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.
