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.”
Some provisions have gone up in price; flour is doubled in value and the government has had to fix a maximum legal price. Meat and game are cheaper than usual, perhaps because many people are killing and selling their animals to save the grain which would otherwise have to be used to feed them.
The utter ignorance of the people concerning everything that is happening outside of Vienna and Budapest is amazing. The government has somehow convinced the people that everything in the war is going wonderfully well, and this in the face of the unsuppressible facts that there are at present no Austrians in Serbia and that the Russians hold all Galicia and have been through the Carpathians.
Saturday, January 2d. The German comic paper Simplicissimus recently made a cartoon comment on the Austro-Hungarian army and the whole issue was suppressed by the censor in Austria and Hungary. The drawing showed a group of three Austrians, a general, an officer, and a private. The soldier had a lion’s head, the officer an ass’s head, and the general had no head at all.
Austria and Germany have not as yet produced one “great man.” The Allies have two—Joffre and Kitchener and possibly a third in Delcassé.
The Austrian Emperor is a little man, slightly stooped, rather shriveled-up and possessed of a pair of keen, shrewd eyes. He is an able follower of the Emperor Ferdinand who once replied to the statement that a certain one of his subjects was a patriot by saying: “I don’t care if he’s patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?” Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the battle of Sadowa.
Sunday, January 3d. I have managed to get in a good deal of reading on boats, trains, and at odd moments since I left Paris, and it has enlarged my comprehension of this war. I have carefully studied every book on the war and subjects related to it. I have read several times each the books of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, and Steed’s “Hapsburg Monarchy.”