At the hotel where I was staying, a small army of German food-buyers was lodged. From some of them I learned what food conditions in Germany might be a year hence. These men were familiar with the needs of their country, and thought it out of place to be optimistic. The drain on farm labor and the shortage of fertilizer were the things they feared most. They were buying right and left at almost any price, and others were doing the same thing in Hungary, I was informed.
These men were not strictly war purveyors. Most of them bought supplies for the regular channels of trade, but they were buying in a manner that was bound to lead to high prices. It was a question of getting quantities, and if these could not be had at one price they had to be bought at a higher.
Within two days I had established that the war purveyors at Vienna were more rapacious than those at Berlin. But I will say for them that they had better manners in public places. They were not so loud—a fact which helped them greatly in business, I think. Personally, I prefer the polished Shylock to the loutish glutton. It is a weakness that has cost me a little money now and then, but, like so many of our weaknesses, it goes to make up polite life.
Vienna's hotels were full of Kriegslieferanten. The portiers and waiters addressed them as "Baron" and "Graf" (count), and for this bestowal of letters-patent nobility were rewarded with truly regal tips. But there the matter ended.
I was holding converse with the portier of the Hotel Bristol when a war purveyor came up and wanted to know whether telegrams had arrived for him—the war purveyor never uses the mail.
"Nein, Herr Graf," replied the portier.
The war purveyor seemed inclined to blame the portier for this. After some remarks, alleging slovenliness on the part of somebody and everybody in so impersonal a manner that even I felt guilty, he turned away.
The portier—I had known him a day—seemed to place much confidence in me, despite the fact that so far he had not seen the color of my money.
"That fellow ought to be hung!" he said, as he looked at the revolving door that was spinning madly under the impulse which the wrathful war purveyor had given it. "He is a pig!"
"But how could a count be a pig?" I asked, playfully.