The first effect of such a condition of things is the enormous increase in the prices of foodstuffs. Milk, potatoes, meat, sugar, etc., are double the usual price; eggs have become a food for the rich, and bread, even of very bad quality, is expensive and scarce.
Special decrees have been issued with the purpose of restricting the use of flour to no more than 50 per cent. in bread and 60 per cent. in cakes, which are not allowed to be made, even in private houses, more often than twice a week.
In the restaurants almost every dish has become more expensive, and there are no more dinners at fixed prices.
Coal is a luxury, it being an absolute impossibility to get any from the Westphalian mines. Gas has nearly doubled in price, and poor people who could not pay their bills had it cut off immediately.
Most of the hotels are full of families of the Galician aristocracy. These families seem to be living a very gay, frivolous, and expensive life. Smart carriages and motor cars run about the streets that are full of starving people; while ladies, in £1,000 furs, and gentlemen, smoking half-sovereign cigars, lounge about the hotels. I have never in my life seen a more insolent and less appropriate display of wealth. The rich Galicians show no inclination to help the poorer refugees. "We are refugees, too," they say.
Outside the stations I saw a crowd of people waiting for soldiers to arrive. Having lost faith in what the newspapers say, and aching for news, the population is trying to get it directly from those coming from the front. Nearly all the decently dressed Viennese people wear mourning and nearly all have the armlet of the Red Cross.
The number of wounded in Vienna is astonishing. All the schools, public buildings, assembly rooms, most of the theatres and halls, and even some of the pavilions which generally shelter picture shows and other attractions, including the famous Circus, have been converted into hospitals. All the Viennese are trying to nurse soldiers to the best of their ability; but everything is scarce, from bandages to medicines, from cotton wool to beds and litters.
A new calamity seems to be approaching now. Smallpox is breaking out in the poorer quarters and is claiming many victims, especially amongst the refugees. Another epidemic that is visiting Vienna is cholera. The fact is being kept very dark by the authorities to avoid panic; but it seems that during one week more than 500 lives were lost through the terrible disease.
While taking my after-lunch coffee I was astonished to hear at my back a conversation taking place in the Venetian dialect; two soldiers were talking about the war, and their accents did not leave me in any doubt as to their nationality. I went to them and, after a few minutes, won their confidence and got them to talk.
They had been wounded in Serbia and had been sent back to Vienna to be cured. Now they were well and were going back to the front again next day. I shall never forget the two poor young fellows; one of them was just twenty, the other about twenty-five; and both were natives of Trieste.