The Iron Ration Part 13

But we had neither milk nor lemon for the tea. We sweetened it with saccharine. There was no b.u.t.ter for the war-bread, so we ate it with a little prune jam. At the bottom of a cut-gla.s.s jar reposed a few crackers. I surmised that they were ancient, and feared, moreover, that the one I might be persuaded to take could not so easily be replaced. So I declined the biscuit, and, to make the baroness understand, offered her one of my bread coupons for the slice of bread I had eaten. This she declined, saying that the day was yet long and that I might need the bread voucher before it was over.

"I am no better off than others here," the baroness explained to me in reply to a question. "I receive from the authorities the same number of food cards everybody gets, and my servants must stand in line like all others. The only things I can buy now in the open market are fish and vegetables. But that is as it should be. Why should I and my children get more food than others get?"

I admitted that I could not see why she should be so favored. Still, there was something incongruous about it all. I had been the guest of the baroness in the great amba.s.sadorial palace on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha in Pera, and found it hard to believe that the woman who had then dwelt in nothing less than regal state was now reduced to the necessity of taking war-bread with her tea--even when she had visitors.

"If this keeps up much longer the race will suffer," she said, after a while. "I am beginning to fear for the children. We adults can stand this, of course. But the children...."

The baroness has two small girls, and to change her thoughts I directed the conversation to Oriental carpets and lace.

Her patriotism, too, is of the lasting sort.

But the very same evening I saw something different. The name won't matter.

I had accepted an invitation to dinner. It was a good dinner--war or peace. Its _piece de resistance_ was a whole broiled ham, which, as my hostess admitted, had cost in the clandestine market some one hundred and forty marks, roughly twenty-five dollars at the rate of exchange then in force. There was bread enough and side dishes galore. It was also a meatless day.

The ham was one of several which had found the household in question through the channels of illicit trade, which even the strenuous efforts of the Prussian government had not been able to close as yet. The family had the necessary cash, and in order to indulge in former habits as fully as possible, it was using that cash freely.

After living for several days in plenty at the Palads in Copenhagen, and ascertaining that _paling_--eel--was still in favor with the Dutch of The Hague, I returned to Vienna. Gone once more were the days of wheat bread and b.u.t.ter.

One rainy afternoon I was contemplating the leafless trees on the Ring through the windows of the Cafe Sacher when two bodies of mounted police hove into view on the bridle path, as if they were really in a great hurry. I smelled a food riot, rushed down-stairs, caught a taxi on the wing, and sped after the equestrian minions of the law. Police and observer pulled up in the Josephstadt in the very center of a food disturbance.

The riot had already cooled down to the level of billingsgate. Several hundred women stood about listening to the epithets which a smaller group was flinging at a badly mussed-up storekeeper, who seemed greatly concerned about his windows, which had been broken by somebody.

The police mingled with the crowd. What had happened? Nothing very much, said the storekeeper. That remark fanned the flame of indignation which was swaying the women. Nothing much, eh? They had stood since high noon in line for b.u.t.ter and fat. Up to an hour ago the door of the shop had been closed. When finally it was opened the shopkeeper had announced that he had supplies only for about fifty fat coupons. Those who were nearest his door would be served and the others could go home.

But somehow the crowd had learned that the man had received that morning from the Food Central enough fat to serve them all with the amount prescribed by the food cards. They refused to go away. Then the storekeeper, in the manner which is typically Viennese, grew sarcastically abusive. Before he had gone very far the women were upon him. Others invaded the store, found the place empty, and then vented their wrath on the fixtures and windows.

I was greatly interested in what the police would do with the rioters.

But, instead of hauling the ringleaders to headquarters, they told them to go home and refrain in future from taking the law into their own hands. Within ten minutes the riot resolved itself into good-natured bantering between the agents of the law and the women, and the incident was closed, except for the shopkeeper, who in court failed to clear up what he had done with the supplies of b.u.t.ter and fat that had been a.s.signed him for distribution. He lost his license to trade, and was fined besides.

Talking with several women, I discovered that none of them held the government responsible. The "beast" of a dealer was to blame for it all.

This view was held largely because the police had gone to work in a most considerate manner, according to the instructions issued by an anxious government.

In a previous food riot, in the Nineteenth Munic.i.p.al District, the gendarmes had been less prudent, with the result that the women turned on them and disfigured with their finger-nails many a masculine face--my visage included, because I had the misfortune of being mistaken for a detective. A muscular _Hausmeisterin_--janitress--set upon me with much vigor. Before I could explain, I was somewhat mussed up, though I could have ended the offensive by proper counter measures. It is best to attend such affairs in the Austrian equivalent for overalls.

Some weeks before, the Austrian premier, Count Sturgkh, had been shot to death by a radical socialist named Adler. In his statements Adler said that he had done this because of his belief that so long as Sturgkh was at the helm of the Austrian ship of state nothing would be done to solve the food situation.

There is no doubt that Adler had thoroughly surveyed the field of public subsistence. It is also a fact that he did the Austrian government a great service by killing the premier. The right and wrong of the case need not occupy us here. I am merely concerned with practical effects.

Count Sturgkh was an easy-going politician of a reactionary type. He gave no attention of an intelligent sort to the food problem, and did nothing to check the avarice of the food sharks, even when that avarice went far beyond the mark put up by the war-loan scheme. His inertia led during the first months of the war to much waste and later to regulations that could not have been more advantageous to the private interests of the food speculators had they been made for them expressly.

No statesman was ever carried to his grave with fewer regrets. In the Austrian government offices a sigh of relief was heard when it became known that Adler had shot the premier.

A revolution could not have been averted in Austria had Sturgkh continued at his post much longer. At first he was attacked only by the _Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung_, a socialist daily controlled by the father of Adler, who, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of the publication, is a member of the Austrian Reichsrath and the leader of the Austrian Socialist party. But later other papers began to object to Sturgkh's _dolce far niente_ official life, among them the rather conservative _Neue Freie Presse_. Others joined. Ultimately the premier saw himself deserted even by the _Fremdenblatt_, the semi-official organ of the government.

Though charged with incompetency by some and with worse by others, Count Sturgkh refused to resign. Emperor Francis Joseph was staying his hands and this made futile all endeavor to remove the count from his high office. The old emperor thought he was doing the best by his people, and had it not been that the Austrians respected this opinion more than they should have done, trouble would have swept the country.

A new era dawned after Count Sturgkh's death. But his successors found little they could put in order. The larder was empty. Premier Korber tried hard to give the people more food. But the food was no longer to be had.

The loyalty of the Austrian people to their government was given the fire test in those days. Now and then it seemed that the crisis had come. It never came, however.

Other trips to the fronts presented a new aspect of the food situation.

It was an odd one at that. The men who had formerly complained that their wives and children were not getting enough to eat had in the course of time grown indifferent to this. It was nothing unusual to have men return to the front before their furloughs had expired. At the front there were no food problems. The commissary solved them all. At home the man heard nothing but complaints and usually ate up what his children needed. Little by little the Central Power troops were infected with the spirit of the mercenary of old. Life at the front had its risks, but it also removed one from the sphere of daily cares. The great war-tiredness was making room for indifference and many of the men had truly become adventurers. So long as the _Goulaschkanone_ shot the regular meals every day all was well. The military commissaries had succeeded by means of the stomach in making the man at the front content with his lot. Food conditions in the rear always offered a good argument, inarticulate but eloquent, nevertheless, why the man in the trenches should think he was well off. In the case of the many husbands and fathers no mean degree of indifference and callousness was required before this frame of mind was possible. But the war had taken care of that. War hardly ever improves the individual. Out of sight, out of mind!

It was the craving stomach of the civil population that caused the several Central European governments most concern.

In the past, newspapers had been very careful when discussing the food question. They might hint at governmental inefficiency and double-dealing, but they could not afford to be specific. The censors saw to that. When the food situation was nearing its worst the several governments, to the surprise of many, relaxed political censorship sufficiently so that newspapers could say whatever they pleased on food questions. First came sane criticism and then a veritable flood of abuse.

But that was what the authorities wanted. Hard words break no bones, and their use is the only known antidote for revolution. Abuse was in the first place a fine safety valve, and then it gave the authorities a chance to defend themselves. To-day some paper would print an article in which, to the satisfaction of the reader, it was shown that this or that had been badly managed, and to-morrow the food authorities came back with a refutation that usually left a balance in favor of the government. The thing was adroitly done and served well to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.

Free discussion of the food problem was the order of the day. The light was let in on many things, and for the first time since the outbreak of the war the food shark had to take to cover. The governments let it be known that, while it was all very convenient to blame the authorities for everything, it would be just as well if the public began to understand that it had a share of responsibility. Informers grew like toadstools after a warm rain in June. The courts worked overtime and the jails were soon filled. The food situation was such that the lesser fry of the speculators had to be sacrificed to the wrath of the population.

The big men continued, however, and pennies were now to be mobilized through the medium of commodities. It was no longer safe to squeeze the public by means of its stomach if patriotism was to remain an a.s.set of the warring governments. The ma.s.ses had been mulcted of their last by this method. Others were to supply the money needed for the war.

I feel justified in saying that the craving stomach of the Central states would have served the Allied governments in good stead in the fall of 1916 had their militaro-political objectives been less extensive and far-reaching. The degree of hunger, however, was always counteracted by the statements of the Allied politicians that nothing but a complete reduction of Germany and Austria-Hungary would satisfy them. I noticed that such announcements generally had as a result a further tightening of the belts. Nor could anybody remain blind to the fact that the lean man is a more dangerous adversary than the sleek citizen. Discipline of the stomach is the first step in discipline of the mind. There is a certain joy in asceticism and the consciousness that eating to live has many advantages over living to eat.

The Central Power governments did not lose sight of this truth.

IX

SUB-SUBSt.i.tUTING THE SUBSt.i.tUTE

Much nonsense has been disseminated on the success of the Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in inventing subst.i.tutes for the things that were hard to get during the war. A goodly share of that nonsense came from the Germans and their allies themselves. But more of it was given to the four winds of heaven by admiring friends, who were as enthusiastic in such matters as they were ignorant of actual achievements.

That much was done in that field is true enough. But a great deal of scientific effort resulted in no more than what, for instance, synthetic rubber has been.

The first thing the German scientists did at the outbreak of the war was to perfect the system of a Norwegian chemist who had succeeded two years before in condensing the nitrogen of the air into the highly tangible form of crystals.

Many are under the impression that the process was something entirely new and distinctly a German invention. I have shown that this is not so.

Even the Norwegian cannot claim credit for the invention as in itself new. His merit is that he made the process commercially possible.

The thing was a huge success. The British blockade had made the importation of niter from overseas impossible. There is no telling what would have happened except for the fact that the practically inexhaustible store of nitrogen in the air could be drawn upon. It kept the Central Powers group of belligerents in powder, so long as there was vegetable fiber and coal-tar enough to be nitrated. Incidentally, some of the by-products of the nitrogen process served in good stead as fertilizer. The quant.i.ty won was not great, however.

I am not dealing with war as such, and for that reason I will pa.s.s by the many minor inventions of a purely military character that were made, nor would it be possible to do more than a cataloguing job if I were to attempt to refer here to all the innovations and subst.i.tutions that were undertaken as time went on.

Science multiplied by three the store of textiles held in the Central states at the outbreak of the war. This was done in many ways and by various means. Take cotton, for instance.

That almost anything could be converted into explosives by nitration has been known ever since n.o.ble made nitroglycerine a commercial product.

Any fat or fiber, even sugar, may be nitrated. That generally we use glycerine and cotton for the purpose is due to the fact that these materials are best suited for the process.

But the fats that go into glycerine, and the cotton that becomes trinitrocellulose, could be put to better use by the Central states. In a general way coal-tar took the place of the former, and wood pulp that of cotton. That meant a tremendous saving in food and clothing.

I remember well the shiver that went through Germany when Great Britain declared cotton to be contraband. The Entente press was jubilant for weeks. But any chemist familiar with the manufacture of explosives could have told Sir Kendall that he was too optimistic. It was known even then that birch pulp and willow pulp made most excellent subst.i.tutes for cotton, if the process, or "operation," as the thing is known technically, is suitably modified. Coal-tar explosives were already _un fait accompli_.

Having attended to that little affair, the German scientists turned their attention to the winning of new textiles. There was the nettle in the hedges. Anciently, it had been to Europe what cotton was to the Mexico of the Aztecs. Times being hard, the nettle, now looked upon as a noxious weed fit only for goose fodder, was brought into its place. Very soon it was in the market as a textile, which often aspired to as imposing a name as "natural silk," a name the plant and its fiber well deserve.

The chemist had very little to do with that. The process was known and, being in the main similar to the production of flax fiber, presented no difficulties. The plant is cut, packed tightly under water so that the vegetable pulp may decay, and is then dried in the sun and prepared for spinning.