VIENNA
Vienna, Saturday, 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 Embassy 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 Attaché at the Embassy, 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 quantity 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 Japan, 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 Ambassador Penfield this morning; took luncheon with Mr. Grant-Smith and went afterward to the Embassy. 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 Embassy 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 Embassy. 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 our generation. The Emperor-King is everything. He could well say without exaggeration “L’État 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-Ambassador 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 Embassy. Later I went for a most delightful automobile ride with Ambassador 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 fête 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 fashionable 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, Attaché to the Embassy, 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 Embassy. Conferences at the Embassy 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 Ambassador to Vienna, Heinrich von Tschirski und Bögendorff.
I sent home today by cable our code-word “greetings” as a New Year’s message. It goes through the Embassy here in Vienna and the State Department at Washington. 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.