Europe-Whither Bound? Part 7

Wrangel's officers use hundred-rouble notes for shaving-papers, and Americans in Vienna behave as unceremoniously with crowns. The lower denominations of the rouble are much cheaper than the price of paper, and the Austrian crown is going that way.[1]

This depreciation of the currency strikes the mind of the visitor to Vienna, and from it he deduces the general ruin of the country. He sees the shabby condition into which imperial palaces and State houses are falling, and talks with the aristocratic or cultured _nouveau pauvre_ carrying his lunch of sausage and black bread to a gloomy apartment at the back of a fourth floor, and he feels the calamity that has fallen upon Austria. Austria with a nominal 2800 crowns to the pound sterling cannot last. How then about Poland with 4000 marks to the pound--an Allied country with a close understanding with France?

But n.o.body in Vienna can understand how Poland lives.

The true inwardness of Vienna's calamity seems to lie in the fact that she is the capital of a very badly governed country. Much could obviously be done in little Austria by an honest, intelligent, and industrious administrative staff. But they prefer to stand in the way and beg, the giant Vienna and the dwarf Austria, staggering the imagination of pilgrims, and whining for alms to pa.s.sers-by.

By all accounts there is not even the will to govern well and make the new Austria into a going concern. Hence arises the economic problem of Austria, which is certainly grave. Here is a State which persistently refuses to live on its income, and prints off paper money to make up its deficiency. A highly expensive bureaucracy five times as large as is needed for little Austria pays itself first, and as for the rest of the population the devil can take the hindmost. The money-printing press works night and day. No loans, no foreign dole, will stop the operation of this machinery; what is necessary is a change of heart.

The expression "starving Austria" is a propaganda phrase. She may starve, she probably will, but the time is not yet. Individual cla.s.ses of workers starve until they get their wages raised. There have been many moments of struggle between the time when the tram-conductor earned forty crowns a week to the time when he earned several thousand.

Ten-thousand-crown notes are not uncommon among the working cla.s.ses, and 10,000 crowns will purchase more than you could buy in England for five pounds, or in America for thirty dollars. A working-man's dinner with a gla.s.s of beer costs about a hundred crowns, a city man's lunch of three courses, a hundred and twenty. The working cla.s.s is accused of constantly holding up the community for money by means of strikes.

The truth is that here the organization of Labour and the strike-weapon proved a highly convenient method for getting level with the money-printing press. Labour has been more fortunate than the professional and clerical cla.s.ses, who, not being organized, have been left badly in the background. There are now many professors at the University of Vienna earning less than one-third of the wages of skilled artisans. There are teachers, clerks, doctors, journalists, and the like, in a most pitiable plight because they have not the means of forcing the community to pay them higher salaries as the crown depreciates. As for the condition of pensioned teachers and professors and officers, of the half-pay widows and the incapacitated of the war, it is a shame to all European ideals. When the Government halves the value of the crown overnight by printing double the number in circulation--it robs first of all the educated cla.s.s and the pensioners. It is among these that one must search for the heart-burning sorrows of Vienna--and these are not paraded on the streets.

The most characteristic places of Vienna to-day are the new _Wechselstuben_ or exchange offices, which have sprung up everywhere.

Here are such crowds waiting to change their money that you have to wait in a line for your turn. Some of the large banks give a much better exchange than the little ones--and the better the exchange given the longer the queue. The large banks stop public business at half-past twelve, and after that hour is the opportunity of the bucket-shop. If you have little time, or if you lose patience, you run into one of the greedy little bureaus and help to make some one's fortune, not your own. This would not be of much importance for Austria if the people one met waiting in these banks were mostly American, British, French. The sad fact is that the people who are changing their money thus are nearly all Austrian or at least ex-Austrian subjects. The old Austrian empire has been divided into five parts, and each part has a different money which has to be exchanged whenever you come into another part. And there is a great difference in the values of the various moneys. Thus the Hungarian money is worth more than double that of Austria. The twenty, the hundred, the thousand-crown notes are almost identical in appearance and printing--a small imprint of a rubber stamp being in many cases the only distinguishing mark--but even from a waiter in a hotel you can get two thousand Austrian crowns for one thousand Hungarian ones.

Roumanian lei are also much the same in appearance. Czech crowns and Serbo-Croat crowns are certainly different. But when your home is in Czecho-Slovakia and your place of business in Austria, and your aged father and mother in Hungary and your uncles and cousins in Croatia, you have a lively time with your money. And it plays prodigiously into the hands of those who have started changing-shops upon the public ways.

An interest in the rate of exchange has developed among the ma.s.ses of the people, who turn to the financial column of the morning paper as Westerners do to football news or baseball results. There is considerable fluctuation in the values, and it is no doubt possible to make a living by speculation alone, and many people do so. In the banks are, therefore, crowds, both of speculators and of people who have just crossed the frontier and must get their money changed.

The Financial Committee of the League of Nations issuing its report in June foreshadowed the subst.i.tution at an early date of a new currency of definite value in gold. The Austrian crowns which are now in use will then suddenly appear in a new light to the deluded Austrian ma.s.ses. They are probably worth nothing at all, and those who have become rich in them will prove to be rich in nothing. If, however, the peasant is paid for his wheat in the new gold-backed currency he will quickly go ahead in wealth. But if he is paid in gold value, how the cities will starve with their paper!

Between the money-changers in the great streets are the fine Vienna shops exposing elegant craftsmanship of many kinds. Here you can buy rich gla.s.s, leather-work, enamelled silver, worked ivory, lace, beautiful bindings, fans, house-ornaments of every conceivable kind in ultra-perfect taste. All that is for sale suggests a luxurious way of life--aristocratic and cultured existence, and certainly not the showy splendour of the parvenu. You will hear it said in other parts of Europe you have still to go to Vienna to buy certain things. As long as the skilled craftsmen and clever workers of many kinds remain, these objects of luxury will be for sale. Besides these, there are, of course, many more ordinary things for which Vienna is noted--velour hats, bronze shoes, and the rest. These, reckoned at world-price figures, are sold at one-third of their value. But there is little market for them.

The next most characteristic things of the city must be the thousands of cafes, where you sit at your coffee surrounded by animated crowds of men reading papers, discussing politics and business, the whole press of Europe at their disposal. Your waiter brings your coffee and automatically at the same time the "Daily Telegraph," or "Figaro," or the "Chicago Tribune," or the "Berliner Tageblatt," or "Obshy Delo,"

according to your accent and appearance. Time seems to cease to have real value in a cafe; it is easy to spend hours over one cup of coffee and the newspapers--the difficulty is at last to pay and go.

The restaurants also are full. Though the bread is of rye the meat and potatoes are of the usual quality. Waiters give you white bread surrept.i.tiously. Your hand is below the level of the table and suddenly you find that it is holding a soft roll of white bread. For this you will not be charged in your bill, as it is illegal to sell it you. You pay the waiter when he helps you on with your coat. You can get milk and b.u.t.ter and sugar in this way if you are ready to forget that someone's children may have to do without somewhere in Vienna.

There is an extraordinary diversity of styles and prices at restaurants. A lunch for yourself and three friends will cost three to four thousand crowns at the "Bristol," but the same lunch round the corner goes for five hundred. Going in with a certain M---- to a fashionable restaurant, one could see that the waiters knew him perfectly well, and the head waiter was most affable. But he averred as he looked round the restaurant that there was not an Austrian in the place. None of those who could have been seen there formerly could afford it now. The best cuisine in Vienna was now only at the service of the foreigner.

Hotels, like restaurants, are speculative inst.i.tutions. But it is difficult to find a room on any terms. Vienna has increased in population and not decreased. She also is crowded with homeless people and refugees. Here are many whose houses are in detached parts of old Austria, now in other States, and they will not go back, or cannot, or are afraid. There are also the Russians once more in great numbers.

At the Stadt-theatre, the Moscow Theatre of Art was giving nightly from its repertoire, and it was instructive to see that great theatre packed with Russians, from the stalls to the standing-room at the back of the gallery, all listening intently to "The Three Sisters" of Chekhof; many demonstrations at the end of the performance, too, and making the building resound with Russian cheers and plaudits.

At Vienna you naturally spend some evenings at the theatre and the opera. It is famous for its stage. There, however, you do realize how Vienna has fallen. The theatres are all full, but not full of the sort of people who demand excellence. Perhaps it would be unfair to judge the opera by a performance of "Parsifal," that heavily over-dressed story of sentimental religiosity and pedestrian symbolism, but it was done in the most slatternly perfunctory style. The theatre was crowded. But it was a strangely mixed crowd. In lonely grandeur in one of the boxes were three Englishmen in evening dress. In the fifth row of the stalls was a servant-girl who kept asking her neighbours the time in the midst of Parsifal's mystical moments. It was her night out, but she had to be home by ten. She looked at the play with her mouth, and lolled to and fro. Occasionally some people down below set about clapping, but were silenced by hisses from the people up above, who hissed down all claps: the theme was too holy. However, in the entr'acts, how the beer flowed in the buffet. It was not too holy to drink beer.

"The profiteers have all the seats in the theatres," say the cultivated Austrians. "They don't understand opera and serious drama, but it has the name, and they could not afford to go before, so they go now. It is only the people in the gallery who know what is good."

"The people in the gallery always know that," said I. "It is the people in the circles who are not sure."

"What I mean is, the people who used to have stalls are now in the gallery, and the people who formerly never came to a theatre are now in the stalls," said the Austrian solemnly.

The intelligent Austrians are in a very gloomy frame of mind. Although the Government is nominally Christian-Socialist, it is very weak and practically unable to cope with the Communist and extreme Radical elements. It is a common opinion that Austria lies almost as low as Russia. "The social destruction of Russia is being done bloodlessly in Austria. The working cla.s.s is well-off; every one else, except the speculators, is in poverty," said Dr. B.

"We have the officials for a first-cla.s.s State, and the need for the number of a third-cla.s.s one," said Capt. S. "Our army now, the new army which we have obtained, is the worst army ever known in any country. I have been in Haiti, and the Haitians are splendid fellows compared with them. Our soldiers are merely a bodyguard for the Socialists, and robbers all. The true army, that went through the unspeakable sufferings of the war, was turned on the streets to starve.

Austria may have been serving a bad case, but the army was not to blame--it was doing its duty. But there is one humble consolation now; we have a condition of affairs in Austria which cannot continue.

Austria has become an economic plague-spot in Europe."

"It would interest me to have your opinion," I asked. "Has Austria a national spirit? Does the heart respond to its name?"

Capt. S. thought not. "I favour union with Germany as the only issue.

Few would grieve if 'Austria' were no more. We are German, and the idea of union with Germany has now made considerable progress with the people. But it is possible that the idea is not so popular in Germany.

It would be a grave responsibility to unite any country with the financial and political wreck which we have here."

I put this question of the future of Austria to a Monarchist. He did not favour the idea of a union with Germany, but of a renewed union with Hungary. He still believed the Hapsburgs could return.

I put it to a working man, but he favoured the State as it was. If only the cost of living could be brought down it would be a very fine State, as wages were so high.

The Pet.i.te Entente of Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, and Roumania, is strongly opposed to a reunion of Austria and Hungary, and would stop it by force of arms. The Czechs are equally opposed to union with Germany.

"So what do you say?" I asked of a Czech. "Do you think that what is left of Austria ought to be divided up between her neighbours?"

"G.o.d forbid!" said he. "We've got enough Germans in Czecho-Slovakia already. Austria can very well exist by herself. Does not Switzerland exist by herself, and do very well, without half the natural advantages of the new Austria?"

The French solution for the problem is known to lie in the possible detachment of Bavaria from Germany, and the setting up of a new South-German State in union with Austria. Only on such terms would France agree to Austria joining part of Germany. The Bavarians, however, show no signs of desiring to cut loose from the still great German confederation. A purely deliberative plebiscite taken in the Austrian Tyrol is all for union with Germany. A similar plebiscite in the province of Salzburg shows the same tendency, another in Styria is certain to go the same way. These plebiscites are called pa.s.sive propaganda by the French, and they for their part egg on the Pet.i.te Entente to stop them. But there seems little doubt that were Austria free to choose she would now give up her name and fame, and merge herself in the German whole of which, ethnographically, she is a natural part.

How strange that all the luxury and glamour of Vienna, as you see it at this moment, is the concomitant of complete decline and mortal peril.

In arriving in the city one felt at last that one was in Europe, but it proves to be not the Europe of the future. Vienna in 1921 is part of the sunset of that old radiant, peaceful Europe we knew before the war.

Night has to swallow it up, and the future lies on other horizons, in Prague and Belgrade and Budapest, in the capitals of that new Europe which arises from the defeat and ruin of the war.

N.B.--By Article 10 of the Treaty of Versailles, "Germany recognises and respects strictly the independence of Austria, and recognises that this independence is inalienable unless the League of Nations gives consent to change." And by Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria engages "to abstain from all acts calculated to prejudice her independence either directly or indirectly."

[1] Travellers to Austria are seldom warned beforehand that there is an internal and external rate of exchange, and they frequently lose 50% on the exchange of their money.

EXTRA LEAVES

(iii) _On Money and League of Nations Currency_

In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000 dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000 Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs, and some paper money of the princ.i.p.ality of Monaco.

You have to be somewhat of an arithmetician to think one week in piastres and the next in dinars, and the next in crowns, and the next in marks. You are always losing but you always think you are winning.

You afford pleasure to strangers whenever you go because you can be robbed so easily and safely. In each country you can be robbed coming in and robbed going out and generally robbed in between. You do not mind very much, it is part of the legitimate expense of modern travel.

You acc.u.mulate great wads of paper. See the people of Vienna and Warsaw, their inside pockets are all misshapen by the bulge of the money. The pockets of an international traveller are worse. He holds his unnegotiable acc.u.mulation of the money which is not worth changing nor yet worth throwing away.

"How much do you expect to get for this?" said a Hungarian banker surveying a bulky packet of Turkish piastres. I mentioned a likely sum.

"_Grande erreur_!" he exclaimed, and lifted his hands in horror. In Budapest they were marketable only for a tenth of what I gave for them.

So the piastres remained together with provincial French notes and small denominations of dinars and what-not, nominally worth something somewhere, but in fact unsaleable.

The Germans have just now a very popular word for a _nouveau-riche_, it is a _schieber_, one who exchanges. Getting your money changed is one of the most wasteful processes for you and one of the most gainful for him.

A certain man had 10 pounds which he exchanged for 450 francs. Then he exchanged the francs for 600 lira; he journeyed by Fiume to Serbia and changed again for 900 dinars. At Belgrade he bought 6,000 Hungarian crowns. He carried the money to Budapest and then to Vienna, where he had some luck and got 15,000 Austrian crowns. However, at Prague the bankers said they did not encourage the sale of Austrian money as they did not know what it was worth. He got 1,000 Czech crowns, which in turn he changed to 10,000 Polish marks. He then changed those for 500 Roumanian lei, returned to Poland again and only received 8,000 marks at the re-exchange. At Berlin they looked very disparagingly at the Polish money and offered him 280 German marks for the lot. He changed this for 11 florins in Amsterdam, for which when he reached Antwerp he received 40 Belgian francs. His 10 pounds lingered tentatively over the abyss of a nothing.