Europe-Whither Bound? Part 6

Last time I had seen them it was one evening with their children scampering round a tall Christmas tree on which all the candles were lighted. They were comfortable and capable people, and proud in their way of what they could do and of what they possessed. Now, with all the other engineers of the Vladikavsky Railway, they had fled from the "terror" and were giving their services for the reconstruction of Serbia.

Serbia did not particularly want them, and was not ready for their grand schemes.

"You can't start anything in this country," said Engineer N---- regretfully. "Every one wants to make money out of it. The administration lives on the enterprise of the people. We have presented the Government with a complete plan for the reorganization of the Serbian railroads. We have brought the treasury of the Vladikavsky Railway with us, so we have a little capital, and given the authority we could make a gigantic improvement in Jugo-Slavia. But all we have been able to do so far is to arrange a few services of motor transport to places not reached by railway."

My friends were in a poor little wooden hut on the outskirts of Belgrade, very courageous and very sad, and their children, once petted and even pettish, were now grown and serious and facing life earnestly for themselves and for their parents' sake.

A great chance for Serbia lay in the use of these Russian engineers.

And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of world destiny.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

VII. FROM BUDAPEST

The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent,"

says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits.

She has sore limbs and inflamed parts--in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?"

"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded.

"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look after her."

The best train for Budapest leaves Belgrade at ten o'clock at night.

From the capital of Serbia to the neighbouring capital of Hungary is only two hundred miles, formerly five or six hours' journey in a fast train without hindrance or anxiety. In a state of good health, to go from one main artery of Europe to another ought to be almost as quick and as easy as thought. But now it is labour. No facilities are made by Serbia for Hungary or Hungary for Serbia. International trains with sleeping cars carefully avoid what are known as ex-enemy capitals. In this night-train from Belgrade all the arrangements are discouraging and fatiguing. First, second, and third cla.s.s carriages are the same, all wood, but some are marked "1" and others "2" and others "3." There are no lights in the train, and it is very crowded. You crawl all night through the ex-Austrian territory now part of Serbia. At four in the morning you arrive at Subot.i.tsa and wait six hours. You wait in a queue and show pa.s.sports to Serbian police; you take your baggage through the Serbian _douane_ and it is searched for articles liable to export duty. You send a "D" telegram to Budapest to reserve a room at a hotel. For this "D" telegram you pay two or three times the ordinary charge in order that it may have precedence of telegrams not marked "D." Some time after ten in the morning you get into the Serbian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres and deposits you in a Hungarian no-man's land. Hungarian gendarmes collect the pa.s.sports of the pa.s.sengers. You stand on a shelterless platform and wait for the Hungarian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres further and deposits you at the station of Szeged. Here you congregate like lost souls in Hades and wait and suffer. They say those suffer most who continue to have hope in that region. The hopeful clamour and push and mortify themselves, whilst highly indifferent and laconic Magyars chuckle among themselves and throw ink across an inky table asking foreigners in Hungarian their mother's maiden name and their natal town. The officials have adopted the principle of the division of labour--one makes out a form, another fills it in, a third franks it with a rubber stamp, a fourth registers details, and a fifth signs the visa. Strange to say, this seems to multiply the time by five rather than divide it by five. And most people know that the train for Budapest will leave at the scheduled hour, leaving half the pa.s.sengers to wait all day at Szeged for another train. After pa.s.sports, there is a violent onslaught on your baggage by the customs officials. When they are convinced that you are carrying nothing dutiable you have to get a cab and make a hundred-crown journey across Szeged to another train. You wait in a long queue for a ticket. Heaven help you if you have baggage to register or re-register. It cannot be registered through from Belgrade. As for the train, the pa.s.sengers seem to be hanging from the roofs of the carriages like bats. It is like a seaside excursion express, and if you are lucky enough to get a place you find there is only half a back to your seat.

A Hungarian diplomat, anxious that I should see his country in a good light, helped me considerably on this journey, and I caught the train.

I had the doubtful pleasure of reflecting that at least half of my fellow-pa.s.sengers were still languishing at the first Szeged station, victims of the division of labour and the verification of pa.s.sports.

"I do hope you get a hotel after all this," said the diplomat. "For my part, I wired to an actress," he added, with a knowing smile. "She knows how to get a room when others cannot."

We arrived in Budapest about 11 p.m. The "D" telegram, alas, was languishing far behind. It was delivered next day about noon. Knowing the expensive folly of taking a cab and trying to find a hotel I made a midnight exploration of the capital of Hungary on foot, all sleeping, all apparently dead and without a spark of night life. There were no trains, no flocking crowds, but only occasional pedestrians and the accidental clatter of a horse-cab now and then. And the Danube rolled through the stillness silently. I fell in with a late-going working man coming off a day shift. He piloted me to the "Ritz," home of Allied Commissions and delegates of all kinds. That there should be a room there was unlikely enough, but it was possible to persuade the clerk to telephone to various obscure establishments on the "other side of the river." It is always obscure on the other side of the river.

At last a hotel was found and located, and when the cabman had brought my things from the station and one asked timidly: "How much?" one received a characteristic reply.

"A thousand crowns," said the unblushing cabby--rather more than the cost of a ticket for the whole journey from Belgrade to Budapest.

I saw next day that I must report to the police within twenty-four hours of arrival, and also within twenty-four hours of departure. Such is modern travel in Europe, and I felt rather amused when the question was put to me, "Are you travelling for pleasure or on business?"

Serbia and Hungary are not on good terms. The Hungarians will not forgive the loss to Serbia of territory over which they claim to have ruled for a thousand years. Hungary will not forgive the Czechs or the Roumanians either. They have been mightily despoiled by the nations.

Roumania has doubled her original territory at old Hungary's expense.

Czechoslovakia holds Pressburg, the ancient capital and coronation-city of the Hungarian kings, and calls it Bratislavl. "They might as well have called it New York," says a Magyar contemptuously. There is nothing soft or relenting about the Magyars. They are quite implacable, and they are a fighting people. There is no good will. On the contrary, there is definite ill-will on the part of Hungary towards her neighbours. Austria is soft towards the new nations which have arisen on the ruins of her empire, but Hungary is hard.

To the Serb, the enmity of the Magyar is disconcerting. By crossing the Danube, Serbia has become genuinely part of Europe; she has turned her back on the Balkans and the eternal strife on barren empty hills.

The new Serbia can afford to forget and forgive Bulgaria, now a remote sort of country. She can retort to Greece concerning Salonica--We have no need of that port now, for we no longer aspire to be a power on the Aegean, we are a Central-European people. Jugo-Slavia is not a Balkan country. She is ashamed of the Balkans and of the Balkan past. She will loyally look to Geneva or any other capital of the League of Nations. She will cling to the centre. All seems well. Perhaps Bulgaria will cease to be an enemy, and Greece will cease to be a rival. Serbia moves northward, but in the North she comes face to face with a worse potential enemy than either--the Magyar. Serbia becomes conscious of a European destiny, but Hungary avers that a large stretch of Hungarian territory has been torn from Europe and is being Balkanized, despoiled of the old comfort and civilization of the Austro-Hungarian State and made dirty and inefficient by Slavs.

Every one blames some one else in this part of the world. There are bugs in the railway-carriages--the German soldiers brought them; they were not there before. The trains go slowly--the Hungarian engine drivers have ruined all the locomotives by making big fires with little water in the boilers; contractors seem to take bribes--these are Hungarians, "They'd sell their souls for a dinar." "Look, look," says a Magyar officer, pointing to the dirt on Subot.i.tsa station. "You never could see that in the old days. I used to be here with my regiment. It was as pretty and clean a place as you could find in Hungary."

Nearing the frontier you pa.s.s in review a very sad sight, and that is, several hundred locomotives rusted to their very depths and eaten out with bad weather and neglect. "These are the locomotives we surrendered to the Serbs after the Armistice," says a Hungarian. "The Serbs could not use them. They have no engineers--no shops for their repair. We wouldn't have minded if the engines were used, but it makes us sick to think of such waste."

On the other hand, perhaps, the Hungarians in their malice surrendered the engines with their boilers burnt out and with other vital defects.

One side or the other, or both, is to blame. But whatever the judgment might be, the engines remain in their rust--these useful iron servants of humanity have perished. They are symbols of a spoliatory peace.

Serbia discourages travel to Hungary. Hungary for her part bristles with spears. Above the pa.s.sport window on the Danube quay at Budapest you read:

I BELIEVE IN ONE G.o.d.

I BELIEVE IN G.o.d'S ETERNAL JUSTICE.

I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF HUNGARY.

--a dangerous creed.

Dr. M----, first a.s.sistant at the University of Vienna, now made a Czech subject against his will, put the matter well: "Bismarck was a man of genius, but he made a great mistake in taking Alsace and Lorraine. And Clemenceau was a great man, greater for instance than Lloyd George; I treated him for twelve years, I know his character well, but he outdid Bismarck by making a whole series of Alsace-Lorraines in Europe. It means a century of wars to put it right."

"There would be war now," said Von K----, an ex-Captain of the 3rd Hussars. "But we shudder to take the responsibility of plunging Europe once more into the bath of blood."

The 3rd Hussars is called the Dead Regiment now. It was reduced to five officers and a hundred and thirty-seven men in the war. It was resolved not to recruit for it again, but to leave it as it was left, and it paraded before the King at Budapest in its original formation, showing all the gaps. "It was tremendously impressive," said the Captain--"one man here, two there, three only on the right wing. Many of us who had come through all that h.e.l.l with dry eyes wept like children in the parade.

"We often receive letters from our people in Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, saying 'Why do you not come over and protect us?'" he went on. "If we marched into the stolen territories, the local populations would all rise in our favour. The time will come, but it is not yet. The last word has not been said."

That conversation was at the beginning of April, and Karl was actually in Budapest endeavouring in a clumsy way to follow the example of Constantine in Greece and resume monarchical sway. Budapest for a day was all agog with rumour and whispered conversations. Karl was popular, but his failure was sensed by the populace. He had come inopportunely, despite the fact that the great powers seemed not unfavourable. France, by many accounts, had given secret countenance to the return of the Hapsburg, Karl being known as Francophile in policy. "Present us with a _fait accompli_," Briand was reported to have said to Karl, "and we will not oppose your return to power."

Evidently part of France favoured the adventure and was not a little annoyed at its failure. As an allied power with Italy and England she had to show a forbidding front to Karl, but as "Le Figaro" said, "_Ce n'est pas sur le Danube que nous menacent des perils mortels, c'est sur le Rhin._" The Allies, however, as they are called, had little power to help or stop ex-Kaiser Karl. It was the little States that stopped him--the Pet.i.te Entente of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-slavia and Roumania, and of these powers chiefly the Czech.

As long ago as January Karl's attempt to return was antic.i.p.ated by the Czechs. They used it as the motive for making a ring round the hostile State. Hungary was the potential enemy of the three States which had taken over ex-Hungarian territory. Hungary, moreover, had had her terrible moment of Bolshevism and had got over it, she had become nationalistic again and had reorganized her army on national lines. To any one of the new States surrounding her she would be a formidable enemy. Hungary, however, would stand little chance against three combined. So with great zest the new combination was formed.

Certainly the warmest national friendship in the Near East to-day is that between Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, and it has been called into being by the common danger of the Magyar.

Budapest is a handsome city with grand bridges spanning the bending Danube. The fashionable part climbs upwards on crags to the higher light, and the Danube flashes upward. The modern city is a first-cla.s.s aggregation of business houses, cafes, and places of pleasure. There is pavement comfort. The people are well dressed, despite losses and troubles. The smooth pates of business men abound, and the k.n.o.bbly skulls of the Balkans are fewer. The women are in fashion, and as in the rest of Central and Western Europe, wear bunches of artificial grapes hanging from one side of their hats. You see no grapes and hanging ribbons in Belgrade and Sofia. They will come there next year or in 1923. The Hungarian women are broad-faced and broad-bosomed, and talk more than they smile. City madam in elegant attire with languorous half-shut eyes and Hungarian drawl is a man's darling.

Flesh-coloured stockings greatly abound. One is, however, strongly advised not to judge of Hungary by the people who spend four or five hours of the day sitting in the cafes of Budapest. The poor parts of the city present a different spectacle. Here there are great numbers of crooked-legged spindly children, war-products evidently. The slums are nothing like so bad as those of London or Chicago--only the children are less boisterous, less vital, and seem to have been underfed all their lives. The new babies look much better than the children of four or five. Food is more abundant now, and a great deal of relief work is done at the schools. But it is doubtful if any philanthropic efforts can restore the war-children. Budapest has a bad streak left in her town-population by the war, and it is visible.

Cotton goods are very expensive, and many of the poor children seem inadequately dressed. The price of cotton is dependent upon much speculation and bad business between the American cotton plantation and the obscure worker in Hungary. It is a curious anomaly that Americans should burn cotton-bales in the Southern States to keep up the price, and that the American Red Cross on the other hand should in Europe distribute free garments to those who cannot pay the world-price thus attained.

The exchange is very low, five crowns to a penny, three hundred to a dollar. For a thousand crowns a week you can live--you can live in one room and keep body and soul together. For two thousand crowns a week you can live at a second-cla.s.s hotel with board and lodging. An ordinary dinner with a gla.s.s of beer costs a hundred crowns. You can also get a seat at the back of the stalls in a theatre for that amount.

There is a luxury-tax of ten per cent on all you buy at cafes and restaurants, on perfumery, and like objects. This, no doubt, brings in a large amount to the national exchequer if it is efficiently collected. The wages and salaries of all trades and professions are in a continual hurdle-race, vaulting cost of living and the rate of exchange. There are thousands of _nouveaux riches_, and there are thousands of ex-rich and gentry in decay. One feels that Hungary, however, is a rich country even as she stands to-day, and that the people have sterling qualities which make for the recuperation of the new State. There is still a love of work in the country, and that is comparatively a rare virtue in modern Europe. The working cla.s.s, as in Germany, feels that it lost the war and cannot expect extra fine conditions. The Hungarian working man outworks and therefore undersells or can undersell the English working man. The nation whose working men are ready to do most work is the most fortunate in 1921.

If Hungary can avoid indemnities and export taxes she is likely to do well. The Government will no doubt undergo many changes, and most people believe that the King is bound to come back. By popular vote he probably would--just as Constantine did in the Greek elections. But external opposition is too great. If Czechs and Serbs quarrelled it would be different. International animosity and the general ill-will militate most against the peaceful development of the new Hungary.

Budapest no doubt will always win friends for the country of which it is the capital. Capitals can be of enormous service to states in the matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest will help Hungary enormously.

What a glamour there is upon Budapest in the evening, with myriads of lights on each side of the gliding Danube. Formerly one arrived under the grand bridges in a house-boat at night and came alongside the stone quays, and without pa.s.sports or customs walked up into one of the gayest and brightest cities of Europe. But now the Danube, mother of mighty countries, is enchanted and enthralled. When will she be disenchanted again?

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

VIII. FROM VIENNA

At Budapest you begin to suspect that you are in Europe; at Vienna you are sure of it--with its great array of fine shops, full of elegancies and delectable grandeur which leave Paris and New York in the shade.

The whole press of Europe seems to have "written up" Vienna as "the ruined city" and "the end of a great capital," and even at Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the eyes, the fiction held that Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization running smoothly--a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafes, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working cla.s.s, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth.

Vienna is not like Petrograd where the thousands of eyes of the Nevski Prospect have been put out and squads of dead shops stare at one from smashed windows and gutted interiors. And it is not a vast caravanserai for sufferers like Constantinople. Something, however, is wrong and has been wrong and will be worse, and this something has power to strike the imagination of every one who visits the great city of Vienna. It is perhaps the contrast of luxury on the one hand and black bread on the other, and the almost fabulous descent of the crown.