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.
Franz Josef in Uniform.
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.
Emperor Carl Franz Josef and His Family.
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.
Soldiers at the Prater Park in Vienna.
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.
Kaiser Carl of Austria on a Visit to Berlin.
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.
Austrian Soldiers in Winter Uniform.
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.