a hundred thousand people
and many of them are helped by being
piifl si ms to sweep the pavements.
But issible to walk fifty yards iu Vienna
thhoui realizing the tragedy of the city. One learns
iciatcd and listless people who pass with
ut evei g at one another r speaking, I do not
"ink tl ' heard laughter in Vienna streets last De
mber. CC it was the gayest city in the world.
pit are very poorly dressed, and. with
an occasional Hungarian, 1 never saw
a "': iring smart or conspicuous clothes. It is
form in Vienna to flaunt fur coats or
JCWelry far ,.t t....i1.. -li. 1 wL- hniIm
m ' uV, l.tvrv .vii until I
it is dangerous. Begging is appallingly
I and ragged children petition for alms
With dreadful, desperate intensity, and 1
I have ever seen anything more terrible
"t the mutilated ex-soldiers crouchinc
F1 Tiny are everywhere, these broken men
"( "(ted bodies and haunted eyes. Even
J ' OUgh to draw tiny pensions cannot live
' ,N unpossible to find work. I asked an
a n' at! how the people could endure to see
'1 fought and suffered for them brought
ltLm,s a pass.
I , ( 1 find it dreadful." she Mid, "hut some
jujj' '! hardened to it now. often I have as
afJ a.v discharged soldiers begging for food
9 one morning."
Misery Follows Luck of Fuel
return 1n , n'utt(' every day in Vienna is the
"r odgatherers. The fuel problem is al
U tliilr j ' a ute of all, for coal is unobtainable
downfo'1! '! '"u,t outside the city are being cut
tfo -Jr. ' d Parties of police go out to regulate
hajjnlng' ! 1" Plte of them accidents are daily
Special t nm,M(' ln the felling of trees,
being u ' J jtboul glatS in the window frames, are
yet each d . ng back thc Btherera and their wood,
foentnd s,rt'ts are a vit dolotOH of men. w
1 an IH " tMmbIinK brokenly under their loads.
torii 111,111 iTOVirttj on the pavement, un
Nrentj i ' s' nt the burden on her back, and not
,r(b!,n' ;Tom ,lt r I a little bos with thin legs
bo '"' T 1 kl of at least a hundred p
Hinds
J gfc ' ,,; RJl place on a tram have lo walk
thc whoL ,ro,n he forests; the others trudge
's tti'.iri' .
-, wy, atany k out m the evening,
garment
prevail i
n the st
do not ti
thin the
By MADELINE LIN FORD
Spend all night felling and return in time for the day"
work. It is tnot ghastly, a most heart-rending thing,
to watch these people most of them very old or verj
young toiling along with then cruel load's, it reaches
just that intensity of tragedy when to look at it seems
sacrilege.
1 he fuel shortage is the greatest factor in the misery
of life in Vienna. It is the thing that has robbed thc
City Oi all its color As result of it. all shops are
closed at five o'clock, and the trams stop at eight. The
lights m the restaurants are turned out at eight, and
places of entertainment are allowed only three hours of
electricity. Opera, which is still going bravely on, lasts
each night from half past five till half past eight.
Every building that one enters is full of thc settled,
penetrating chill that comes from a long-standing lack
oi heating. The bare Boors of the churches, the hos
pitals, and splendid art galleries are so cold that they
are exquisitely painful to walk on and one's breath
hangs around one like a mist.
In the houses of middle class people great porcelain
stoves Kit'am like cenotaphs in memory of long-dead
fires, and the owners wear indoors just the same amount
of clothing, even to gloves, that they wear in the street,
it i- practically impossible to obtain enough hot water
for a bath. When I was m Vienna I was told that a
return of tin bitter weather that had ravaged tin city
in November would mean the death of thousands of
1
If I1 I IM UNFORD, a votte woman of
1 24, has just made a journey to investigate
the distress in ienna and Voland. I he
Manchester (,uardian, of Man hester, i.nland,
n 1 1 fitly raised a fund for the relief of the suffer
ers in the war area, and trusted its funds to The
H ar I i, tints Relief Committee of the f riends.
and Miss f in ford, of the (iuardian staff, went to
msfitet and deserihe eonditions. She has made
this speeial report for The Dearborn Independent.
people. On one or two days during my stay a cruel
wind swept tip the Street! and the sky looked heaw
with snow, and on thes,- days the city seemed quieter
than ever and the faces of the people the thin, thin
people with just one layer of cotton garment over their
limbs were haunted with fear.
All Are Hungry
The other rcat terror of Vienna is starvation. The
lost of living there is ten times the pre-war rate as
regards the cheaper articles and higher still iu the ease
of the others. Bread costs five kronen for the ration
loaf of two pounds, unrationed bread is very much
dearer. A piece ot bad. dark brown margarine, about
the sie of a small cup, COStS six kronen. And besides
being expensive, all food is terribly scarce. I could not
even in the restaurants get a reall good and satisfying
meal, and at the present rate of exchange with '''
kronen to the English pound, instead of pr wai twent)
four I could afford the most high!) priced dishes while
the Viennese had to choose cheap concoctions of vege
tables, and only one course of them. The suar ra
tion for AugUSt had just been distributed, and I often
-aw queues "t women waiting outside sweetshops in
the hope ot buying sweets as a substitute. The only
other queues in ienna are the lines of people waiting
tor the itee OT eheap meals of soup which are given b
charitable organisations and are in most eases the only
food that the) get in the day. In Warsaw one can
hardly walk along the pavements tor the people lined
up outside shops; iu Vienna there is nothing to wait for.
The greatest sufferer i of all in Vienna are the chil-
dren, It is estimated that the) are two vears behind
the normal development of childhood and hundreds of
them are hopelessly diseased and crippled by privation
I never saw one that was rosy, and I never law one
playing or running. In every ease when I asked the
ae of a child it has proved to be much older than I
expected. They are suffering from the lack of all the
necessities ot health. There is a milk ration for babies
under twelve months; after that ae there is nothing at
all tor them but the horrible, ill -nourishing food that
serves for adults. I do not think that anyone who has
not witnessed it can imagine the utter horror of watch
ing, as I did over and over again, a tiny, emaciated
baby drink spmaeh SOup through a feeding bottle and
of knowing that on that diet alone the bab) had to fighi
its way to maturity and health. At hast eighty per cent
ot the children in Vienna are. as a result of under
feeding, in an advanced stage of rickets; a very lanc
percentage of them will never be able to walk ll
this is more terrible because Vienna ran provide n
remedies tor them. There l- a complete lack of all
drugs and hospital sup. lies. The morning I arrived in
Vienna I saw a baby having an operation to its head
without an anaesthetic. That was in a wonderfully
well organized clinic, yet each small patient, infectious
or not. had to be laid on the same sheet and there were
no drugs to spare for this poor little mite with its head
all covered with boil from unsuitable feeding. In one
"rnhanaue whieh I iit. il tUm . ... i i
children I had ever seen were just starting their only
meal in the day a bowl of thin soup and a small T)jecc
oi black bread. They wore one cotton garment each,
and their hands were scarred with chilblains. In an
other the ingenuity that manages to provide a weekly
hath for thirty children cannot supply more than one
towel for all of them.
Hy U ay of Relief
1 he only way to endure a visit to this pale and
desolate city is to concentrate one's attention on what
i being done to alleviate her misery. The two out
standing channels of help are the American feeding
scheme inaugurated b) Mr. Hoover which gives a mid
day meal each noon to over a hundred thousand school
children, and the Relief Mission or Society of Friends.
It was the work of the latter, a body of British and
Vmerkan workers, which I went t Vienna to see.
Most of the efforts of the Friends' Relief Mission
are directed toward the unhappy babies between one
and five years of age, who have lot their milk ra
tion and are not yet old enough to benefit by the
benevolence of Mr. Hoover. This time is the most
critical of all m the lives of Vienna children. The
Mission's help reaches them through the infant wel
fare centers, of which there are a great number in
ienna. They are better equipped and organized than
any that I have seen in England, but just now they are
absolutely destitute of material of all kinds. Some that
I visited were s() cod that, in my thick outdoor clothes.
I felt chilled through hi them and all round me little
naked babies were waiting their turn to be weighed
To these places the Mission sells for below cost price
or gives outright if the institution i particularly poor
fuel, milk, clothes, cocoa, drills and fresh butter tor
tuberculous children. To one of them titty small chil
dren are brought each morning for a drink ot cocoa
supplied by the Mission, and ery well made with con
densed milk. It is tin only food that these babies
Met. To watch them drinking it with an intense eager
ness which one never sees in normal children at this
ae when toocis an object of less interest than at anv
other period of childhood was one of the prettiest and
saddest things 1 saw.
Much the same kind of relief is given to hospitals
and maternity homes. Just before I left Vienna the
Friends' Mission bad started a new scheme for helping
middle class people. While the pa) of workmen has
increased lix or seven hundred per cent, the salaries of
professional people have increased only about two or
three or very occasionally four hundred per cent, and
hundreds of men and women are living on pensions or
small unearned incomes which have not risen at all.
To the last there is practically no alternative other than
a slow death by starvation or a tpiick one by suicide.
They are the most difficult classes ,,t all to reach with
help, more difficult perhaps in proud, aristocratic Vienna
than anywhere else, but the Mission is trying to miKc
one of their problems b starting the sale of clothes to
them Teachers were the tirst to he helped in this ua
On Sunday before Christinas Da) I watched a sale
ot clothes to professional men and women at prices
which wet, about a quarter of tlu sums charged for
them in shops, and in many uses Unobtainable in the
ordman waj Tin i were all either thus sent
from England and America where kind working parties
had madi them or else had been made in the work
rooms opened m ienna by the Mission for tin purpose
of Kiun; employment to poor women Tor the Vien
nese people the Krietids' Relief UbsioTi has Softened
both the bitterness of their defeat and the hardness of
their suffering