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.
Vienna—Along the Danube.
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.
A Station in Vienna.
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.
The Inside of a Polish Hut.
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.
Russian Refugees Returning Home.
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.
A Family of Polish Refugees.
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.
Galician Refugees in Austria.
"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.
Uniform of a Viennese Red Cross Girl, Field Gray Trimmed in Red.