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.
