Funeral of Franz Josef. The Emperor and Crown Prince of Austria in the Foreground.
Viennese Vegetable Woman.
For some time there has been a bread card in Vienna, and at the time of my visit, November 1916, the government was just beginning to take the food question in hand, and a few weeks before Christmas a coffee and a sugar card were issued. But the Austrians have not the gift for organization which the Germans have, and I heard that even six months later the food distribution was in a very poor state. I talked to many Austrians, and they all told me that they were anxious to have the entire German food card system established in Austria.
Collecting Books, Papers and Tobacco for the Hungarian Soldiers.
Austria is a great agricultural and wheat-raising country, and yet when I was there, there was very little bread in Vienna. The beautiful white Viennese bread had entirely disappeared, and a soggy brown stuff had taken its place. There was one kind called "Anker Bread" that was still very good, and the people stood in line to get it. And all this was not because flour was scarce but because of its poor distribution.
None of the restaurants are allowed to serve bread, even if you have a bread card you cannot get it, and the only place a stranger can get bread in Vienna is for breakfast at his hotel. People who eat in restaurants carry their bread with them, and generals and all sorts of high officials have little packages of bread concealed in their pockets which they slyly pull out at the table.
All the white flour is baked into cakes, and the Viennese cakes are as white and as wonderful as in their palmiest days. But the price! In a café a piece of cake of two thin layers costs one crown twenty-five hellers, about a quarter in our money.
