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 EUROPE'S 
 
 MORNING AFTER 
 
 By 
 KENNETH L. ROBERTS 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 v; 
 
 %
 
 Europes Morning After 
 
 Copyright, 1931. by Harper 4 Brothers 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 B-V
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. ™ GB 
 
 Foreword v 
 
 I. Poland for Patriotism i 
 
 II. Husks 6 3 
 
 III Handing It Back 121 
 
 IV For Over a Thousand Years 174 
 
 V. Almost Sunny Italy 237 
 
 VI. The Mysteries of Paris 285 
 
 VII. Merrie England 33 1 
 
 VIII. Schieber Land 369
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 The material for this book was gathered during 
 the end of 19 19 and the early months of 1920. 
 This period was unique in the history of Europe. 
 Both the old nations and the new nations were just 
 beginning to sit up after their four-year debauch 
 of warfare and to realize that they ought to take 
 something for the awful headaches from which they 
 were suffering. Pessimism was rampant. The en- 
 tire outlook was a rich dark brown in color. The 
 money of the Central European nations was tum- 
 bling to new low levels from day to day. The dazed 
 business men of those nations hadn't learned how to 
 keep pace with the falling exchange. Each nation, 
 as it weakly took up the burden of living in the 
 morning, confidently expected its neighbor nations 
 to expire miserably from anaemia before nightfall — 
 or at least by the following Friday. Nobody knew 
 what was going to happen; and those who made 
 any predictions were usually wrong. An Austrian 
 or a Pole or a Czech or a Magyar might go to sleep 
 at eventide with the equivalent of eleven dollars in 
 his trousers pocket, secure in the conviction that he 
 was going to buy a pair of shoes with his money 
 on the following day; but when he awoke to the 
 rosy flush of a new dawn, prices might have doubled,
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 while the value of his money might have slumped 
 to the equivalent of three dollars and nine cents — 
 or just a little more than enough to buy a pair of 
 stockings. Everything, from international bound- 
 aries to domestic postal rates, was in a state of 
 flux. I make this statement for the benefit of the 
 people who, like so many others who have read my 
 remarks on Europe, may be impelled to write to me 
 and ask whether it would be advisable for a man 
 with a capital of one hundred and seventeen dollars 
 and fifty-four cents to go to Vienna or Budapest or 
 Warsaw to engage in the automobile — or any other — 
 business. I wish to answer these people now, and 
 in the following way, to wit: their guess is as good 
 as anybody's. The statements in this book apply 
 only to the months during which they were being 
 collected. They were accurate at that time. The 
 book is not a guide to conditions which exist to-day 
 and which will exist next week; but it is a record 
 of what I believe to be the lowest spots of Europe's 
 morning after. 
 
 Kenneth L. Roberts. 
 
 October 10, IQ20
 
 EUROPE'S 
 MORNING AFTER 
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 IF patriotism could be capitalized, the large, flat, 
 and rejuvenated republic of Poland would have 
 so much money that she could afford to buy all the 
 surrounding countries which are crowding her so 
 annoyingly, and blow them up just to provide fire- 
 works and amusement for the children. If patriot- 
 ism were edible, the Poles could eat a square meal 
 every half hour, instead of standing in line eight 
 hours for a loaf of bread and then finding out, as 
 they frequently do, that there isn't any bread. 
 
 Poland holds the long-distance patriotism cham- 
 pionship of the world. Though there are no text- 
 books in the Polish public schools explaining in 
 twenty lessons how to be patriotic, the small Poles 
 acquire their patriotism with as much vigor and 
 thoroughness as any of the large Poles. It is difficult 
 to say how this is done; for the physical aspects 
 of Poland do not seem to be such as to inspire great 
 enthusiasm in its residents. There is no great 
 abundance of rocks and rills; and as for woods and
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 templed hills, they are as rare as electric fans on the 
 Muir Glacier. Poland is a flat land. Enlarge 
 a pancake many millions of times and tint it ap- 
 propriately, and one would have a fair working 
 model of Poland. Its very name proves it. Its 
 Latin name, Polonia, from which the English 
 "Poland" comes, means the country of plains. It 
 is not a beautiful land. None the less, the ac- 
 quisition of patriotism on the part of its inhabitants 
 is accomplished with neatness and celerity. Long 
 Poles and short Poles, thin Poles and thick Poles, 
 soldier Poles, musical Poles, and barber Poles — 
 each and every one of them is so filled with the fire 
 of patriotism that the pangs of hunger and cold and 
 disease and war and nakedness and disappointment 
 and grinding poverty are deadened by its genial 
 warmth. 
 
 In America we are somewhat given to mentioning 
 a man's activities when speaking of him. "I'd 
 like to have you meet George Jingle, the greatest 
 ping-pong player in Ossawatomie County," we say; 
 or, "I wonder whether you know my friend Will 
 Whiffle, who effected the great consolidation in 
 doughnut-hole machinery?" In this way do we 
 stamp the acquaintance as desirable. In Poland, 
 however, there is only one qualification which is 
 worth advertising. That is patriotism. "Who is 
 this guy Brownski?" asks one Pole. "Why," re- 
 plies the other Pole, "he's a great patriot." That 
 settles the matter. He's a great patriot, and no- 
 body cares whether he's a. dub at golf or the president 
 of the Nowy Swiat Trust Company or a second-rate 
 druggist. When you've said that a man's a great 
 
 2
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 patriot you've said it all, in Poland. You have, as 
 the saying goes, said a mouthful. Nobody presses 
 the matter any farther. Nobody asks whether he 
 wears one ounce or twelve pounds of gold braid on 
 his uniform. He's a great patriot. Fine! Bring 
 him round to dinner ! 
 
 If I were a futurist artist and were attempting 
 to produce a picture which would represent Poland 
 during the first winter of its new lease of life, I 
 would give it a background of gold to represent its 
 patriotism. I would throw in a few Bolshevik 
 beasts gnawing at its edges and at its heart, some 
 endless lines of little children and middle-aged people 
 and old people waiting and waiting and waiting for 
 food, the rags of poverty, the wavy lines of inde- 
 cision, the smoke of battle, a few dilapidated railway 
 coaches bursting with people, the black splashes of 
 countless funerals, some dizzying downward brush 
 strokes to represent the depreciation of its money, 
 scores of helping American hands and a number of 
 politicians milling round in circles. Wherever there 
 was the smallest unoccupied space I would toss in 
 icicles, Bolsheviks, white eagles, and food cards. 
 Then I would mount the picture on a wheel, attach 
 the wheel to a dynamo, and start it to spinning at the 
 approximate rate of four hundred and seventy 
 revolutions per second. The effect would be some- 
 what messy; but that is the effect of Poland on the 
 casual observer. 
 
 That, in fact, is the effect of all central Europe 
 on everyone. All that one can say about Central 
 Europe as a whole is that it is a mess and that it 
 will probably be a mess for some time to come. 
 
 3
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Practically all other statements are dangerous be- 
 cause of the excellent chance that a statement which 
 is true on a given day will probably be untrue on the 
 following day. Things, as the political economists 
 frequently observe with a look of great profundity, 
 are in a state of flux. They are in a state of flux 
 up to their necks, not to say up to their ears. They 
 have large, unsightly pieces of flux in their hair and 
 eyebrows. I would even go so far as to say that they 
 were stuck in the flux and were making day and 
 night hideous with wild shrieks for some one to 
 come along with a pair of horses and a shovel and 
 get them out. I will also add that their shrieks are 
 justified, and that some one has got to get them 
 out. My reasoning is based on the fairly well- 
 known axiom that a man cannot lift himself by his 
 own boot straps. This operation has frequently 
 been attempted, but has been universally unpro- 
 ductive. People who try hard enough sometimes 
 succeed in pulling their feet out from under them 
 and falling down and breaking their necks. Then 
 somebody has to pay for a funeral. 
 
 Poland is in a generous state of flux. Her bound- 
 aries are particularly fluxish, especially the bound- 
 aries which face Russia and the Bolsheviks. The 
 Peace Conference has carefully refrained from de- 
 fining these boundaries; so that nobody is able to 
 come within three hundred miles of locating them 
 with any accuracy. They have been left as hazy 
 and indistinct as a kerosene lamp in a London fog, 
 and offer remarkably fine grounds for future wars. 
 The Peace Conference failed in many notable re- 
 spects, but it was a complete success at providing 
 
 4
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 every country in Central Europe with boundaries 
 to fight over. I might add that there are very few- 
 countries which will fail to take advantage of the 
 opportunities with which the Peace Conference has 
 so generously provided them. That, at least, is the 
 opinion of every American military man and every 
 American observer that I met in Central Europe — 
 and they are the only disinterested and impartial 
 people to be found in that large and troubled stretch 
 of territory. Everybody else has an ax to grind. 
 Some have only one ax in need of grinding; but 
 most of them have as many axes awaiting the 
 sharpener as a stage magician has rolls of colored 
 paper which he produces to mystify his audience. 
 
 And the United States seems to have been unani- 
 mously elected to the position of official ax grinder. 
 To change the simile a trifle, if the United States 
 joins with her well-known heartiness in the League 
 of Nations, which President Wilson insisted that 
 the United States should enter without a batting of 
 an eye or a gnashing of the teeth, or words to that 
 effect, she will be the energetic member who will be 
 expected to remove the chestnuts from the fire. 
 She will have to be the one who will have to endure 
 the curses of those who are impatiently awaiting the 
 chestnuts, as well as the one who will have to apply 
 the salve to the burns on her fingers. 
 
 The intensity with which Americans in Central 
 Europe mention the League of Nations is truly 
 passionate. They usually lead off in the same way. 
 "When I came over here," says each one of them, 
 "I was all for the League of Nations. But I've 
 changed now; believe me, I've changed! Let them 
 
 5
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 sign the Peace Treaty as soon as they can; but for 
 the love of Mike don't let them get mixed up with 
 the League of Nations, which has no reservations in 
 it! If they want to fight, and we tell them not to 
 fight, do you think they'll stop? Not so that you 
 could notice it! Help them, because they need 
 help; but stay out of the League unless it's altered!" 
 And so they run on, from morning to night and 
 through most of the night as well, whenever they 
 can find a warm room in which to sit. 
 
 That, however, has little to do with Poland. 
 Poland's boundaries are in a state of flux, and so are 
 her politics and her food supply and her fuel supply 
 and her rate of exchange. The things which I write 
 about Poland were as I found them in the month of 
 January, 1920. They have probably done a con- 
 siderable amount of fluxing since that time. Prob- 
 ably the rate of exchange is much worse, and prob- 
 ably all the political parties have shifted their 
 allegiance eight or ten or fifty times. Probably 
 the frontier which faces the Bolsheviki has been 
 punched in or pushed out in several places. Prob- 
 ably she has less food and fuel. All these things 
 are bound to change. 
 
 There are, however, certain things about Poland 
 which will not be affected by the flux. The people 
 in most parts of the country won't have nearly 
 enough to eat ; you may be sure of that. The poor 
 people in the cities will be living on bad potatoes 
 and half -rotten beets and inferior carrots and black 
 bread for which they must stand in line for hours. 
 In the districts which the Russian armies and the 
 German armies devastated thousands of them will 
 
 6
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 make their heartiest meals on grass and thistle soup, 
 or on bread made out of pounded roots and vegetables 
 and such-like truck. The Polish money will be 
 worth so little and everything in the stores will be so 
 very expensive that the people will be unable to buy 
 anything except the barest necessities of life; while 
 business men from other countries will be buying 
 everything in sight because the prices seem so 
 ridiculously low to them. 
 
 None of these things will change in a hurry; and 
 above all else, the patriotism of the Poles will remain 
 constant. The Poles may be inefficient at governing 
 themselves, — almost any people would be if they 
 had been at it for as short a time as the Poles; 
 they may be lazy and averse to settling down to 
 work; they may squabble among themselves over 
 political matters; they may be regarded by their 
 neighbors as hopelessly incompetent to govern them- 
 selves. In spite of all this they will continue to 
 rank high among the world's patriots ; and patriotism 
 in sufficient quantities has more than once been 
 known to pull nations out of deeper holes than the 
 one which Poland now occupies. 
 
 Poland, as one is quite unable to discover from 
 most of the maps which purport to represent the 
 new nations of Europe according to the Peace 
 Treaty, is a large chunk of territory which starts 
 modestly at the Baltic Sea, bulges mildly into Ger- 
 many in the west and violently into Russia on the 
 east, and rubs against Czechoslovakia and Rumania 
 on the south. According to the maps it is a rather 
 symmetrical cup-shaped country; but, due to the 
 praiseworthy and ferocious attacks of the Polish 
 
 7
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 army on the Bolsheviks, the Russian side of the cup 
 has developed a massive wen which makes Poland 
 twice as large as the map makers conceived it to be 
 when they drew the post-war maps. 
 
 The German side of the cup sticks into Germany 
 in a manner which is highly irritating to the Ger- 
 mans; for a Polish army could leap over to Berlin 
 in about two shakes of a lamb's tail. The distance 
 from the Polish frontier to Berlin is only one third 
 the distance from Berlin to the Rhine. Since Ger- 
 many is contemplating another intensive war with 
 France in the not-distant future, the imminence of 
 the Polish frontier is, to put it conservatively, ex- 
 tremely distasteful to her. She is not particularly 
 enthusiastic about Poland. In the argot of the day, 
 Germany hopes that Poland will choke. She not 
 only hopes that Poland will choke, but she is willing 
 to do anything in her power to assist the choking. 
 Though she is fearful of Bolshevism within her own 
 gates, she is very much in favor of external Bolshe- 
 vism, provided it be directed against Poland. Some 
 people may consider that these are idle ravings, 
 similar to the disordered visions produced by the 
 potent hashish, or Indian hemp. Such, however, 
 is not the case. The German War Office sent out 
 instructions to former members of the German 
 army, informing them that the Bolshevik army would 
 pay each former German soldier thirty-five marks 
 a day to fight with the Bolsheviks, and give each 
 man a bonus of five thousand marks at the end of 
 three months' service. A Bolshevik general ap- 
 peared in Berlin with his adjutant late in 19 19 to 
 thank one of the highest officials of the German 
 
 8
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 government for the many officers which the Germans 
 had sent, by agreement, to fight with the Bolsheviks. 
 The Bolsheviks have a powerful and venomous 
 hatred for France. This hatred has been carefully 
 nurtured by German propagandists; for the Ger- 
 mans are already planning to have the assistance 
 of Russia in the next war with France. These plans 
 call for the elimination of Poland. In the city of 
 Kovno, away up on the outer edge of the northern 
 corner of Poland, there is a German propaganda 
 bureau whose entire activities are devoted to sending 
 out anti-Polish propaganda. Most of the pogrom 
 stories come from the Kovno bureau, being sent 
 from there to Scandinavia and from Scandinavia to 
 America. Germany maintains a complete intelli- 
 gence organization in Poland. 
 
 No, Germany does not regard Poland with deep 
 affection. Her fondest hope is that the Bolsheviks 
 will batter the Polish army to pieces — a task for 
 which the Bolsheviks have so far shown little aptitude 
 — and leave the country lying limp and fainting in 
 the dust. When this occurs, she proposes to come 
 into Poland, administer a few well-directed kicks to 
 the Bolsheviks, pick Poland up, brush the dirt from 
 her, hold the smelling salts under her nose and start 
 her going again, attached to the German pay roll. 
 All of Poland's neighbors declare loudly and em- 
 phatically that Poland cannot continue to exist as 
 an independent state for any length of time. They 
 say she is so inefficient and impractical that she 
 doesn't know enough to raise an umbrella during a 
 cloud-burst. Germany is the loudest talker along 
 these lines. The Germans are sufficiently practical 
 
 9
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 and efficient ; but it is quite impossible to see where 
 some of the others have any special license to twit 
 Poland about inefficiency and impracticality. If 
 Poland is due for a fall merely because she is in- 
 efficient and impractical, all of Central Europe will 
 be echoing with the thuds of falling countries for the 
 next few years. 
 
 Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was an easy place 
 to reach from any part of Europe before the war. 
 It was a day-and-a-half journey from almost all the 
 European capitals. One could go in from Paris 
 or across from London or down from St. Petersburg 
 or over from Bucharest or up from Rome in about 
 thirty-six hours. At the present day one has a 
 better chance of making the trip in thirty-six days 
 than he does of making it in thirty-six hours. I 
 went into Warsaw from Berlin — a trip which took 
 eleven hours before the war. It took me thirty- 
 three hours; and it would have taken me forty if I 
 hadn't thrown my baggage out of the window of the 
 so-called express train in which I was traveling — but 
 which was temporarily incapacitated because the 
 bottom had fallen out of the engine, squeezed into a 
 freight car attached to a switching engine — and trans- 
 ferred from that into a crowded local train which 
 appeared to be going in the right direction. 
 
 In America we are inclined to speak of a train 
 as crowded when a few people have to stand up in 
 the aisles. In Central Europe a train which has a 
 few people standing in the aisles is regarded as prac- 
 tically empty. There are a few trains de luxe, 
 operated by the Interallied Military Authorities, 
 which carry only as many people as can mid seats. 
 
 10
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 But 99 per cent of the trains are so crammed with 
 patient, stolid, foul-smelling, sick, and suffering 
 humanity that the windows are crushed out and the 
 very woodwork splintered. 
 
 That sounds somewhat exaggerated, but it isn't. 
 I examined train after train at various spots between 
 Warsaw and the German frontier, to say nothing of 
 riding in a few of them, and I have no hesitation 
 whatever in lifting up my right hand and taking 
 oath that each and every one of them was crowded 
 to the extreme and uttermost limit. Compartments 
 which were constructed to hold eight people would 
 be crammed with eighteen, twenty, and sometimes 
 more than twenty people. In some of the cars the 
 windows were simply broken out. In others they 
 were replaced with wooden boards, so that the 
 darkness inside the cars was made more awful by the 
 lack of ventilation. The people who were squeezed 
 into these trains were traveling out into the country 
 in search of food, or traveling back to the homes from 
 which they had been driven by the Russian or the 
 German army, or traveling in search of a place 
 where they might rest their weary heads — for the 
 larger cities of Poland are filled to overflowing with 
 refugees who are coming out of Russia. Persons 
 who ride for half an hour each day in crowded subway 
 or surface cars in America are forced to endure a 
 most unpleasant experience; but not even they can 
 grasp the horrors of travel in Poland, where one 
 cannot ride in a train without being jammed im- 
 movably into a tiny compartment for hours on end, 
 and where no train reaches its destination without 
 at least one typhus victim being removed from it. 
 2 ii
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 One catches typhus only after being bitten by the 
 typhus louse, and the typhus louse can bite without 
 leaving any trace; and since American medical 
 officers in Poland have found that practically all of 
 the poorer people of Poland are plentifully supplied 
 with lice, one cannot endure the enforced intimacy 
 of a Polish railway journey without enjoying the 
 anticipation of catching a nice case of typhus. This 
 helps to a certain extent to distract the mind from 
 the physical discomforts of the trip; but the dis- 
 traction is not overpoweringly delightful. It is not 
 a distraction which one would pay large amounts of 
 money to obtain; in fact, a speculator dealing in 
 tickets for that sort of distraction would probably 
 be out of luck even in New York, where the populace 
 appears to be almost unanimous in its anxiety to 
 force its money on ticket speculators of all sorts. 
 
 The transportation problem is Poland's worst 
 problem, and she has many serious ones. Germany's 
 greatest problem is raw materials; Czechoslovakia's 
 greatest problem is politics; the greatest problem 
 of fehe remainder of Central Europe — except Austria 
 — is the lack of coal; and every problem is Austria's 
 greatest problem; but if Poland could have the 
 proper transportation facilities she could probably 
 overcome all her other troubles. She could probably 
 get food and distribute it; she could probably 
 scratch up a fair supply of raw materials from her 
 own tremendous and undeveloped stores; she could 
 probably squelch her rambunctious politicians; she 
 could probably attend handily to the Bolsheviks 
 and watch the Germans at the same time ; she could 
 probably manufacture enough goods and export a 
 
 12
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 sufficient amount of them and of wood and of raw 
 materials to bring the value of her money to a point 
 where her people could begin to live again rather 
 than merely exist. She has enough coal of her own 
 to take care of her own needs, but her transportation 
 system is limping so badly that she can't get it 
 round to the places that need it. 
 
 Poland is fortunate in having several advisers and 
 helpers, many of them sent in by the American 
 who has the respect and the admiration of every 
 nation in Europe and every American in Europe — 
 Herbert Hoover. 
 
 In almost any Central European city one is apt to 
 find photographs of Hoover staring somewhat frown- 
 ingly at him from shop windows. Whenever Amer- 
 icans meet in Central Europe they invariably agree 
 that there is only one man in America who has a 
 thorough knowledge of the horrifying and dazing 
 mess into which Europe has fallen, and that Hoover 
 is the man. The new Prime Minister of Poland 
 stared out of the windows of the former Russian 
 governor-general's palace and informed me in a cold 
 and level voice that there wasn't a child in Poland 
 to-day who would ever forget the name of Herbert 
 Hoover. He also stated unemotionally that the 
 people of Poland will establish an institution which 
 shall perpetuate Hoover's name forever. 
 
 Hoover's people are feeding the children of Central 
 Europe; Hoover's people are advising the govern- 
 ments of Central Europe. Central Europe has 
 learned from them, as well as from the American 
 Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A., that Americans keep 
 their promises and that they are in Central Europe 
 
 13
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 for no ulterior motives. Other nations come into Cen- 
 tral Europe and play politics of the dirtiest sort; 
 they come in and spread the propaganda of hate for 
 other nations; they come in and sanction the ex- 
 ploitation of the different nations by permitting 
 contraband goods to be shipped in and out as military 
 stores; they come in like buzzards to prey on the 
 dying bodies politic in Central Europe. And as they 
 prey they lift up their voices and scream that America 
 must do this and that; that America must do thus 
 and so; that America has made all the money in 
 the world and that she must therefore supply all the 
 help ; that America must be the cosmic goat and the 
 international sucker. The Swedes and the Danes 
 and the Dutch and the English and the French and 
 the Italians pour into Central Europe, where the 
 money is scarcely worth the paper it is printed on, 
 and they buy machinery and tools and antiques and 
 jewels and works of art and industries and furs at 
 prices less than a quarter of what they were in pre- 
 war days ; and the value of money in Central Europe 
 goes tumbling down into a bottomless pit. America 
 helps the suffering countries with food and loans 
 and advisers; and the buzzard nations on the edge 
 continue to strip them of their goods and to shout 
 that America has all the money in the world and 
 that she alone can help. Poland needs all the help 
 that she is getting from America, and more. Austria 
 is getting some American aid, but not nearly enough. 
 Some of the other nations of Central Europe need a 
 certain amount of American help. All the Ameri- 
 cans in Europe agree on that. But Americans in 
 Europe also agree that there are times when it gives 
 
 14
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 them a long, lingering pain to think that America 
 is about the only nation which does things for 
 nothing. 
 
 But let us get back to that journey into Warsaw 
 from Berlin. That is where one first gets a glimpse 
 of the transportation difficulties with which Poland 
 is saddled. One runs bumpily along the boundless 
 plains, and then the train hesitates, coughs, and 
 stops. A car has broken down. It is repaired with 
 wire or an old rope, and the train proceeds again. 
 Once more it coughs and stops. It has run out of 
 coal and the fireman must cut down a few trees for 
 fuel. It proceeds eventually, only to stop for the 
 third time. This time the bottom has fallen out of 
 the engine. A new engine is procured after an 
 interminable delay. Sometimes, on the fourth 
 attempt to go forward, everything breaks down at 
 the same time and an entire new train has to be 
 summoned. 
 
 In all of Central Europe 40 per cent of the locomo- 
 tives are suffering from such advanced cases of 
 nervous debility that they are useless. Of the large, 
 heavy locomotives a much larger percentage is out 
 of business, so that most of the work is done by 
 small near-locomotives which look as if they had 
 been constructed from tin biscuit boxes and a few 
 old spoons, and which make about as much noise in 
 passing as would be made by a small boy with a 
 penny whistle. Colonel Barber and Major Ryan, 
 two American army officers, are helping the Polish 
 Minister of Railways to establish order so far as it 
 is possible, and are working day and night at the 
 task. As things stand at present the Poles are 
 
 15
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 barely moving their coal and their food ; and in order 
 to do this the entire nation is making great sacri- 
 fices. Passenger traffic has been cut to the lowest 
 possible point, and no luxury articles are allowed 
 to be shipped into the country. The only things 
 in Poland which travel in any comfort are the lice, 
 and even they probably complain of their lot among 
 themselves. 
 
 It is also on the journey from Berlin to Warsaw 
 that one gets an idea of the peculiar and messy 
 manner in which Poland is divided. It is divided 
 into three parts in two different ways. This sounds 
 about as clear as Poland looks to a newcomer. 
 Close observers state that one is quite incapable of 
 grasping the Polish situation until he has been there 
 at least six months, and that persons who have been 
 there for six months or over realize that they know 
 less about Poland than they knew when they had 
 been there only two weeks. None the less, Poland 
 is divided into three parts in two different ways. 
 It is divided politically into Posnania, Congress 
 Poland, and the Military Area. And it is divided 
 by pre-war ownership into Russian Poland, Austrian 
 Poland, and German Poland. In parts of Russian 
 Poland the Russian ruble is the only money that is 
 used. In parts of Austrian Poland the Austrian 
 crown is the only money that looks like the real 
 thing to the natives. In Austrian Poland the people 
 had an idea that a crown is as good as a mark. The 
 Polish government didn't think so, and issued an 
 order that one hundred crowns were equal to only 
 seventy marks. The residents of Austrian Poland 
 promptly became frantic with rage. 
 
 16
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 The little differences which rise between Austrian, 
 German, and Russian Poland, however, are small 
 and easily straightened out, and if it comes to a 
 question of repelling a common enemy they will all 
 be Poles together. 
 
 The political division is a bit more confusing. 
 Posnania is that section of Poland whose center is 
 the city of Posen. It formerly belonged to Ger- 
 many ; and for months after the armistice the Poles 
 and the Germans were greatly given to guerrilla 
 warfare along the new border. That section of the 
 country, having been run by the Germans, was 
 better systematized and better cultivated than the 
 rest of Poland, and food was more plentiful and 
 cheaper. The Poles in Congress Poland say that 
 Posnania is the cheapest place in the world in which 
 to live just now ; and I have no reason to disbelieve 
 them. I traveled through Posen with a Dutch 
 courier ; and the two of us went to the best restaurant 
 in Posen to try out the Posen food prices. We dis- 
 played the utmost recklessness and prodigality in 
 ordering, and succeeded in getting a thick venison 
 soup, a quart bottle of a fine white wine — Rotenberg, 
 1907, for the benefit of those who think that fine 
 white wines no longer exist — two large orders of 
 turkey, a sallow variety of bread, a generous order of 
 butter, sweet cakes, coffee, and two glasses of cognac. 
 The total reckoning was fifty-six Polish marks. 
 Since a Berlin bank had stung me severely on the 
 preceding day by allowing me only one hundred 
 Polish marks for a dollar when the official rate was 
 really one hundred and twenty marks for a dollar, I 
 am forced to compute the cost of that dinner at 
 
 17
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 fifty-six cents from an American standpoint. In 
 Congress Poland the same dinner would have cost 
 three times as much. 
 
 Since things are cheaper in Posnania than in 
 Congress Poland, the Posnanian officials must guard 
 against the people who wish to buy there and take 
 goods into other parts of Poland to resell at a profit. 
 This gives rise to the peculiar situation of one part 
 of a nation maintaining customs officials to prevent 
 smuggling into other parts of the same nation. 
 After one has passed the customs officials at the 
 German-Polish frontier one runs up against another 
 set of officials at the Posnanian-Congress Poland 
 border; and the latter are even more thorough in 
 their search than the former. They herd passengers 
 out of the through train at two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, line them up with their hands over their heads, 
 and frisk them with the utmost vigor. They take 
 loaves of bread from the travelers, break them open 
 and wriggle their fingers round in the interiors of the 
 loaves. They open bottles of wine belonging to the 
 voyagers and take generous swigs from the bottles. 
 They whack the travelers on the head in order to 
 see whether anything is concealed in their hats. 
 They even make them remove their boots. They 
 don't do these things to Americans or British or 
 French; but the ordinary traveler is treated with 
 about as much consideration as though he were trying 
 to escape with all the treasures of the Polish Church. 
 
 Posnania has a government all its own, and pre- 
 sents all the appearance of a separate state, working 
 in many instances at variance with the centra! 
 government at Warsaw. 
 
 18
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 Prussians snort contemptuously at the situation 
 and declare that a government that is not strong 
 enough to unite its different parts is bound to fall. 
 Polish officials, however, are not at all alarmed. 
 They say that Posnania has a right to protect herself 
 against high prices elsewhere, and that there is no 
 other reason for the separate customs officials and 
 the separate government. I prefer to believe the 
 Polish officials rather than the Prussian snorters; 
 for the past five years have demonstrated conclu- 
 sively that when a Prussian sizes up a situation he is 
 usually wrong. He always knows what he is going 
 to do himself, but he only thinks that he knows 
 what the other fellow is going to do. So the Prussian 
 knows that he is doing his best to wreck Poland; 
 but there's a very good chance that he's wrong 
 when he thinks that Poland will collapse by the 
 end of 1920. 
 
 Congress Poland is made up of the bulk of Poland 
 as it appears on all the post-war maps. That section 
 of the country is run by the President of the Council 
 of Ministers, by the Ministers, and by the Diet, 
 which corresponds to our Congress. East of Con- 
 gress Poland is the Military Area, acquired by the 
 Polish army because of its facility in chasing the 
 Bolshevik armies to the uttermost confines of the 
 landscape. The Military Area is larger than Con- 
 gress Poland and Posnania together, and is governed 
 entirely by the army; and whenever the army says 
 anything, it goes. The great bulk of the Poles 
 are emphatically in favor of having the army run 
 everything. They want a military dictatorship for 
 the country. They are very, very weary of politi- 
 
 19
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 cians and of political parties which change their 
 allegiance, their political platforms, their minds, and 
 their names every Tuesday afternoon. They are 
 sick of patriotic but unskilled politicians who don't 
 know what to do until they have held a meeting to 
 decide, and who, when they have decided what to do, 
 haven't the slightest idea how to do it. 
 
 Politicians are pretty much the same all over the 
 world ; but in the new states of Central Europe they 
 are even more so. For the most part they are men 
 who have been yanked out of harness shops or drug 
 stores or schoolhouses or little provincial news- 
 paper offices, and who know about as much con- 
 cerning the running of a nation as they do about the 
 nebular hypothesis or the theogony of angiosperms. 
 They are woefully incapable and inefficient — far 
 more so than the same sort of people would be in 
 America; for in Central Europe this class of person 
 has been politically sat on for centuries; whereas 
 in America the habitues of every country post office 
 and every country store feel themselves thoroughly 
 competent — and frequently are thoroughly compe- 
 tent — to point out to the heads of the nation the 
 horrible mistakes that they are making. 
 
 The army is everywhere in Poland. The war 
 isn't over for Central Europe, and it won't be over 
 for many a long year to come. There are soldiers 
 at every station, soldiers in every hotel, soldiers on 
 every street. Poland, which last winter was the 
 world's rampart against the Bolshevik armies, had 
 nearly one million men under arms, and was holding 
 five hundred miles of front against the Bolshevik 
 armies. She was also keeping careful watch on the 
 
 20
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 Germans, who are waiting to slip a knife into her; 
 and on the Czechoslovaks, who have been making 
 things uncomfortable for Poland down round the 
 Teschen coal fields — which, as one looks at a map, 
 are down at the lower left-hand corner of Poland, 
 where she and Germany and Czechoslovakia meet. 
 
 All the nations of Central Europe are constantly 
 making things unpleasant for one another. The 
 Peace Conference made a complete and total mess 
 of Central Europe, and each individual mess is pro- 
 ducing as many minor messes as it can. Every 
 American in Central Europe is anxious to get that 
 message back to the United States — that Central 
 Europe is nothing but a bundle of hopelessly en- 
 tangled hatreds and discords; that it is a mass of 
 selfishness and distrust and deceit and dirty politics ; 
 that it is a place from which the United States must 
 stay away politically. Help Central Europe, but 
 stay away from anything that will tie us up with it. 
 Nothing that we can do will help to stifle or to 
 soothe or to eradicate the bitter hates which have 
 existed between the peoples of Central Europe for so 
 many centuries. 
 
 Poland, as I see it, is the most deserving of our 
 help of all the Central European nations, and Austria 
 is the neediest. Poland is fighting the battle against 
 the Bolsheviks — or was fighting it last winter in 
 the face of almost insurmountable difficulties. Her 
 armies and her people were hungry and bitterly cold 
 and wretchedly clad and enduring unbelievable 
 hardships. Instead of being assisted in every way 
 by the Supreme Council in Paris, the Polish army 
 was ordered again and again by the Supreme Council 
 
 21
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 to stop advancing when victories were within its 
 grasp. Poland alone, of all the Central European 
 states, has obeyed the orders of the Allies. Ru- 
 mania gave the Allies the cold metallic laugh; 
 Germany ignored their commands and continued to 
 do as she pleased on the Baltic; the Hungarian 
 Bolshevik army went up and tried to chew a piece 
 out of Slovakia; the Ukrainians violated an ar- 
 mistice and attacked the Poles; and the Jugoslavs 
 have been indulging in minor wars from time to time. 
 Austria has done nothing because she has nothing 
 with which to do anything; but all the others, with 
 the exception of Poland, have been doing as they 
 pleased and are making great preparations to do 
 as they please some more, despite any commands 
 which the Allies may issue to the contrary. Poland 
 has behaved herself; Poland has fought a good fight; 
 Poland is doing her utmost to live as she should live 
 in the days of misery and poverty and cold and 
 hunger. And because of all these things I repeat 
 that Poland deserves our help more than any of the 
 other nations — though Austria's plight is more pitiful. 
 As one comes into Warsaw from Berlin one sees 
 soldiers everywhere — soldiers in the steel-blue Polish 
 uniform and the four-cornered caps with the white 
 eagle of Poland on the front ; or in olive-drab Ameri- 
 can uniforms. Some of these olive-drab uniforms 
 still bear American army buttons. Some are still 
 decorated with gold service chevrons. I watched 
 a detachment swinging along the streets of Warsaw 
 one day, and every man wore an American uniform 
 and carried an American haversack with the letters 
 U. S. stenciled on it. There was nothing to dis- 
 
 22
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 tinguish them from American doughboys except their 
 four-cornered caps and their Kosciuszko burnsides. 
 They were a credit to the uniform, too, for they were 
 fine-looking boys — and any Bolshevik can tell you 
 that they are fine fighters as well. They fought 
 through the early part of last winter, in the biting 
 cold of western Russia, without overcoats, and in 
 many cases with so little clothing that when the men 
 came back from the front lines they would go to the 
 dugouts in the rear and take off their shoes and their 
 breeches and give them to the half-naked men who 
 were to relieve them. And then they would lie 
 there in the dugouts until their breeches and their 
 shoes came back to them, and then they would 
 put them on and go forward and fight once more. 
 In the hotel lobbies one encounters Polish officers 
 who could be placed bodily on the operatic stage 
 or among the pages of that sort of novel in which the 
 hero overturns a kingdom in order to marry the 
 beautiful princess who was educated in America. 
 They wear sabers at least five feet long, and the 
 sabers dangle about a foot above the floor and 
 bang against their beautifully polished riding boots. 
 As they stride up and down, the sabers occasionally 
 swing round between their legs, but instead of falling 
 down the officers merely give a dexterous kick with 
 their right heels, and kick the sabers out from be- 
 tween their legs so that they whirl round in a very 
 dangerous manner. They let their hair grow down 
 in front of their ears just the way Kosciuszko used 
 to ; and by so doing I think they have acquired some 
 of the fire and the enthusiasm and the patriotism 
 of that brave and patriotic soldier. Whenever they 
 
 23
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 meet acquaintances they snap their heels together 
 with a noise similar to the dropping of a pie plate 
 on a marble floor, and bow from the hips. And on 
 meeting a lady of their acquaintance they seize her 
 hand and kiss it passionately. When an officer 
 enters a restaurant in which other officers are 
 seated he stops before every officer and bows from his 
 hips, whereat the officer to whom he bows, dropping 
 his knife and fork, half rises to his feet and bows 
 from his hips in turn. It is all very impressive and 
 splendid. When one dines with a Polish officer the 
 officer devotes half his time to rising and bowing 
 to brother officers. It is a pretty spectacle, but it 
 cuts into the conversation severely. 
 
 Possibly that is why the wealthy Poles devote so 
 much time to eating. Or rather, possibly that is why 
 they devoted so much time to eating up to the 
 middle of last January, when the new food regulations 
 went into effect. 
 
 There was scarcely a soul in the Warsaw restaurants 
 until nine o'clock at night; but at nine o'clock every 
 restaurant filled up and the occupants ate, bowed to 
 one another, and kissed hands until midnight. And 
 at eating, the Polish officers and the wealthy citizens 
 are almost without peers. It may be that a hearty 
 Russian eater can outeat a Pole, but I doubt it. 
 
 In every good Warsaw restaurant there is — or 
 was until last January — a long table covered with a 
 large assortment of cold meats, jellied what nots, 
 salads, small cold fishes, both raw and cooked, and all 
 sorts of appetizers. There might be an entire tur- 
 key, which would prove to be goose-liver paste 
 molded into the shape of a turkey. It was always 
 
 24
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 a tempting layout. On entering a restaurant a 
 Pole would betake himself to the long table, secure 
 a plate from a waiter, and range up and down the 
 table, transferring one or more samples of every 
 appetizer to his plate. When his plate weighed 
 about four pounds he would get a small glass of 
 slivervitz, which is a potent Polish beverage distilled 
 from the old familiar prune, find himself a chair, 
 toss his slivervitz down his throat, and eat up his 
 four pounds of appetizers, pausing ever and anon 
 to rise and bow to a passing officer. 
 
 The appetizers alone would be enough to provide 
 a full meal for almost any American. But for a 
 Pole it was the merest snack. It served only to 
 put an edge on his appetite. Evidently the restau- 
 rants had slight regard for its value as a food; for 
 nobody ever kept count of the amount of appetizers 
 which each visitor took. The cost was the same, 
 whether one took a small cold fish or carted away 
 seven pounds of stuffed eggs, goose-liver paste, 
 sliced ham, potato salad, pickled beets, prawns in 
 aspic, corned beef, jellied tongue, smoked salmon, 
 and cold roast what not. Ten Polish marks was the 
 tax for all this or for any part; and ten Polish marks, 
 when I was in Warsaw, was the equivalent of eight 
 cents in American money. After a Pole had finished 
 with his plate of appetizers he would settle down 
 to a couple of hours of steady eating. 
 
 All this, however, was in the dear departed days 
 before the Food Ministry and the Department for 
 Fighting Speculation and Profiteering got in its 
 deadly work. They passed a decree which abolished 
 the wonderful spread of appetizers which had em- 
 
 25
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 bellished every restaurant. By this decree every 
 restaurant, hotel, and club was prohibited from 
 serving dinners consisting of more than a soup, one 
 meat or fish dish, vegetables, preserved fruit, and a 
 small cup of coffee. The weight of the meat or fish 
 was forbidden to exceed one third of a pound. No- 
 body could have a piece of bread which weighed 
 more than an ounce and a half, and he had to ask 
 for that to get it. And once he got it, he was 
 forbidden to leave any of it on the restaurant table. 
 He either had to eat it or carry it away in his pocket. 
 The price of the bread was forbidden to exceed the 
 purchase price plus 15 per cent. Concerning sugar, 
 the order declared that "the using of sugar for 
 sweetening hot and cold drinks, omelets and other 
 sweet dishes, is prohibited." This seemed to imply 
 that there was some way in which sugar could be 
 used in restaurants; but unless the customers 
 wanted to smoke it in their pipes or eat it straight 
 it was hard to see how it could be done. Every 
 bottle of wine had to be provided with a tag stating 
 the price of the bottle and the price of one glassful 
 of the wine, and also stating the exact dimensions 
 of the glass which would be filled at the given price. 
 All these regulations were put into effect merely 
 because the government wished to stop speculation 
 in food as far as it could, and also because of the 
 moral effect on the people. To stop the restaurants 
 from selling appetizers didn't mean that more food 
 could be distributed to the people, for all the ap- 
 petizers in the country amounted to a small drop 
 in an enormous bucket. But it meant that the 
 hungry people on the street couldn't peer through 
 
 26
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 the restaurant windows and see other people stuffing 
 themselves while the masses were staggering along 
 on starvation rations. If Germany, which has more 
 food in a week than Poland has in a month, were to 
 adopt such measures as Poland has adopted to curb 
 food speculation, her wails might be listened to with 
 a little more care and a little more confidence. 
 
 There doesn't begin to be enough food in Poland 
 to feed everybody. If all the eatables in the country 
 were divided into equal rations and distributed 
 among the people, they couldn't live on what they 
 got. The people are allowed to buy a certain amount 
 of food at a low price each week, if the food can be 
 delivered. Sometimes it can't be delivered. In 
 many cases the people don't have enough money to 
 pay the low government price; but somehow or 
 other they manage to exist. In many other cases 
 the people can barely afford to buy the government 
 ration; but the government ration by itself isn't 
 sufficient to live on, even when it can be delivered. 
 Yet there are hundreds of thousands of people 
 living on it. 
 
 It is an irritating affair, in the countries of Central 
 Europe, to attempt to find out how a poor person 
 lives at the present time. One gets such a person 
 and backs him into a corner and questions him 
 carefully. He is always willing to give information. 
 He has little personal pride left, for hunger has 
 made him numb and tired and helpless. You ask 
 him how much money he earns, and you find out 
 that it is a very small amount. You ask him what 
 he needs each day. He mentions bread and potatoes 
 and coffee and carrots and cabbage. He mentions 
 
 3 27
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 lard, but adds that only a rich man can afford lard. 
 Knowing the prices, you add them up, multiply 
 them by the number of days in a year, and discover 
 that the result is a larger amount of money than the 
 man earns. And no mention has been made of rent 
 or meat or clothes or shoes or car fares or medicines 
 or heat or light or any other necessities of life. 
 It is a difficult matter to comprehend. 
 
 For example, I rode out to the town of Skiernie- 
 wice, upward of sixty kilometers out of Warsaw. 
 The weather was bitterly cold, and our machine 
 had to be shoveled out of six snowdrifts. The Polish 
 system of child feeding had broken down, and the 
 Americans were taking it over. Hoover knew how 
 to pick his men. They work all day, and most of 
 the night as well. At any rate, we poked round 
 Skierniewice and got up on to the second floor of an 
 old rattle-trap apartment house. A door was un- 
 latched, so we went in. The room was a tiny little 
 one, under the eaves, and it had one window in it, 
 and three children and a hen. It was the sole resi- 
 dence of one family. The hen was tied to a bed- 
 post. One of the children was a baby, and it was 
 asleep on a dilapidated bed. The two other chil- 
 dren were four and six years old. Four-years was a 
 boy, and Six-years was a girl. There was a little 
 stove in the room, and from the stove a rusty stove- 
 pipe ran straight back through the wall. On top 
 of the rusty stovepipe were seven slices of raw po- 
 tato. Six-years was waiting for them to get warm, 
 and then she and Four-years were going to eat 
 them. It was their evening meal. Seven slices of 
 warm raw potato! The mother was out working 
 
 28
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 for ten marks a day. If she worked steadily for two 
 months, Sundays included, and didn't spend a cent 
 for food, rent, clothes, or anything else, her two 
 months' earnings would be exactly enough to buy 
 one pair of shoes. The mother and the baby and 
 Six-years and Four-years had breakfasted on a cup 
 of coffee apiece. And two of them were dining on 
 seven slices of warm raw potato. God knows how 
 the hen lived. ' I forgot to ask. 
 
 Actually, as I have said before, most of Poland's 
 present woes hinge on the poor transportation facili- 
 ties ; but to the great run of people everything seems 
 to hinge on the money problem. If the country 
 could feed the people and distribute raw materials 
 to the factories and export its natural resources and 
 manufactured products, the value of the Polish 
 money would soon improve. But since it can't be 
 done, Polish money slides down and down in value. 
 This is the only angle of the problem which the 
 masses are able to see, and it gets, as the saying goes, 
 their goats. And I don't mind saying that it 
 would get the goat of anybody in the world who had 
 to live in Poland and be paid in Polish money for his 
 labors. 
 
 The Polish monetary unit is the Polish mark. 
 The bulk of Poland, having been a part of Russia, 
 used to use the Russian ruble ; another part used the 
 Austrian crown ; and the third part used the German 
 mark. When the Germans swept across the country 
 and occupied it during the war, they flooded it with 
 a new species of currency — the Polish mark. This is 
 a gaudy bit of poster work, flamboyantly printed 
 in red and white and bearing large white eagles. 
 
 29
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 The Germans printed it in carload lots on any old 
 kind of paper. There is plenty of it; but since 
 Poland is not an overcleanly country just at present, 
 it is in a revolting state of filth and raggedness. 
 They printed it day and night, and whenever they 
 purchased supplies or did not resort to ordinary 
 stealing they paid with this imitation or almost 
 money. The Poles have therefore had this unit of 
 exchange wished on them, so to speak. There is a 
 chance that some day Germany may back up the 
 enormous amount of money which she printed in 
 Poland, but it would be impossible to get a Pole to 
 bet a Polish nickel on it. I doubt, too, whether 
 any German would consider it a good speculation. 
 Supposedly, the Polish mark and the German mark 
 are worth the same amount of money, so that in 
 normal times one Polish mark would be worth 
 24 cents in American money. Early in January 
 one American dollar would purchase 120 Polish 
 marks, so that each mark was worth less than one 
 cent. The rate of exchange wasn't stationary at 
 120 for a dollar by any means. During one of the 
 days when I was in Warsaw it hit 150 and then re- 
 covered somewhat. But since I changed my dollars 
 at 120 I shall call that the rate. A person can get 
 himself into a frightful mess by changing money 
 back and forth from the currency of one Central 
 European country to that of another. I experi- 
 mented in Berlin. Late in December I went to a 
 Berlin bank with $10 clutched tightly in my hand. 
 At the foreign-exchange window I exchanged the 
 $10 for 475 German marks. I walked round the 
 corner to another bank and traded the 475 German 
 
 30
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 marks for 950 Polish marks. I went to a third bank 
 and changed the Polish marks back into German 
 marks, receiving 370 German marks for them. At 
 a fourth bank I exchanged the German marks for 
 American dollars, and received $7.15 for them. 
 Thus I had lost over 25 per cent by changing my 
 money on one day when the rate of exchange was 
 supposed to be stationary. If I had changed my 
 money into German marks, then into Polish marks, 
 then into Austrian crowns, and then reversed the 
 process, allowing a few days to elapse between each 
 process step, I would probably have ended by owing 
 money to the bank. 
 
 There is a young American diplomat in Warsaw 
 who arrived there early last November, when the 
 Polish mark could be obtained at the Warsaw banks 
 at the rate of 38 for an American dollar. This 
 made the mark worth about 2 2-3 cents. The 
 young American diplomat had brought a large bale 
 of American money with him, and he was terribly 
 excited to think that he could get 38 whole marks 
 with just one little American dollar. So he ex- 
 changed his entire roll into Polish marks at the 
 rate of 38 for one. Only two months later one dollar 
 would buy 120 marks. Consequently the money 
 of the young American diplomat was worth only 
 one third of what it was worth when he originally 
 changed it. Whenever he wanted to get one 
 mark's worth of anything he had to spend three 
 marks for it. From this one can get an inkling 
 of the involved money situation in Poland. With 
 a little exercise of the imagination one can also get 
 a vague idea of the feelings of a Pole whose income 
 
 31
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 used to be 10,000 marks, or about $2,500. Last 
 January the value of a 10,000-mark income had 
 fallen to about $85. A 10,000-mark income in the 
 old days used to be a pretty snappy nest egg. To- 
 day a man who tries to exist on it suffers severely. 
 
 As the money depreciates, the costs of all things 
 rise. The shopkeepers try to keep pace with the fall- 
 ing money values; but as a rule they can't work fast 
 enough. For example, an American woman in War- 
 saw bought a beautiful moleskin coat in November 
 for 5,500 marks. At the time when she bought it 
 5,500 marks represented $150 to her. Moleskin 
 coats, I am told, cost at least $700 in America. At 
 any rate, she paid 5,500 marks, or $150, for it. In 
 January she bought another. In that time the price 
 had risen to 14,000 marks — nearly triple — but 14,000 
 marks in January represented less than $120. The 
 furrier had tried to keep pace with the falling ex- 
 change, but hadn't been able to do it. 
 
 For Americans the prices in Warsaw are as cheap 
 as dirt — and considerably cheaper than American 
 dirt, I'm sure. My room at the best hotel in the 
 city, with breakfast, seldom amounted to more than 
 80 cents a day. One could have a suit cleaned and 
 pressed for 9 cents. A pound of butter cost 16 
 cents, and a pound of beefsteak cost 10 cents. A 
 dozen eggs cost 20 cents. A suit of clothes could be 
 bought from one of the best tailors in Warsaw for 
 $22. One could entertain his friends at a sumptuous 
 banquet, with two or three kinds of wine — that 
 was before the new food regulations went into effect 
 — for about $1.50 or $2 a plate. One could take a 
 party to the opera — and the opera in Warsaw is 
 
 32
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 real big-league stuff — and have the royal box in the 
 first tier of the diamond horseshoe for 80 cents. 
 Diamonds could be purchased at a price that would 
 make a Fifth Avenue jeweler sob noisily. A two- 
 carat blue- white diamond that would, according to 
 Central European rumor, bring $1,000 in the United 
 States, could be bought in Warsaw for the equivalent 
 of $200. The English, the French, the Italians, the 
 Americans, the Danes, the Dutch — all were buying 
 diamonds to take home with them. The jewelry 
 stores had few goods except those in their windows. 
 
 A jeweler tried to sell me a platinum cigarette case 
 for $200. It was about the same weight as a frying 
 pan, and would have been worth at least $1,500 in 
 America. Two Americans in the consular service in 
 Warsaw have an apartment consisting of a living 
 room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a maid's room, and 
 a kitchen. For this, last January, they paid less than 
 a cent a day rent. They kept two servants, had 
 electric lights and a telephone, and had champagne 
 every night for dinner. Their expenses for the 
 apartment, servants, food, light, heat, and laundry 
 averaged $35 a month, or only a little over $400 a 
 year. Yet to a Pole that would represent about 
 50,000 marks a year at the January exchange rates ; 
 and 50,000 marks is something of a salary in Poland. 
 In fact, a Cabinet Minister receives 38,400 marks — 
 quite a little less than the equivalent of $400. 
 
 Polish workmen, who are the best-paid people in 
 Poland, taking them as a class, are paid 20 to 40 
 marks a day. Allowing that they work six days a 
 week and fifty-two weeks a year, which they don't, 
 they would earn from 6,300 to 12,600 marks a year. 
 
 33
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Polish laborers, at the present writing, dodge work 
 whenever they can. Shops close, without any ap- 
 parent reason, for days at a time. The Poles 
 seem to celebrate not only their own holidays, but 
 also the holidays of nations which have conquered 
 or oppressed them in the past and of nations which 
 are helping them at present. There is in Poland a 
 League of Work which is attempting to persuade the 
 laborers to do more work. The league has figured 
 that every holiday causes the Polish nation to lose 
 100,000,000 marks. It succeeded in persuading the 
 city government of Warsaw to annul seven holidays, 
 among which were the second day of Christmas, the 
 second day of Easter, Whitsuntide, and Saint 
 Stanislaus's Day. The laborers, however, failed to 
 appreciate the effort of the League of Work and 
 showed signs of wishing to revolt against the in- 
 human decree which would curtail their loafing. 
 
 None the less, a generous estimate places the 
 earnings of a Polish workman between 6,300 and 
 12,600 marks a year. A coal miner, earns about 
 7 ,000 marks a year. This is unskilled labor. Skilled 
 labor earns more, and in certain cases receives as 
 high as 20,000 marks a year. The laborers are much 
 better off than professors, minor government officials, 
 clerks, salesmen, teachers, lawyers, and architects. 
 The latter, in many cases, earn about one fourth of 
 the amount that laborers earn. This is a familiar 
 story in Central Europe, as it is in almost every coun- 
 try in the world. 
 
 The average wage of the head of a family in Polish 
 cities is about 8,ooo marks a year; and on this 
 8,000 marks a family must lodge and feed and clothe 
 
 34
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 itself. Eight thousand marks is a very generous 
 estimate. But of the 33,000,000 people who make 
 up the population of Poland, there are millions 
 who get less, and not many hundreds of thousands 
 who get more. Allowing that a family has an 
 income of 8,000 marks a year, let us see what could 
 be bought for that amount. The family has got to 
 live somewhere, so we'll allow them one wretched 
 room in a bad section of town. They can get such 
 a room for about 200 marks a year — rents being the 
 only things which haven't increased greatly in price. 
 Everything else has jumped from 300 to 1,800 per 
 cent. Bread is the staple food in Poland, so we'll 
 allow him one loaf of vile black bread each day — 
 seven loaves a week at the government-regulated 
 price of 1% marks a loaf. They can't live on that, 
 but that's all we'll allow them. That amounts to 
 456 marks a year. Then we'll allow them half a 
 pound of tea or coffee each week. That, in one year, 
 would amount to 676 marks. Suppose the family 
 had one pound of meat once a week at 10 marks a 
 pound. They can't get it for that, but they're 
 supposed to; so we'll allow it to them. That 
 amounts to 520 marks a year. Allow them two 
 cabbages a week at 3 marks a cabbage; that makes 
 312 marks. We'll allow them just enough fuel to 
 cook one meal a day. That would cost 20 marks 
 a week, or 1,040 marks a year. We'll allow them 
 two pounds of flour a week at 16 marks a pound. 
 That runs up to 1,600 marks a year. We'll allow 
 them two pairs of boots for the entire family for 
 one year, which makes 1,200 marks; and two very 
 cheap suits of clothes for the entire family, which 
 
 35
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 makes another 2,000 marks. Total that up and 
 you'll find that it amounts to 8,000 marks. That 
 allows for no sugar, no butter, no lard, no salt, no 
 eggs, no milk, no education, no taxes, no underwear, 
 no soap, no street-car fares. Yet there are millions 
 of people in Poland living on less than that. 
 
 I have before me a budget for a family composed 
 of three grown persons and two children. It is 
 pared down as far as it can be pared, so that the 
 family can live with every economy and yet be 
 adequately nourished and decently clothed. It 
 figures up to 4,957.35 marks a month, or 59,488 
 marks a year. That's only about $500 in American 
 money; but for a Pole it's a fortune. Before the 
 war that same budget would have figured up to 2,800 
 marks. Think this over, all you Americans who are 
 suffering because living costs have risen 100 per cent 
 in America. 
 
 If a Pole wanted to buy a six-pound turkey every 
 week for his Sunday dinners, he would pay out in the 
 course of a year for turkey alone 9,360 marks, or 
 more than the average earnings of a workman. 
 How can people live when they have so little to live 
 on and so little to eat? I don't know. I prowled 
 round the tenement district of Warsaw, and got 
 into buildings where two or three families were oc- 
 cupying a single room and living on nothing but 
 black bread and decayed vegetables. Some of those 
 rooms had sixteen or eighteen people in them. There 
 were people living in the cellars, where they got no 
 daylight and could afford no candlelight. There were 
 families living in little holes under stairways and bor- 
 rowing enough heat from their more fortunate neigh- 
 
 36
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 bors to cook a pot of coffee or a bowl of carrot soup. 
 I got into one horrible den — an old rabbit war- 
 ren of a building — in which three thousand people 
 lived. It wasn't extremely large, but it was infested 
 with people, just as decayed matter is infested with 
 crawling things. The people lived among heaps of 
 rags in corners and burrowed among one another 
 on floors; six or eight children would sleep in a single 
 bed with no covering except loose rags. None of 
 those people, except the children who were getting 
 one meal a day from the Americans, had eaten a 
 square meal for years. I'll just repeat that, in case 
 you missed it. None of those people, except some 
 of the children, had eaten a square meal for years. 
 They didn't know what a full stomach felt like. 
 
 Warsaw is so crowded with refugees and repatriates 
 from Bolshevik Russia and the devastated regions 
 to the north that there is scarcely a hole into which 
 one can crawl and rest. Private houses have been 
 requisitioned by the authorities. There are 1,000,000 
 people in Warsaw — 100,000 more than before the 
 war and 300,000 more than during the war — and 
 less than 5 per cent of them get one square meal a 
 day. The rest of them have just been squeaking 
 along for years. Their stomachs have shriveled 
 up to such an extent that if an opportunity were 
 given them to eat largely they wouldn't be able 
 to take advantage of it. 
 
 The Warsaw bread lines are disturbing spectacles. 
 The Poles are not good organizers, and they cannot 
 distribute their rationed food with any efficiency. 
 The people have had many sad experiences at getting 
 bread ; for there have been occasions when the bread 
 
 37
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 gave out and they went without for days. So each 
 day sees a long bread line at the door of every bread- 
 distributing center. There are hundreds of them, 
 and they are scattered all over the city. The lines 
 start forming at four o'clock in the morning. The 
 people stand in the ice and snow for hours on end, 
 clad in shoddy garments and broken shoes. The 
 bitter wind whistles down the street, and the people 
 hunch up their shoulders and shrivel into themselves 
 and wait for the bread. They wait for hours on 
 end — thousands of them. I went out early one 
 morning after a heavy rainstorm. The temperature 
 was falling rapidly, and the lines were standing in 
 pools of water which were freezing at the edges. 
 The people were jammed so closely together that 
 when a military policeman hauled a person out of 
 the line for cheating, the whole line toppled over 
 like a row of cards. Those people stood in line 
 from four until half past ten in the morning — six 
 hours and a half in freezing slush. In the coldest 
 part of early winter, when the bread gave out 
 entirely for a while, they stood in line through entire 
 nights with the temperature below zero. These 
 conditions threaten to become worse instead of 
 better. 
 
 There are lines in Poland for everything. Each 
 day, opposite the hotel where I lived, there was a line 
 one block long waiting for cigarettes. The govern- 
 ment had purchased cigarettes, which were sold to the 
 people at three marks a package, instead of at the 
 ordinary price of six marks and higher. Men stood 
 in line for hours to get a single package, and though 
 the tobacco had the same fragrance that rises from 
 
 33
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 smoldering rags and damp hair mattresses on the 
 town dump, the Poles would willingly have waited 
 twice as long if it had been necessary. Occasionally, 
 one would find a line of people formed along a side- 
 walk without any apparent reason. When they were 
 questioned as to why they were waiting in line they 
 would stare blankly at the questioner and continue to 
 stand. It was generally believed in Warsaw that 
 the people had contracted the line-forming habit 
 and that whenever they saw a person standing any- 
 where they instinctively crowded up behind him and 
 formed a line. 
 
 The weakened condition which the people are in 
 because of their lack of food and the manner in which 
 they crowd together each day, makes them excellent 
 targets for epidemics. In January there was an 
 influenza epidemic which killed them off like flies. 
 Funerals passed through the streets all day long. 
 It was a particularly virulent epidemic, for those 
 who died of it died within twenty-four hours of the 
 time when they became ill. 
 
 Conditions in Poland would be infinitely worse 
 were it not for the activities of the American Child 
 Feeders— or, to give them their proper title, the Ameri- 
 can Relief Administration, European Children's Fund, 
 Mission to Poland. This is a Hoover outfit under 
 the direction of Lieut. W. P. Fuller, a young ex-naval 
 officer. It feeds 1,300,000 children one meal a day, 
 and in order to keep things working smoothly it has 
 to do some brisk hustling. In all of Central Europe 
 the Hoover Child Feeders have something of a job 
 on their hands; but the mission to Poland has to 
 do more sitting up nights than any of the other 
 
 39
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Hoover missions which are doing such a wonderful 
 work; 1,300,000 children is quite a sizable mob to 
 feed every day, when one stops to consider it. They 
 are fed without any distinction as to race or creed. 
 In Warsaw there are eight Christian kitchens and 
 five Jewish kitchens, and in the Warsaw district 
 alone 161,150 children are fed each day. 
 
 The feeding stations are scattered all over Warsaw. 
 One can visit any one of them on any morning in the 
 year and always see the same spectacle^— thousands 
 of wretchedly clothed, pinched-faced youngsters with 
 battered mugs and spoons waiting for a chance at 
 the American food. The children can't take the 
 food home with them; they have to eat it at the 
 feeding stations, unless they represent a school. If 
 two youngsters stagger in from a school, holding 
 between them a stick from which dangles an enor- 
 mous kettle, they can carry the kettleful back to the 
 school and eat it there under the watchful eyes of the 
 teachers. But all individuals must eat at the feed- 
 ing stations. This rule is due to the desire of the 
 Child Feeders to be sure that the children get the 
 food. 
 
 Hungry people aren't always so self-sacrificing as 
 they might be; and if a child should show up before 
 two hungry parents with a bowl of savory soup the 
 food might feed the parents instead of the child. So 
 the Child Feeders don't feel that they are doing their 
 duty by the children until they have watched the 
 food enter their mouths. 
 
 The meal isn't overlarge from our standpoint; 
 but from the standpoint of a Polish child it's a 
 banquet. It consists usually of a pleasing mixture 
 
 40
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 of beans, rice, and meat, with a small slug of olive oil 
 floating on top to provide the much-needed fat. 
 People in America don't know what it is to be with- 
 out fats; but the people of Central Europe haven't 
 had fats for a couple of years. They long for fats; 
 they hone for fats constantly. A person has to live in 
 Central Europe to know the craving. In the case of 
 the Polish children who are fed by the Americans, 
 the one plate of soup is all they get to eat during the 
 entire day. Sometimes they get a piece of black 
 bread early in the morning and some succulent dainty 
 like a boiled potato or carrot at night. But just as 
 often they get nothing but the young meal which 
 Mr. Hoover's young men see that they get. 
 
 The Child Feeders are also distributing clothes to 
 Polish children. For poor people the price of clothes 
 is prohibitive. A workman who earns 8,000 marks 
 a year, for example, would have to pay out three 
 whole months' salary if he wanted even a cheap 
 shoddy suit which would stand two months' hard 
 wear. We'd have the same thing in America if a 
 man earning $4,000 a year had to pay $1,000 for a 
 ready-made suit of the cheapest sort. So the 
 Child Feeders are distributing 700,000 outfits of new 
 clothing — cloth cut for an overcoat, but not sewed 
 together, shoes, stockings, shoe laces, one hundred 
 yards of thread and a needle — a needle and a half, 
 in fact. There are three needles for every two 
 outfits, and the efforts of the Child Feeders to ex- 
 plain the needle and a half have almost resulted in 
 sending a large number of Poles to the insane 
 asylum. 
 
 The Red Cross, too, is distributing clothing in 
 
 41
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 addition to sending out medicines and anaesthetics 
 and vaccines which it manufactures in its Warsaw 
 laboratories, and in addition to sending doctors and 
 nurses through the districts which are suffering the 
 most. The Red Cross has big warehouses in War- 
 saw, and in them, among other things, they sort and 
 bale the clothing which comes out of America for the 
 Poles. I found a Russian judge and an ex-colonel 
 from the Russian army and two young women who 
 were the daughters of the president of the Kieff 
 Street Railway Company sorting second-hand Amer- 
 ican shoes in a Red Cross warehouse. Before escap- 
 ing from Russia the judge had a dandy time with 
 the Bolsheviks. They pulled out all his teeth and 
 jabbed him in about a hundred and fifty places with 
 their bayonets. He is now receiving the munificent 
 salary of 500 marks a month, or $4. On top of the 
 pile of shoes on which the judge was working was a 
 neat -looking American woman's boot made out of 
 dark-blue cloth. It was a pretty No. 2 boot, and it 
 came from the Famous Shoe Store in Paris, Texas. 
 But the judge couldn't find the mate to it. I think 
 he has an idea that the residents of Paris, Texas, 
 have each only one leg. 
 
 Bad as are the conditions in Warsaw, they are 
 infinitely worse in the sections of Poland which were 
 devastated by the Germans behind their lines during 
 the war. This region lies to the north and east of 
 Warsaw. The people were driven out of it, houses 
 and factories and even trees were razed to the 
 ground, and all the landmarks were destroyed. 
 Now the people have moved in again, and are living 
 in the old German dugouts and trenches, under banks 
 
 42
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 of earth, among the roots of tree stumps and under 
 the rudest and flimsiest shelters. In many in- 
 stances they have no regular food at all. That is to 
 say, they have neither bread, meat, nor vegetables. 
 Our minister to Poland, Hugh Gibson — another 
 young man to whom the Poles are very grateful 
 and whom America is fortunate to have as a repre- 
 sentative — went up into this district. Mr. Gibson 
 is an accurate and reliable observer. He found entire 
 settlements where people were living on grass or on 
 roots and thistles boiled down into soup. All the 
 people had swollen stomachs, and faces which were 
 old and monkeylike from starvation. In one settle- 
 ment Mr. Gibson was told of a family that had some 
 bread. It was spoken of in hushed and admiring 
 tones. Bread! Think of it! Mr. Gibson investi- 
 gated. He wanted to find out how they got the 
 bread. He located the people who had it, and they 
 took it out of what corresponded to the family safe- 
 deposit box and exhibited it proudly. It was a red- 
 dish-brown mass about the size of a coconut, and 
 it had a foul smell. It was made from a flour com- 
 pounded of pulverized beets and carrots and roots 
 and dried grass — the vilest comic valentine of bread. 
 
 Dr. Placida Gardner, a comely young American 
 woman, is making vaccines in Warsaw for the 
 American Red Cross. She toyed carelessly with a 
 glass tube containing cholera bacilli which she had 
 reared herself, and spoke of some of the towns she 
 had visited. She went dov/n to Kovel to work on a 
 cholera epidemic. The Bolshevik prisoners there 
 had so few clothes that they could go out only at 
 night. At Bobruisk the Bolsheviks had taken the 
 
 4 43
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 clothes from every orphan in all the orphanages — 
 all the clothes from twenty-three hundred orphans. 
 At Barnowitzi the orphanage had been jammed to the 
 door for three months, and the Red Cross couldn't 
 get any transportation facilities to empty it so that 
 the waiting and starving orphans could get in. 
 Hundreds of peasants were living in old German 
 dugouts amid the greatest misery, for even German 
 dugouts have their drawbacks as town houses. 
 Families were packed into rooms twelve feet square 
 — twelve and fourteen people to a room. The vile- 
 ness of such rooms is indescribable. In one place 
 a family of eight had forty pounds of flour made 
 from barley, and they proposed to live on it all winter. 
 
 The Germans had destroyed everything: they 
 had stripped every factory of its machinery; they 
 had taken all the cattle and every bit of live stock; 
 they had taken lightning rods, door locks, keyholes, 
 door knobs, radiator connections — everything, and 
 shipped them all back to Germany. They did all 
 this after the armistice — after the armistice! They 
 wasted and destroyed all things. Over miles of 
 territory, thanks to the Germans, the villages of 
 Poland are blown dust down the wind. 
 
 They laugh at Poland in Germany. She is inef- 
 ficient, they say. She cannot exist. The Poles are 
 lazy dreamers. They can't put things over. The 
 Germans sneer and laugh, and the Polish army pulls 
 in its belt around its empty stomach, and Polish 
 doughboys in Yankee olive drab drive back the 
 Bolshevik hordes that threaten to overrun the world. 
 
 The domes of the Russian cathedral in Warsaw 
 gleamed gold against the blue-gray sky before the 
 
 44
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 Germans came. But the Germans climbed up and 
 stripped off the gold. Bronze letters above the 
 entrance set forth the age and the name of Warsaw- 
 University before the Germans came. The Ger- 
 mans climbed up and chiseled them away. The 
 Germans jeer at the Poles. The Poles say nothing, 
 and fight on against the Bolsheviks — the last stand 
 of the forces of law and order against the forces of 
 disorder and anarchy. The Germans send officers 
 and men to fight with the Bolsheviks against the 
 inefficient, impractical dreamers. And at the Peace 
 Conference there are gray-headed, fusty persons 
 who complain querulously that the war is over, and 
 ask fretfully why Poland doesn't disband her army 
 instead of wasting so much money keeping expensive 
 soldiers under arms. The Peace Conference has 
 displayed as much wisdom and judgment in settling 
 the affairs of Central Europe as a Hottentot might be 
 expected to display in repairing a badly damaged 
 typewriter. 
 
 The story of the Polish army is a remarkable and 
 a hectic one. Sketchily it is about as follows: in 
 January, 191 9, the Polish army didn't exist. There 
 was, however, a Polish patriot named Joseph Ginet 
 Pilsudski. He was born in 1869, and even in his 
 youth he was plotting and planning for a free united 
 Poland. The Russians took notice of his pernicious 
 activities and packed him off to Siberia as a political 
 prisoner. When he was released from Siberia he 
 came back to Poland and became the editor of an 
 anti-Russian newspaper called The Laborer. This 
 again caused the Russians great pain, because 
 Pilsudski said some very nasty things about them. 
 
 45
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AETER 
 
 So they backed the Black Maria up to the office of 
 The Laborer, attached the gyves to Pilsudski's wrists, 
 and gave him a free ride to Petrograd, where he was 
 placed in a nice cool cell in the leading jail. This 
 bored him, so he feigned insanity. He kept it up 
 for two months, and presented all the earmarks of 
 being completely loco, not to say nuts. The Rus- 
 sians studied his case carefully, and all of the doc- 
 tors said that he was the looniest thing they had ever 
 seen. So he was transferred to a hospital, whereat 
 he promptly crawled out of a window and betook 
 himself to the uncut timber. 
 
 The Russians never caught him again; but they 
 heard of him frequently, because he was constantly 
 raiding banks and holding up trains and indulging in 
 similar irritating activities in order to relieve the 
 Russian authorities of money that belonged to 
 Poland. At the beginning of the war he came into 
 Russian Poland with a small outfit of Polish patriots 
 and started a private war of his own against the 
 greatest oppressor of his nation — Russia. He formed 
 Polish legions to fight for a free Poland, but there 
 was no Polish army as such. 
 
 In January, iqiq, as I have said, the Polish army 
 didn't exist. Poland, as a separate state, had just 
 been created, and she was in a bad way. In fact, 
 if she had gone out hunting for bad ways she prob- 
 ably couldn't have found a worse one. 
 
 As the Germans withdrew through Poland, accord- 
 ing to the terms of the armistice, the Bolsheviks 
 followed them up, and it looked as though they 
 might overrun the entire country. In the north, 
 on the old Russian-German frontier, the Germans still 
 
 46
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 hung on where they had no right to hang; in the 
 northeast they lingered in violation of the armistice 
 terms; and in the west they continued to occupy 
 Posnania; in the southwest the Czechoslovak troops 
 became restless, and eventually advanced into the 
 coal fields which Poland regarded as belonging to her, 
 and took them by force. In the south, as the 
 Austrians withdrew from Galicia, or Austrian Poland, 
 they brought in three Ruthenian regiments and 
 turned over the city of Lemberg to them. Lemberg 
 is an essentially Polish city, occupied almost entirely 
 by Poles, and it should be Polish territory if the 
 nationality and desires of the inhabitants have any- 
 thing to do with the matter. The Ruthenians 
 joined with the anti-Bolshevik Petlura government of 
 the Ukraine, and the Ukrainians thereupon started 
 to squeeze the Poles in the south. 
 
 Starting early in 191 9, Pilsudski scratched to- 
 gether a Polish army. He used his secret Polish 
 legions, as well as trained Polish soldiers from the 
 old Russian army, and Austrian-Polish soldiers from 
 West Galicia, and any fighting men that he could 
 scrape together. He started at once against the 
 Bolsheviks, and in a series of very successful opera- 
 tions he got them on the run and ran them until 
 their nether garments almost fell off. In Posnania 
 the Poles pulled themselves together and chased out 
 the Germans — though even up to the beginning of 
 1920 there were minor engagements between the 
 Germans and the Poles. Down in Lemberg the 
 Polish population rose against the Ukrainians. The 
 women rose and fought them, and little schoolboys 
 — who weren't as tall as the guns which they used — 
 
 47
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 rose and fought them. The heroism of the school- 
 boys of Lemberg is known to every Pole. They 
 speak of them with an approving nod of the head. 
 "Good patriots," they say. I'll say so, too. With 
 the help of the Polish women and the Polish school- 
 boys of Lemberg, the Ukrainians were ejected from 
 Lemberg with great vigor. The Lembergians were 
 good ejectors, but they weren't what you could call 
 a trained military force. So they couldn't follow up 
 their victory. They could, however, and did, keep 
 open one line of track into this city ; and over this 
 track provisions were brought in in an armored 
 train. The Ukrainians squatted just outside and 
 besieged Lemberg, shelling it frequently and killing 
 about thirty people each day. 
 
 In the spring of 191 9 the Haller divisions, which 
 were Polish divisions formed in the United States 
 and which were commanded by another Polish pa- 
 triot, General Haller, began to come out of France. 
 It was planned to use these troops in conjunction with 
 Polish troops to relieve Lemberg. The operations 
 were planned and the orders issued, when the 
 Supreme Council in Paris forbade the use of Haller 
 troops against the Ukrainians. The exact reason 
 for this ruling on the part of the Supreme Council 
 is unknown, but it was supposed to be due to the 
 rights of small nations and the self-determination of 
 people. There is about as much self-determination 
 of peoples in Central Europe as there is milk in 
 Vienna — and there is very little milk in Vienna. 
 The Ukrainians, it is generally understood, were to 
 be allowed a small amount of self-determination so 
 far as Lemberg was concerned, though Lemberg is a 
 
 48
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 strictly Polish city and had ejected the Ukrainians. 
 They weren't to be entirely self -determining, but 
 only partially self-determining. 
 
 The distinction is a delicate one. They could 
 determine themselves unless somebody weaker than 
 themselves could stop them. If the Poles could 
 undetermine them, so to speak, without the aid of 
 Haller troops, they were at liberty to do so, but they 
 couldn't use Haller troops, who were highly trained 
 fighters. In other words, if the Poles could whip 
 the Ukrainians with one hand tied behind their 
 backs, they could go as far as they liked. Otherwise 
 they could sit and twiddle their thumbs. This was 
 the ruling of that august and omniscient body, the 
 Supreme Council. 
 
 At any rate, the Poles revised their plans. The 
 Haller troops were not included in them. With one 
 hand tied behind their backs, Pilsudski's patriots 
 sailed into the Petlura army, relieved Lemberg, and 
 were just about to eject the Ukrainians from Galicia 
 amid loud huzzas when the Supreme Council again 
 interfered. This time the Supreme Council ordered 
 the Poles to stop all operations against the Ukrain- 
 ians. Having first told the Poles that they could 
 fight if they didn't use their full strength, they now 
 told them that they couldn't fight at all. The 
 Supreme Council is also said to have stated that the 
 Ukrainians had been ordered to stop all operations 
 against the Poles as well. The Poles obeyed orders, 
 ceased operations, and withdrew their forces. They 
 started peace negotiations with the Ukrainians. 
 These negotiations were concluded, but on the 
 morning when the terms were to go into effect 
 
 49
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the Ukrainians attacked the Poles on the entire 
 front. 
 
 At this the American minister to Poland, Hugh 
 Gibson, got in touch with the Supreme Council 
 and handed it a few hard facts in unmistakable 
 American talk. Mr. Gibson is a diplomat of the 
 highest order, but his method of expression is often 
 at variance with the accepted ideas of diplomatic 
 utterance; for he says what he means in the fewest 
 possible words. Having been apprised of the situa- 
 tion, the Supreme Council reversed its decision about 
 Haller troops. The Poles, they now decided, could 
 use Haller troops for a certain distance. They could 
 drive the Ukrainians beyond the Spruzc River, but 
 the troops themselves couldn't cross the river. So 
 the Poles brought in the Haller troops and chased the 
 Ukrainians to the Spruzc River and across it. 
 Operations then ceased, with the Poles on one side 
 and the Ukrainians on the other. Half a loaf, as 
 the poet says, is better than no vacation. 
 
 The Ukrainians, of course, can make out a case 
 which calls for as much sympathy as the Polish case. 
 Any of the people in Central Europe can make out 
 good cases for themselves. The Peace Conference 
 has left things in such a mess that anyone can fish 
 enough pieces out of the mess to support any of his 
 arguments. 
 
 When, late in the spring of iqiq, the Germans 
 wished to refuse to sign the Peace Treaty, they 
 showed signs of taking Posnania by force. Con- 
 sequently, the Poles had to rush heavy forces to the 
 German front. At this juncture Hugh Gibson again 
 stepped forward with a hot note to the Germans, in 
 
 So
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 which he said that no attack by the Germans would 
 be tolerated by the Allies. The Germans promptly 
 sheered off, and the Poles were at last at liberty to 
 devote all their energies to the Bolsheviks. They 
 piled into the Bolsheviks in a series of wholly suc- 
 cessful operations. In places they drove them back 
 over one hundred and fifty miles. Their troubles 
 were augmented, however, by an unfortunate com- 
 bination of circumstances in the southeast. Here 
 Denikin came over from southern Russia with a 
 force of Cossacks and what not, and squashed the 
 Ukrainians from the rear. When he had done this 
 the Bolsheviks came down on his rear in turn and 
 gave him a dose of squash which completely elimi- 
 nated him from the proceedings. This made it neces- 
 sary for the Poles to extend their front in order to 
 take care of the victorious Bolsheviks. 
 
 In January, iqiq, the Polish army didn't exist. 
 In January, 1920, it consisted of a million men. 
 This is about as close as it would be possible to get 
 to Mr. William Jennings Bryan's glowing picture of a 
 million men springing to arms overnight. 
 
 Pilsudski, who was responsible for the Polish army 
 and for its many successes against the Bolshevik 
 army, holds — or held last January — the office of 
 Chief of State. In the patois of the day he is the 
 Big Noise of Poland. When people talk of a 
 military dictator for the country they are referring 
 to Pilsudski. His only military rank is that of 
 major. He wears no gold braid and no decorations 
 and no badges of office, though he carries the biggest 
 sword in all Poland. When he sits down and holds 
 his sword between his legs it sticks up higher than 
 
 5 1
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 his head. But he is a regular Polish patriot. He 
 needs no gauds or trappings to endear him to Polish 
 hearts. He could even get along without a sword. 
 His patriotism and achievements are sufficient in 
 themselves. 
 
 The Poles have been getting what is technically 
 known as a raw deal in many ways. They have been 
 the only consistently successful fighters of the 
 Bolshevik forces. They succeeded where Kolchak, 
 Denikin, Yudenitch, and several minor leaders failed. 
 They have been fighting under terrible conditions. 
 They have gone barefoot and half naked in the 
 winter. Whole companies have plowed through the 
 snow and slush and ice of western Russia with raw 
 and bleeding feet. The lines of communication have 
 been in very bad shape, so that it has been most 
 difficult to get supplies to the front. They have 
 lived on starvation rations, but they have plugged 
 ahead uncomplainingly. When the Red Cross doc- 
 tors under Colonel Chesley entered the Polish 
 military area last spring they found little boys 
 serving in the army. The hospitals had no anaesthet- 
 ics, no dressings, no doctors. Soldiers carried no 
 first-aid packets. The hospitals got few heavily 
 wounded men, because the heavily wounded almost 
 always died. The soldiers literally lacked every- 
 thing. The wounded lay for days on the floors of 
 cold buildings with their clothes stiff with blood. 
 The typhus was very bad, and the dysentery was 
 worse. But the spirit and the morale at the front 
 were and still are wonderful. 
 
 Yet the Germans have been allowed to hold dis- 
 tricts admittedly Polish until the Peace Treaty 
 
 52
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 goes into effect. The Poles have been deprived of 
 their historical port of Dantzic and practically cut 
 off from the sea. They have been repeatedly ham- 
 pered in their fighting by the Supreme Council. 
 Poland seems to have drawn nothing but soiled 
 deuces, when she deserves only aces from a clean 
 deck. 
 
 A Bolshevik medical report filtered into the Polish 
 lines from the Bolshevik army last winter. This 
 report stated that there were fifteen hundred thou- 
 sand cases of typhus in western Russia. How many 
 there are in Poland isn't known definitely, but the 
 number is distressingly large. 
 
 Col. H. L. Gilchrist, of the medical department 
 of our army, is at the head of our typhus mission to 
 Poland. He has been through settlement after 
 settlement in eastern Poland where cases of typhus 
 existed in every house and where in some houses 
 entire families were down with it. He visited one 
 house where the father and three children were lying 
 on heaps of straw on the floor, all sick with typhus. 
 The mother had died of it on the preceding day. 
 Their only food was a basket of gnawed potatoes 
 and beets. An interesting feature of typhus is its 
 habit of taking heavy toll from victims who are 
 cultured and refined, and passing comparatively 
 lightly over the people who have had no advantages 
 whatever. 
 
 In some of the worst districts of Poland there is 
 one doctor to every one hundred and fifty thousand 
 people. Almost the worst pest hole in Poland is the 
 city of Tarnopol, in Galicia. There is a quarantine 
 station there. In December, 191 9, there were 
 
 53
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 twelve doctors at this station, and one of them — 
 Lieut. -Col. Edward Register — was an American. 
 Early in January, 1920, two doctors out of the twelve 
 were left. The others, including Colonel Register, 
 had died of typhus. There is only one treatment 
 for typhus, and that is constant care; so when 
 the news of Register's illness reached Warsaw an 
 American Red Cross nurse — Miss Susan Rosensteil, 
 of Freeport, Illinois — took the night train for Tar- 
 nopol to nurse the case, knowing that she had about 
 one chance in a thousand of coming back alive. I 
 mention this because I want the people at home to 
 know the sort of nerve that our women can show. 
 To fight an enemy that can be seen is no easy task; 
 but it's easier than fighting the horrors of a disease 
 that comes from vermin and filth and darkness, and 
 against which one can have no protection except 
 his private God of Luck. 
 
 Trains come into Warsaw from Vilna, which is 
 out to the northeast in the military area, with 
 eighteen to twenty-two people in a compartment. 
 I have seen twenty-two people crammed into a 
 compartment. Colonel Gilchrist has seen thirty 
 and thirty-two people in one. As far as I am 
 concerned, my mind refuses to conceive of more than 
 twenty-two people in a compartment ; but if Colonel 
 Gilchrist says he has seen it he has unquestionably 
 done so. These compartments usually have typhus 
 cases in them. Typhus, as I have said before, is 
 contracted only from the bite of the typhus louse. 
 Wherever there are typhus cases there are usually 
 typhus lice. The Poles attack typhus by disinfect- 
 ing the trains. The third- and fourth-class cars, which 
 
 54
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 have no cushions, have steam hosed into them at an 
 eighty-pound pressure, so that the lice are nicely 
 cooked. The first- and second-class cars, which have 
 cushions which the steam would damage, are given 
 a shot of hydrocyanide gas. Thus the lice are 
 gassed and die in violent convulsions, though for the 
 life of me, I cannot understand why the stench in a 
 Polish railway compartment which has held twenty - 
 two people for ten or fifteen hours doesn't asphyxiate 
 a louse as readily as hydrocyanide gas. 
 
 Unfortunately, plenty of people run round the 
 streets with lice in their clothes, and the refugees 
 who are streaming steadily back into Poland from 
 Russia are covered with them. So this method of 
 attacking typhus is like a man's trying to rid his 
 house of flies without putting screens on the windows. 
 Colonel Gilchrist plans to set up a strict quarantine 
 along the eastern border. He will install four de- 
 lousing plants as a first line of defense; and ten 
 miles behind the first line there will be a second line. 
 Everyone who comes into the country will have to 
 run the gantlet, and this will amount to screening 
 the windows. 
 
 I reached Warsaw a few days after Paderewski 
 had finally succeeded in resigning as President of the 
 Council of Ministers. He resigned because he was 
 unable to control a majority of votes in the Polish 
 Diet, or Congress, and because he was consequently 
 unable to institute the measures which he thought 
 Poland needed. He resigned several times, in fact, 
 but only his last attempt was successful. For some 
 little time he carried his resignation with him wher- 
 ever he went, just as he carried his watch and his 
 
 55
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 cigarette case. It was part of his daily costume. 
 After his first resignation three of the twelve political 
 parties represented in the Diet came to him and 
 urged him to reconsider his resignation. In the 
 future, they assured him, he could always rely on 
 their votes. Hitherto they had been against him, 
 but now they would vote with him. So Paderewski 
 reconsidered his resignation. Twenty -four hours later 
 the representatives of these same three parties came 
 to him again and said that they had changed their 
 minds — that they couldn't vote with him, after all. 
 
 Americans in Warsaw frequently held pools on the 
 leanings of the political parties. The man naming 
 the correct affiliations of the largest number of 
 parties on a given day would win the pool. Pools 
 were held every day because the parties changed 
 every day. It was a difficult sport, for the parties 
 themselves rarely knew how they stood. On one 
 day, for example, the newspapers would say, "The 
 National People's Party has decided to support 
 Paderewski." On the following day the papers 
 would appear with the statement, "The National 
 People's Party met at three o'clock and decided to 
 withdraw its support from Paderewski." On the 
 third day the newspapers would carry an interview 
 with the leader of the National People's Party in 
 which he would declare firmly that his party had 
 never at any time arrived at a decision concerning 
 whom it would support. When reporters inter- 
 viewed Polish party leaders they never could tell 
 how their parties were leaning that day until they 
 had attended the afternoon meetings. 
 
 So Paderewski resigned as President of the Council 
 
 56
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 of Ministers. But he lost neither his influence nor 
 his popularity in Poland. The Poles, being new at 
 the game, didn't quite know what they wanted. 
 They felt, many of them, that Paderewski was a 
 dreamer; they said that they wanted a more 
 practical man. They rather resented the fact that 
 he had made so much money in America while other 
 Polish patriots stayed at home and devoted their 
 energies to working for Poland. But they were 
 united in the knowledge that he was a great patriot ; 
 those who knew said that Paderewski 's ideas and 
 plans would be carried out, even though he was no 
 longer Minister President. On New Year's Day 
 there was a demonstration for Paderewski in the 
 square in front of the Bristol Hotel, where he was 
 living. He had only recently resigned. Yet twenty 
 thousand people assembled in the square and stood 
 there for three hours in a cold drizzle, waiting for him 
 to come out and speak to them. The band played 
 the Polish national hymn every few minutes, and 
 whenever this happened the twenty thousand bared 
 their heads to the rain. Two men tried to sell 
 caricatures of Paderewski. The crowd beat them so 
 badly that both of them had to be taken to the 
 hospital. 
 
 Paderewski was succeeded as President of the 
 Council of Ministers by M. Skulski, a tall, husky, 
 level-eyed, hard-headed man of about thirty -five. 
 He took an engineering degree from Karlsruhe 
 University, and was the head of an engineering firm 
 in the city of Lodz. Most Americans probably 
 never heard of Lodz, but it is — or was before the 
 lack of raw materials closed so many factories — an 
 
 57
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 enormous industrial city. The cotton and woolen 
 products of Lodz competed with German products 
 in Constantinople, with Austrian products in the 
 Balkans. Commercial travelers from Lodz were to 
 be found in Siberia, China, Persia, Asia Minor, Spain, 
 and South Africa. 
 
 Skulski became the President of the city of Lodz, 
 which is no mean job. During the German occupa- 
 tion of Poland he edited two papers which con- 
 stantly pleaded the cause of the Allies. These papers 
 were thorns in the German flesh; and if the Ger- 
 mans had ever been able to prove his connection 
 with the papers they'd have shot him. When he was 
 elected to the Diet from Lodz he set out to get the 
 support of a majority of the members. Paderewski 
 has always recognized his ability, and twice wished 
 him to join the cabinet — once, when the cabinet 
 was first formed, as the Minister of Interior Affairs, 
 and again, just before his resignation, as Vice 
 President of the Council. Skulski, just after he had 
 taken office, told me that he had 233 members of 
 the Diet solidly behind him out of a total member- 
 ship of 395, but he admitted that he couldn't be sure 
 of a fixed majority on all questions. In other words, 
 he had them, only he didn't. 
 
 Skulski laughed at the idea of Bolshevism obtain- 
 ing a foothold in Poland. Eighty per cent of the 
 Polish people, he said, were peasants and had 
 proved their unconquerable patriotism by the man- 
 ner in which they had organized peasant troops to 
 fight against the Bolsheviks, purchasing their own 
 equipment and serving without pay. The Russian 
 peasants are passive, but the Polish peasants aren't. 
 
 53
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 Bolshevik delegations frequently come into the 
 Polish lines to spread Bolshevik doctrines, and are 
 usually rewarded for their pains by being shot by 
 the Polish soldiers without orders. One regiment 
 of Polish troops, according to information which 
 Skulski had just received, had put twelve Bolshevik 
 regiments to rout. 
 
 Skulski made a strong plea for American help and 
 the investment of American capital. Poland's 
 greatest needs, he said, were rolling stock and en- 
 gines for her railroads, food for her people, and 
 capital for investment in her natural resources. 
 The value of the Polish mark can be raised only by 
 the export of Polish goods to other countries — 
 textiles and chemicals, raw materials, petroleum, and, 
 especially, wood. Poland has an unlimited supply 
 of wood, and she is anxious for its exploitation by 
 foreign capital. "Many American, British, and 
 Italian companies," said Skulski, "have already ap- 
 plied to us for concessions in our eastern timberlands ; 
 and we have instructed the authorities to assist the 
 representatives of these companies in every way. 
 We are willing to allow foreign companies as much 
 land as they want for exploitation purposes for as 
 long a time as they may need it. We are anxious to 
 have foreign capital — American in particular — in- 
 vested in our vast farm lands. By the importation 
 into Poland of steam or motor plows, tractors, and 
 other agricultural machines, enormous enterprises 
 could be started. We have over seventy -five million 
 acres of unoccupied farm lands which could be cul- 
 tivated with great advantage to Poland as well as 
 to the cultivators." 
 
 5 59
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Paderewski was occupying the bridal suite — or at 
 any rate it looked like the bridal suite — on the first 
 floor of the Hotel Bristol. This is one of the eighteen 
 million Hotel Bristols in Europe. Every city, town, 
 and village has a Hotel Bristol, and some of the 
 cities are so enamored of the name that they have 
 Old Bristols and New Bristols; First, Second, and 
 Third Bristols; Small and Large Bristols. One of the 
 few differentiations they don't use is Clean Bristol 
 and Dirty Bristol — probably because not a great 
 many of them are clean. I would suggest that some 
 of the European cities differentiate their Bristol 
 Hotels by calling them the Cold Bristol and the 
 Colder Bristol; the Breadless Bristol and the Meat- 
 less Bristol; the Bathless Bristol and the Heatless 
 Bristol and even the Roomless Bristol. All this would 
 be a great help to Americans who are foolish enough 
 to try to travel in Europe in the near future, when it 
 becomes necessary for them to wire ahead for rooms. 
 
 At any rate, Paderewski was occupying the bridal 
 suite of the Hotel Bristol. Whenever he emerged 
 and passed through the lobby everybody removed his 
 hat and bowed low, and all the army officers kicked 
 their sabers out from between their legs and cracked 
 their heels together in token of respect. Anybody 
 who tries to say that Paderewski hasn't the love and 
 the admiration of the entire Polish nation is talking 
 through his hat as well as through his overcoat and 
 his galoshes. 
 
 He had a few words to say about Bolshevism and 
 about the gratitude of Poland for American help, 
 while his parrot hung from the top of its cage and 
 swore quietly but fluently in choice Polish. 
 
 60
 
 POLAND FOR PATRIOTISM 
 
 "Poland," said Paderewski, "has done wonder- 
 fully well in the short time she has been at it; and 
 those who judge our government by American 
 standards are doing us an injustice. The nation 
 has been functioning for only a year; our people 
 are suffering from five years of war and invasion and 
 hunger and disease; all of our industries have been 
 brought to a standstill. Yet Poland has a govern- 
 ment which governs and an army which fights. We 
 realize the dangers of Bolshevism here ; for Germany 
 is supplying the Bolsheviks with money and men, 
 and the Bolsheviks themselves are pounding at our 
 gates. They are flooding the country with posters 
 which set forth the glories of Bolshevism; they 
 attack what they are pleased to call Capitalistic 
 America through these posters. Magazines printed 
 in alien tongues in America have reached Poland 
 filled with Bolshevik propaganda, and we have taken 
 them from the mails. The people of America don't 
 realize the dangers which may come to them from 
 Bolshevism or the sources from which Bolshevism 
 all over the world is receiving its greatest aid. Amer- 
 icans have insufficient imagination. They refuse to 
 see a danger until it becomes a concrete menace — 
 something that can be physically met and over- 
 come. American publications have failed to dis- 
 cover or have refused to print the truth about 
 Bolshevism. They have recognized its outward 
 manifestations, but not the forces behind it. But 
 there will come a time in the near future when these 
 forces must be universally recognized." 
 
 Paderewski asked particularly that the heartfelt 
 thanks of Poland be conveyed to America for the 
 
 61
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 great help which America has given. Throughout 
 the nation, he said, there was a deep and sincere 
 feeling of gratitude for all that America has done. 
 He followed me out into the hall, beyond the range 
 of the quiet but malignant profanity of the parrot, 
 and repeated this statement three times. He 
 wanted to be very sure that the American nation 
 gets an inkling of Poland's gratitude. 
 
 One can find many things at which to smile in 
 Poland. One can get a good laugh out of the 
 Polish nobility. They claim that Poland is a very 
 democratic country because one out of every ten 
 people in Poland belongs to a noble family. One 
 cannot toss a brick into any Polish gathering without 
 hitting a count. One can worry a smile out of the 
 Polish waiters, who insist on wearing sack suits to 
 show their democracy. One can snicker a bit at 
 Polish opera, which is gloomy and likes to depict 
 people dying resignedly in the snow for the mere 
 gloomy joy of dying. One has to laugh a little and 
 even swear a little at the inefficiency and impractical- 
 ity of the Poles. But one cannot get any mirth out 
 of their hunger and their steadfastness and their 
 intense patriotism. 
 
 You can call me pro-Pole if you like. I'm pro- 
 anybody who fights a clean fight in a righteous cause 
 against overwhelming odds. The Poles answer to 
 that description, and it's a pretty good basis on 
 which to rest a case.
 
 II 
 
 HUSKS 
 
 AUSTRIA is a small peanut of a country about 
 *■ twice as large as Switzerland. It used to be a 
 large, magnificent country — a K. u. K. country, to 
 quote the Austrians, K. u. K. meaning Kaiserlich 
 und Koniglich, or Imperial and Royal. It was about 
 as K. u. K. as any reasonable emperor could desire; 
 for at the top it was wedged up into Germany and 
 Russia, and swept grandly down past Switzerland 
 and Italy and squatted heavily on the Balkan 
 Peninsula. It was the largest and most K. u. K. 
 agglomeration of real estate in all Europe, barring 
 only Imperial Russia. Russia was a larger parcel 
 of land, but a lot of it was marshland. It wasn't 
 nearly so K. u. K. as Austria — or more properly 
 Austria-Hungary. It didn't support so many palaces 
 and Hofs and Schlosses and royal retainers and 
 K. u. K. kinglets and princes and grand dukes and 
 royal bums as Austria did. 
 
 Austria was rich. She had great industries and 
 the raw materials for them, and the coal and the 
 oil that they needed. She had a population of 
 55,000,000; and among the 55,000,000 there were 
 as many different breeds of people as there were 
 different varieties of postage stamps in one of those 
 
 63
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 packages that used to be advertised as "10,000 
 stamps, all different: 25 cents." On every Austrian 
 bank note the value had to be printed in eight dif- 
 ferent languages. Austria had everything — before 
 the war. 
 
 That, however, was before the war. At the pres- 
 ent time, due to the rulings of an ill-advised body of 
 men known as the Peace Conference, Austria is a 
 small, shriveled wisp of a country. She has lost 
 her farm lands and her mineral lands; she has lost 
 her industries and her seaports ; she has lost her coal 
 and her oil and the purchasing power of her money ; 
 she has lost every resource which a modern state 
 must have in order to exist. Instead of her former 
 55,000,000 inhabitants she has only 6,500,000 — less 
 than one eighth of her former population. The 
 Peace Conference cut off a slice of Austria and gave 
 it to Poland — and Poland is fighting with Czecho- 
 slovakia over part of that slice. The Peace Con- 
 ference hacked off a huge gob and called it Czecho- 
 slovakia; and the Czechs and the Slovaks are 
 quarreling between themselves, while the Czechs 
 and the Hungarians are on the verge of going to the 
 mat over part of Slovakia. The Peace Conference 
 slashed off another slice and gave it to Rumania, 
 and Hungary and Rumania are on the verge of 
 fighting over it. She cut off a final great gob, which 
 is now part of Jugoslavia. The Peace Conference 
 has acted like a fatuous butcher cutting up a slab 
 of meat for some friends; it cut off here and it cut 
 off there, tossing the untrimmed chunks to this one 
 and to that; and at the end it had a disagreeable 
 little piece of gristle left, and that piece was tossed 
 
 64
 
 HUSKS 
 
 to the dogs. The piece of gristle is Austria, and the 
 dogs to whom the Peace Conference threw it are the 
 ravening beasts, Hunger and Cold and Despair. 
 
 Austria is a husk of a country — an empty shell. 
 The nation itself is nothing but an unnatural 
 boundary line surrounding a mass of land insuf- 
 ficiently large to feed its people, and without suf- 
 ficient industries to support them. And Vienna, 
 which with her 2,250,000 people is the greatest part 
 of Austria, is an empty shell as well. The palaces 
 of Vienna, which housed the diseased but royal 
 breed that led Austria into the war and kept her 
 there, are empty except for American feeding 
 stations, while their erstwhile occupants strut and 
 blow in Swiss resorts amid their little pomps and 
 gauds. The stores and shops of Vienna, renowned 
 through Europe for their beautiful things, are 
 stripped and gutted. The banks of Vienna have 
 plenty of money, but it's good for nothing — or next 
 to nothing. And the people of Vienna are empty, 
 too — empty of pride and empty of hope and empty 
 of fighting spirit and empty of food. They're 
 especially empty of food. Quite by chance one day 
 I stumbled into the home of Rosalie Amsuss, aged 
 eleven, and watched her dying of starvation. It was 
 a very unpleasant spectacle. I will tell you all 
 about it in another place. There are plenty of 
 Rosalie Amsusses in Vienna. The stories that you 
 read about starvation in Vienna are quite true. 
 Austria is a nation of emptiness — a husk of a nation 
 and a nation of husks. 
 
 I saw scores of letters from Americans in the 
 United States to Americans in Vienna while I was 
 
 65
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 there, and every letter contained such questions as: 
 "Are the stories about starving people in Vienna 
 true?" or: "The papers say that the people in 
 Vienna are starving, but they seem to keep on living. 
 What's the truth of it?" or: "Are conditions in 
 Vienna as bad as they say ? I suppose most of it is 
 nothing but propaganda or newspaper talk." 
 
 I answer those questions here as the Americans 
 in Vienna answered the letters: 
 
 The stories are true. Conditions are exactly as 
 bad as they say, and they only grow worse with the 
 passage of the weeks; almost none of it is either 
 propaganda or what the thoughtless sometimes call 
 newspaper talk, for the misery of the situation in 
 Vienna is almost impossible to exaggerate. 
 
 Central Europe is the greatest political, social, 
 and economic mess, with the single exception of 
 Bolshevik Russia, that any man now living has ever 
 seen. The situation is so fantastic and so incredible 
 that any person who attempts to tell even a small 
 part of it will automatically be doubted by all 
 persons accustomed to a sane and ordered existence. 
 What wonder that every American in Central Europe, 
 when the League of Nations in its present form is 
 mentioned, makes flapping motions with his hands 
 significant of repugnance? Many a good American 
 in the United States who is all in favor of America 
 entering the League as it stands will, I have no 
 doubt, accuse me of being pro-German and pro- 
 Bolshevik because of what I say against it. I am 
 a reporter, however, and not a statesman or a judge. 
 I am reporting the sentiment which I found among 
 Americans in Central Europe. These men are good 
 
 66
 
 HUSKS 
 
 Americans and many of them came into Central 
 Europe enthusiastically in favor of the League. 
 They are in favor of it no longer. Somewhere in 
 Central Europe there may be Americans who favor 
 the entry of the United States into the League, but 
 I missed them. "A league of nations is all right," 
 the Americans say; "such a thing ought to exist, 
 and America ought to be in it. But not in this 
 League! No indeed! Not this one!" 
 
 The Peace Conference has stripped Austria of every- 
 thing which she needs in order to exist. Far harder 
 terms, financially and territorially, have been im- 
 posed on Austria than on Germany. She can't buy 
 coal, she can't buy food, she can't buy raw materials. 
 Her neighbors, who hate her bitterly for her past 
 sins, will give her nothing and will sell her next 
 to nothing. She is cold and starved and helpless 
 and hopeless. Her people want nothing but food 
 to cook and fire on which to cook it. 
 
 The present-day Austria, as I have said, is a small 
 peanut of a country. The contour of Ireland, I 
 believe, is vaguely familiar to most people. If a 
 giant steam roller were to roll up on Ireland's lower 
 end and flatten it out a bit, her size and appearance 
 would closely approach Austria's at the present time. 
 Austria's flattened end is wedged between Germany 
 and Italy, and the rounded end is held down at the 
 top by Czechoslovakia, pushed in on the front by 
 Hungary, and jacked up by Jugoslavia. 
 
 The flat end is the Austrian Tyrol, where American 
 tourists used to go to exclaim in wonder at the 
 magnificent mountains worn by the landscape and 
 the remarkable hats worn by the Tyroleans. These 
 
 67
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 hats had large shaving brushes stuck in the bands 
 in back, and were too killing for words. The hats 
 still exist, and so do the mountains; and in the 
 mountainous sections there is very little raised except 
 the nimble chamois, a goatlike creature whose beard 
 supplies the shaving-brush decoration for the Ty- 
 rolean hat. There is no agriculture to speak of. 
 The rest of Austria is also very rugged and hilly, 
 so that the farms are neither numerous, large, nor 
 fertile. Even when all the farms of Austria are 
 thoroughly fertilized and producing at pre-war speed, 
 they produce only enough to feed 30 per cent of her 
 present population. In other words, they produce 
 only a little more than enough to feed the people 
 who live in the country districts. In the past, 
 Austria has manufactured a wide variety of goods, 
 sold them, and purchased food for the remaining 
 70 per cent of her population with a part of the 
 proceeds. To-day the farms of Austria are produc- 
 ing even less than usual. Most of the few factories 
 that have not been given to Czechoslovakia are shut 
 down, for she has neither fuel nor raw material. 
 
 Consequently, Austria has no goods to sell outside. 
 She is earning nothing, and she has few resources; 
 so she can buy nothing. Outside nations don't 
 want to accept her money, for it is worthless. 
 They are only willing to barter with her, and Austria 
 has next to nothing with which to barter. There- 
 fore the only people in Austria who are getting 
 enough to eat are the people who are living in the 
 country. They are getting just enough. The people 
 in the cities are getting what the government can 
 buy for them in outside countries and sell to them at 
 
 68
 
 HUSKS 
 
 a fairly reasonable rate, or what the Americans send 
 them. When the newspapers publish the statement 
 that Vienna has enough bread to last until April 17th, 
 it means that the amount of flour which outside 
 nations have consented to sell to Vienna will give 
 out on April 17th, and that unless the government 
 has succeeded in scratching up a supply somewhere 
 before that time the people will be unable to have 
 any bread whatever. It does not mean that abso- 
 lutely everyone will be breadless. Persons who have 
 a great deal of money will still be able to get food. 
 They won't be able to get the things they want, but 
 they will be able to get enough to fill their stomachs. 
 At no time can they, even with a lot of money, get 
 enough fats to keep themselves from feeling hungry 
 a short time after they've eaten, but they can keep 
 from suffering. This applies only to people with a 
 great deal of money. If the bread supply is ex- 
 hausted on April 17th, the normal population gets 
 no bread on April 18th. It can neither find nor 
 afford the bread which is sold secretly. 
 
 All the capitals of Central Europe, in spite of 
 their misery, look normal. Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, 
 Prague, Budapest — all of them are big, roaring, 
 magnificent cities with crowded streets and honking 
 taxicabs and shops and cabarets and theaters. On 
 arriving in Vienna one rather expects to see people 
 dying in the middle of the street-car tracks for lack 
 of food. One expects to see the palaces crumbling 
 in ruins and to see grass growing between the cobbles 
 and to hear the low moaning of the starving children. 
 
 One finds nothing of the sort. Vienna wears a 
 gay front. Her women, as always, are the most 
 
 69
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 beautiful in Europe. Her men go briskly about their 
 business, and their appearance is normal; there's 
 none of that universal pallor that one expects. 
 The shop windows glitter with jewels or blaze with 
 paintings or silks, or foam — as the saying goes — 
 with lingerie. The palaces are as massive and stately 
 and imposing as ever. The streets, it is true, are 
 full of dust and dirt and paper scraps ; and there are 
 hundreds of beggars importuning the passer-by — 
 war cripples in the indescribably shoddy Austrian 
 uniform; scraps and wrecks and husks of men who 
 scramble on the sidewalks for the stubbiest of 
 cigarette butts. But in order to see the true 
 Vienna one must go into the shops and note the 
 empty shelves and show cases; one must look 
 closely at the palaces to see that the windows are 
 unwashed and the rooms untenanted; one must 
 go into the apartment houses to find once wealthy 
 people living in the direst poverty, and to find them 
 dying of starvation. 
 
 To get an idea of Vienna as it really is one should 
 see it for the first time at night. Then it is dark 
 and dismal, cheerless and ghastly. The streets are 
 lighted by the weakest of gas lights or electric lamps, 
 separated by wide distances. Except for a few 
 streets in the very center of this great city of two 
 and a quarter million people, the thoroughfares are 
 almost deserted when night has fallen. Even on 
 the few populous streets the wayfarers are dim 
 shapes whose movements seem stealthy and furtive. 
 The hotel entrances and lobbies are dark caves. 
 Vienna after dark looks like what it is — a sick city, 
 a dying city, a city of abject despair. 
 
 70
 
 HUSKS 
 
 In the restaurants and cafes — there is a wide dif- 
 ference between a restaurant and a caf6 in Vienna — 
 the electric lights are shut off at eight o'clock and are 
 replaced by a few carbide lights, which give off a 
 ghastly greenish-yellow glare. No street cars run 
 after half past eight at night. The theaters begin 
 at five o'clock in the afternoon, or half past five, 
 and eight o'clock sees their audiences emptying into 
 the darkened streets. Long-winded German operas 
 like "Tannhauser" or " Gotterdammerung, " in 
 which pairs of fat singers must sing into each other's 
 faces endlessly, begin as early as four o'clock in the 
 afternoon. In January, when I arrived in Vienna, 
 there was a period covering several days during 
 which, because of lack of coal, no passenger trains 
 ran, no street cars, no elevators, no theaters, no 
 opera, no cabarets. Every shop pulled down its 
 shutters and locked its doors at dusk because no 
 electricity could be burned. Vienna was the most 
 desolate city I have ever seen. 
 
 At the bottom of all the trouble are lack of coal 
 and lack of raw material. With coal and with raw 
 material Vienna could eventually produce enough 
 goods for export, so that she wouldn't have to be 
 dependent on charity for her food. Without coal 
 and without raw material Austria must be a beggar 
 nation until she is permitted to join her fortunes 
 with those of another nation that has the things 
 which she lacks. Alone she cannot exist; that is 
 an absolute, an accepted, and an incontrovertible 
 fact. There are four countries that she could join: 
 Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Jugo- 
 slavia; Czechoslovakia, which used to be a part of
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Austria-Hungary, hates her for the years of oppres- 
 sion at Austrian hands. Jugoslavia hates her for 
 the same reason — and a Central Europe hate is one 
 of the most persistent and acrimonious hates that 
 ever entered the hating business. Hungary has 
 been stripped of her choicest possessions and is 
 raving wildly to become a monarchy. The govern- 
 ing class in Austria, being Social Democrats — and 
 Social Democracy is so close to a dictatorship of the 
 working classes that a knife blade can scarcely be 
 pried between them — is fearful of tying up with 
 Hungary, because if it had a monarchy wished on 
 it the working classes would not continue to be the 
 ruling classes to any noticeable extent. Germany, 
 however, is also Social Democratic, and Germany 
 is the country which Austria wants to join. The 
 Allies, with the exception of France, are in favor of 
 allowing them to join. France, mindful of Ger- 
 many's determination to crush her in the not distant 
 future, is determined to prevent any move which 
 might eventually tend to strengthen Germany. The 
 situation is complicated by the fact that there are 
 a few million Germans in Czechoslovakia who can't 
 get along with the Czechs; and if Germany and 
 Austria should join, Czechoslovakia would probably 
 be squeezed out of business with the utmost celerity 
 and vigor. The choicest half of Czechoslovakia is 
 wedged between Germany and Austria as a nut is 
 wedged between the jaws of a nut cracker — and the 
 Germans in Czechoslovakia would do their utmost 
 to assist in the crushing. 
 
 If the Allies do not permit Austria to save herself 
 by joining Germany, then it would seem that the 
 
 72
 
 HUSKS 
 
 only other solution of the problem would be for her 
 to become a province of Czechoslovakia — and that 
 would be retribution of the most extreme brand. 
 The Czechs are Bohemians, or Boehms. The Aus- 
 trians have always despised them as being slow and 
 pigheaded. When an Austrian wanted to speak con- 
 temptuously of somebody he called him a Boehm 
 — Boehm being pronounced as the word "berm" 
 would be pronounced in Boston. Wandering gypsy 
 bands, traveling north from Jugoslavia through 
 Austria into Czechoslovakia, picked up this expres- 
 sion and added it to their slang. Many American 
 slang words come from gypsy slang by way of 
 thieves' kitchens and hobo haunts; and from the 
 contemptuous "Boehm" of the Austrians and the 
 gypsies comes our contemptuous slang word "bum." 
 So if Austria, who once ruled Czechoslovakia with 
 an iron hand, should become a province of Czechoslo- 
 vakia, she would be ruled by the Boehms, whom she 
 once despised and oppressed. 
 
 Back even of the lack of coal and raw materials 
 is the Peace Conference, which has ruled that Austria 
 must exist as a separate state, but refuses to allow 
 her the requisites of existence. It's about the same 
 situation that might have arisen if the Peace Con- 
 ference had transported the city of Vienna, with its 
 two and a quarter million people, to a barren island 
 in the Pacific Ocean and had decreed that the 
 residents keep themselves alive as best they could. 
 In the Pacific the Viennese might at least have 
 caught fish and lived on them; but in Austria they 
 can't even get fish. 
 
 If the Peace Conference had announced solemnly 
 
 73
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 that on such and such a day it would give a superb 
 production of "Hamlet," but that the characters of 
 Hamlet, Ophelia, the Ghost, and the First Grave- 
 digger would be eliminated from the play, there 
 would have been a great hue and cry. Two regi- 
 ments of alienists would have been rushed to the 
 Conference posthaste, and the brains of the august 
 body would have been subjected to careful scrutiny. 
 This would have been due to the fact that almost 
 everybody knows all about Hamlet and realizes 
 that only a crazy man would try to give the play 
 without its leading and essential characters. The 
 action of the Peace Conference as regards Austria 
 had earmarks of insanity; but nobody seems to 
 know anything about Central Europe. 
 
 But only the financiers and the statesmen and the 
 thinkers of Vienna concern themselves with the lack 
 of raw material and the mistakes of the Peace Con- 
 ference. The bulk of the people are chiefly worried 
 about the cost of the necessities of life, the value of 
 their money, and the place from which their next 
 meal is coming. No one can take the Vienna people 
 to task for not delving deeper into their problem. 
 These three worries of theirs are sufficient to keep 
 any worrier, no matter how high-geared it may be, 
 working overtime. In fact, I will guarantee that any 
 American, suddenly confronted with any two out of 
 the three worries which occupy the waking moments 
 of every Viennese, would have to take to his bed 
 with congestion of the worrier — or a lesion, or some- 
 thing which would utterly unfit him for further 
 mental activity. 
 
 The krone, or crown, is the Austrian unit of ex- 
 
 74
 
 HUSKS 
 
 change. The Austrian crown and the French franc 
 were equal before the war, their value in American 
 money being 20 cents. Five Austrian crowns were 
 equivalent to an American dollar in 19 14. In 
 February, 1920, as this is written, one American 
 dollar is equivalent to 300 Austrian crowns. The 
 crown is worth one third of a cent. In other words, 
 the crown is worth one sixtieth of what it used to be 
 worth, and an Austrian income that used to be worth 
 $5,000 a year is now worth $83. 
 
 The Austrian crown is divided into 100 hellers. 
 Thus one heller is worth one three-hundredths of a 
 cent. This, I maintain, is about as low as money 
 can fall and still be honored with the name of money. 
 A five-heller stamp, which is in constant use in 
 Austria, is worth one sixtieth of a cent. Since the 
 cost of printing the stamps, perforating them, and 
 applying the gum to the backs must run pretty 
 close to that figure, it is easy to see why the Austrian 
 postal department isn't rolling in money. Ten- 
 heller notes, worth one thirtieth of a cent to an 
 American, actually buy things in Austria. I don't 
 know what they buy, but the Austrians do. Women 
 will hang round shops for ten or fifteen minutes 
 waiting for 20 hellers change — a fifteenth of a cent. 
 The heller offers some remarkable opportunities for 
 puns, but it's good for little else. 
 
 The collapse of monetary values in other countries 
 is bad enough; but those collapses fade into in- 
 significance beside the collapse in Central Europe. 
 When an American gets two or three times as many 
 francs in France for a dollar as he used to get he 
 thinks that he is seeing a terrible state of affairs — 
 
 6 75
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 as he is. Then he moves over into Germany, where 
 he gets from ten to twenty times as many marks for 
 a dollar as he used to get; and he at once thinks 
 that nothing could be worse. But when he moves 
 into Poland and gets thirty times as many marks for 
 a dollar as a dollar would normally bring he begins 
 to think that the Germans are well off. And when 
 he gets down into Austria and gets sixty times as 
 much for his money as he could have got in normal 
 times he looks back at the depreciated French cur- 
 rency as being absolutely sound. 
 
 No toboggan ever slid down a chute with more 
 rapidity and vigor than the Austrian crown went 
 downhill. During the winter of iQi8-ioa dollar was 
 worth 17 crowns. In the spring of 19 19 a dollar 
 could be exchanged for 30 crowns. In the autumn 
 the rate was 60 crowns for a dollar. Early last 
 October it was 80, in November 100, in December 
 180; and in January of 1920 there was a time when 
 a dollar would buy nearly 400 crowns. A man 
 who changed 100 American dollars into small Aus- 
 trian bank notes last January or February would 
 have had to bale them up and carry them away in 
 a taxicab, for he could never have got them into his 
 pocket. 
 
 In May, 1919, some American destroyers came up 
 the Danube to Vienna. The astute gobs looked 
 round and saw that they could get 25 crowns for a 
 dollar. The prospect intrigued them. What a 
 chance! they declared. What a chance! Twenty- 
 five crowns for a dollar! The crown could never go 
 lower than that! So they scraped together all their 
 American dollars and bought crowns at 25. When 
 
 76
 
 HUSKS 
 
 they sold out the rate was ioo crowns for a dollar, 
 and they had learned that one must never think 
 that Central European money has reached the 
 bottom. No matter how low it is, it can always go 
 lower. 
 
 The worst of it is that the Austrians can't sit on 
 their money and wait until its value improves. 
 They have to spend it for food. The shopkeepers 
 have to sell their goods in order to live, but when 
 their stocks are gone they can never be replaced, 
 because the profit, which is in crowns, will buy next 
 to nothing in outside countries. For example, an 
 American in Vienna was going on a trip into Jugo- 
 slavia last December. Before he started, a Vienna 
 tailor urged him to have a suit made from a very 
 fine piece of English cloth, assuring him that he 
 needn't pay for it until his return. The American 
 agreed, and a price of 7,000 crowns was fixed for the 
 suit. At that time 7,000 crowns was equivalent to 
 $50. Some weeks later the American returned and 
 got the suit, paying 7,000 crowns for it. But in- 
 stead of being worth $50, the 7,000 crowns was then 
 worth only a little over $20. Suppose the Vienna 
 tailor had originally bought the English cloth for 
 $4 a yard, and used three and a half yards in making 
 the suit. The same cloth to-day would cost him 
 much more. His profit on the suit would enable 
 him to buy about half a yard of new cloth. 
 
 And it doesn't even take a person skilled in higher 
 mathematics to understand that if the Austrian 
 government buys a carload of flour at 1,000,000 
 crowns and sells it t'o the people at cost, and if the 
 crown depreciates 50 per cent while the people are 
 
 77
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 buying the flour, the proceeds from the sale will 
 buy only half a carload of new flour. 
 
 As a result of the depreciated money Vienna, 
 which was the most expensive city in Europe before 
 the war, is to-day the cheapest large city for an 
 American to live in that the civilized world has ever 
 seen or probably ever will see. And at the same time 
 it is the most cruelly expensive place for an Austrian 
 that can be imagined. 
 
 I know an American family in Vienna — a father,' 
 a mother, and three small children. They were 
 offered a suite of rooms in Schonbrunn Palace — the 
 former residence of the Emperor — for $7 a month, 
 but they refused it because they would have had to 
 walk about a mile through empty rooms to get to 
 their cozy home. They finally took a beautiful 
 apartment near the center of the city at the same 
 rate — $7 a month. For this amount they also 
 received a complete outfit of coroneted silver and 
 large quantities of the finest table and bed linen. 
 They have five servants — a cook, a kitchen helper, 
 two maids, and a trained nurse. They pay the cook 
 85 cents a month. The two maids get 50 cents a 
 month apiece. The kitchen helper, being young 
 and unskilled, cannot aspire to such a munificent 
 salary; she draws 25 cents a month. The nurse, 
 who received a hospital training, demanded a sal- 
 ary of 4 cents a day, but she was given 5 cents 
 so that she would be thoroughly satisfied. Fifteen 
 crowns a day is her pay; and a dollar is equal 
 to 300 crowns. It is almost cheaper to have a 
 trained nurse in Vienna than to subscribe for the 
 London Times, for where a trained nurse costs only 
 
 78
 
 HUSKS 
 
 15 crowns a day, one copy of the Times costs 17 
 crowns. 
 
 The head of this family rents a gorgeous limousine 
 from a former cavalry officer in the Austrian army. 
 He pays a dollar a day for it, and furnishes all the 
 gasoline and pays half of the tire expenses. The 
 cavalry officer throws himself in as chauffeur, and 
 also throws in a mechanician to open the door for 
 the American and fool with the carburetor when it 
 shows signs of indisposition. The American doesn't 
 care much for the showiness of the mechanician and 
 would be willing to pay five or ten cents extra if the 
 cavalryman-chauffeur would leave him at home. 
 But he won't. The mechanician used to be the 
 cavalryman's chauffeur before the war; and, besides, 
 the cavalryman doesn't know enough about the 
 engine to trust himself alone with it. The cavalry- 
 man owns three other machines. When asked where 
 they came from he replied that he had once been 
 independently wealthy, but that the depreciation of 
 the money had so decreased the size of his fortune 
 that he thought he had better invest it all in au- 
 tomobiles before it faded entirely out of sight. One 
 can buy a fine second-hand automobile of the best 
 make in Vienna for $1,000. 
 
 This same American family has a box at the opera 
 three or four times a week. Vienna opera has few 
 equals in the world. The singers are surpassed only 
 by New York. The orchestra and the stage settings 
 are unequaled. Richard Strauss himself conducts 
 the orchestra. The Americans pay a dollar a per- 
 formance for their box. 
 
 At the rate of exchange which existed in January 
 
 79
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the United States could buy a beautiful palace in 
 Vienna for her diplomatic representatives for $25,000 
 — a sum about equal to eighteen months' rent on 
 such a building at pre-war rates. The United States 
 has followed such a wasteful and short-sighted 
 policy in the past as regards embassies, legations, 
 and consulates that Congress will probably prefer 
 to install our foreign representatives in fusty and 
 cockroach-ridden shacks at tremendous and con- 
 tinuous expense rather than to see that they occupy 
 quarters which are commensurate with America's 
 position among the nations, and which would cost 
 only a fraction of what the rent of the shacks would 
 eventually cost. It is, to put it conservatively, an 
 extreme bore to Americans in Europe when they see 
 American diplomats occupying poorer quarters than 
 the representatives of obscure countries whose names 
 are unfamiliar to the average postage-stamp collector. 
 Hotel bills in Vienna figure up to peculiar amounts. 
 When I first arrived I could only get a room in a 
 second-rate hotel. It was a large far-flung room 
 with a bilious carpet and a green porcelain stove that 
 looked like an ice chest which had grown too rapidly 
 in its youth. That room cost 17 cents a day, and 
 a bucketful of wood for the stove cost an additional 
 7 cents. Feeding one bucketful of wood into the 
 stove was like feeding an angleworm to a full- 
 grown alligator. I attempted to negotiate for more 
 wood, for I planned to spend my evenings sitting 
 cozily in front of the green, shiny stove and writing 
 busily in its genial warmth. One bucketful of wood 
 gave the stove about as much genial warmth as a 
 box of wax matches would have given it. So I 
 
 80
 
 HUSKS 
 
 approached one of the eighteen or twenty servants 
 who cared for my room. Austrian hotels may be 
 shy of heat, but they are well supplied with serv- 
 ants. One rings a bell and a servant comes in, 
 while three or four other servants stand outside 
 the door and try to peer in. In a spirit of lavish- 
 ness one hands him 10 crowns, or 3 cents, and in- 
 structs him to bring in a bottle of mineral water. 
 He retires, and in a few moments another servant 
 enters with the bottle and hangs round expectantly. 
 One gives him another 10 crowns, whereat he goes 
 away. In ten minutes a third servant appears to 
 take the bottle away. He looks so reproachful and 
 so neglected that one feels obliged to slip him 
 another 10 crowns. 
 
 At any rate, I begged the waiter to get me some 
 more wood. The request amazed him. More, it 
 horrified him. One bucket of wood a day was all 
 that anyone was allowed. To-morrow I could have 
 another bucket. I assured him that I would freeze 
 if I waited until the next day, and urged him to go 
 out on the street and buy more for me. This request 
 cut him to the quick. He felt for me, but he could 
 do nothing. I offered him untold wealth — as much 
 as 80 cents — if he would get wood for me. There 
 was nothing doing. He didn't know where to buy 
 it. I saw the manager about it, but it did me no 
 good. During the entire time I remained at the 
 hotel I could get only about twelve small pieces of 
 pine wood every day. A few people in Vienna 
 know where to buy wood and have enough money 
 to do it. Sometimes they can get enough to keep 
 one room warm all the time. But they must be 
 
 81
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 very wealthy people, and they must know the secret 
 places where wood is sold. 
 
 From the second-rate hotel I moved to the hotel 
 which has the reputation of being the best. The 
 walls were padded with red satin, and it had a 
 magnificent bathroom, and the bed had a silk 
 canopy over it. It was a very expensive room, and 
 one had to disgorge 30 cents a day for it. It had 
 no stove at all, and one paid 8 cents extra for central 
 heating, but the central heating was not a conspicu- 
 ous success. The best that it could do was to take 
 the chill out of a radiator for fifteen minutes every 
 morning. It didn't heat it; it merely had the same 
 effect on it that a very large-mouthed giant would 
 have had if he had breathed on it for a short time. 
 Even though a person has untold wealth in Vienna, 
 he usually can't get enough heat. But he can get 
 one of the best rooms in the best hotels in the city — 
 and Vienna has some fine hotels — for 30 American 
 cents a day. I had a big room in the Grand Hotel 
 for 700 crowns a week. Before the war the same 
 room would have cost more than that for a day. 
 Imagine the situations reversed, and one can get 
 an idea of the tragedy of it. Imagine, for example, 
 that American currency had depreciated to such an 
 extent that a suit of clothes cost $2,500 and an 
 ordinary room in a New York hotel cost $50 a day. 
 And imagine Austrians being able to come to New 
 York and live in such a room for a crown a day; 
 imagine them getting a suit of clothes for 50 crowns 
 when we were paying $2,500. It takes something 
 of an imagination, but that's the way things were in 
 Vienna during the early months of 1920. 
 
 82
 
 HUSKS 
 
 No hotel in Vienna is able to heat water for its 
 guests oftener than once a week. Baths have gone 
 out of fashion ; for a cold-water bath is viewed with 
 alarm. The people don't wash. Every store, every 
 dining room, every theater has an atmosphere that 
 can be cut with a knife. The hotels even rent their 
 bathrooms. Perfumery is scarce and expensive. 
 
 The hotel prices are not the only ones which amaze 
 an American. The price of everything is amazing. 
 I met a woman who was buying antiques for an 
 interior decorator. She was buying almost blindly. 
 "It doesn't matter what I buy," she said, "for on 
 all the things that I care to take out I can make a 
 profit of from 300 to 400 per cent, even in Paris. 
 If I should take them to New York my profit would 
 run up to 700 per cent and even higher." Bone- 
 headed business men who couldn't make a success 
 anywhere else could get along very nicely in Vienna, 
 for they could buy anything and invariably sell it 
 in other countries to advantage. 
 
 I quote a few Vienna prices at random from my 
 notebook, giving the American equivalent for the 
 Austrian money. A safety razor, exactly like a 
 popular American make, packed in a leather case 
 with a dozen blades, sells for 80 crowns, or about 
 25 cents. A dozen blades, made to fit my own 
 razor, cost 20 crowns, or 6 cents. A Mauser au- 
 tomatic pistol in its wooden holster butt was priced 
 at $3. This was the gun carried by German officers, 
 and is one of the best-made automatic pistols in the 
 world. A Styer automatic pistol cost $2.50 and a 
 Styer revolver $1. They are both good guns. An 
 excellent sporting rifle with telescopic sights cost 
 
 83
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 $3.50. The best double-barreled shotgun in one of 
 the best gun stores in Vienna cost $9. 
 
 A guidebook to Vienna, which used to sell for 
 4 crowns, or 80 cents, before the war, now sells for 
 6 crowns, or 2 cents. A malacca walking stick, 
 mounted in sterling silver, can be bought more 
 cheaply in Vienna than it can be bought in Singapore, 
 where malacca comes from. Such a stick in Vienna 
 costs $1. Ten colored post cards sell for half a 
 crown apiece, and foreign post-card postage is an- 
 other half crown. Therefore one can buy ten post 
 cards and send them to America for 3 cents. It isn't 
 reasonable. A manicure costs 2K cents; a haircut 
 3>2 cents; a shave i^4 cents. Wouldn't it — as the 
 less-refined elements used to remark — jar you? 
 
 A gold wedding ring that used to cost 20 crowns, 
 or $4, now costs 700 crowns, or $2.30. A platinum 
 chain with a pendant of small diamonds and pearls 
 set in platinum used to cost 500 crowns, or $100; 
 now it is 12,000 crowns, or $40. A beautiful bead 
 bag knitted from tiny beads so that it crumples 
 softly into the palm of the hand used to cost 800 
 crowns, or $160; to-day it costs 9,000 crowns, or $30. 
 
 That's about the way with all things. Things 
 cost infinitely more in crowns than ever before, but 
 because of the down-rushing rate of exchange they're 
 cheaper than ever from the viewpoint of the person 
 from a country whose money has not depreciated so 
 violently. 
 
 It is, of course, unfair to quote Vienna prices in 
 dollars, for somebody may get the idea that the 
 prices are cheap for the Viennese as well as for 
 Americans. This, of course, is not the case. For a 
 
 84
 
 HUSKS 
 
 Viennese the prices are prohibitive. He can't buy 
 anything at all. I quote prices in the above manner 
 to emphasize the fact that when the Vienna shop- 
 keepers have finally sold everything, the amount of 
 money which they have made from the sales won't 
 be large enough to permit them to get new stocks 
 from the outside countries. 
 
 All the above prices are figured on the basis of 
 300 crowns for a dollar, which is the average rate of 
 exchange that one could get late in January and 
 early in February, 1920. One of the most shameful 
 features of the whole Central European mess is the 
 manner in which money speculation is permitted to 
 continue. How it can be stopped I do not know. 
 American bankers have looked at the situation, and 
 they do not know. They say that the financial 
 situation in Central Europe is unparalleled in the 
 world's history. Meanwhile, every nation in that 
 locality is knifing every other nation, and the 
 bankers are knifing their own people by aiding in the 
 destruction of money values. The value of the 
 money of Central European countries is very low 
 because of the lack of credits and the lack of produc- 
 tion, but it is not so low as the rate would tend to 
 show. The violent fluctuations are due in part to 
 speculation. 
 
 In one of the large banks in Vienna on the 12 th 
 of January I exchanged American dollars into crowns 
 at the official Zurich rate of 195 crowns for a dollar. 
 Private banking houses outside were giving 250 
 and 260 crowns for a dollar. On February 6th the 
 official Zurich rate was 260 crowns for a dollar. 
 Having learned from experience not to have money 
 
 85
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 exchanged at a big bank, I went to a private bank 
 and received 330 crowns for each dollar, though the 
 official rate was 260. Between January 12th and 
 February 6th there was one day when the official 
 bank rate was 310 crowns for a dollar and when the 
 private banks were giving 400. Since the private 
 bankers were not in business for love, they were dis- 
 posing of each dollar for more than 400 crowns. 
 The effect of such dealings on Vienna business and 
 prices is nerve-racking. No matter how rapidly 
 the shopkeepers raise their prices, they cannot keep 
 pace with the falling exchange. They can't even 
 find the point to which exchange has fallen at a 
 given moment. 
 
 The government is doing its utmost to keep abreast 
 of the falling money values by printing more of it. 
 The newness and crispness of the Austrian money 
 made me curious as to how it was done, so I went 
 down to the Austro-Hungarian Bank, which prints 
 all the money, and asked to be allowed to see the 
 printing presses. The menial whom I asked almost 
 swooned at my insolence. He passed me on to the 
 eighteenth assistant manager, who turned me over 
 to the eleventh assistant manager, who shunted me 
 off to the second secretary of the director. The lat- 
 ter refused my request. I went back to the sixth 
 assistant manager, who summoned the second assist- 
 ant manager, who led me to the director's first 
 secretary. He was persuaded to admit me to the 
 presence of the director himself. 
 
 The director was horrified at my demand. No 
 foreigner had ever seen the printing department. 
 Who was I, anyway? With a flourish I produced 
 
 86
 
 HUSKS 
 
 my passport and indicated the stamped signature of 
 the Secretary of State. The director was impressed. 
 Ah, well! if the Secretary of State had signed my 
 papers, I should enter. He summoned the director 
 of the bank-note department, Arthur Naderny. 
 Naderny has invented most of the engraving and 
 printing processes in use in Austria, and his inven- 
 tions have been adopted by practically every other 
 nation, including the United States. His machine 
 for engraving the copper plates for bank notes is 
 one of the most complicated machines in the world. 
 It looks like the insides of thousands of watches, 
 and the whole machine could easily be covered by 
 a bushel basket. Naderny made a few adjustments 
 in the machine, slipped a copper plate into place, 
 and started it going. A needle cut a beautiful and 
 intricate design in the copper, and when the design 
 was finished it stopped of its own accord. It can be 
 adjusted to engrave any sort of conventional design 
 or animal figures or faces — anything at all. 
 
 The Austrian bank-note printing department 
 starts running every morning at half past seven. 
 It prints bank notes steadily until quarter past three 
 in the afternoon. Then a new shift comes on and 
 prints from four in the afternoon until half past 
 eleven at night. Day and night the money rolls off 
 the presses. On Saturdays the work is less arduous. 
 The first shift works from half past seven to twelve, 
 and the second shift works from one to six. Every 
 day an average of 100,000,000 crowns is struck off, 
 and the average monthly production is 3,000,000,000 
 crowns. This is the amount that used to be pro- 
 duced in an entire year before the war. 
 
 87
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Naderny showed me the typographical printing 
 room, where a battery of thirteen machines slid 
 great sheets of bank notes under the presses and 
 flapped them down in piles. He took me to the 
 copper-plate printing room, where a battery of 
 nineteen machines stolidly ground out sheets of 
 1,000-crown notes. Each one of the nineteen 
 machines spilled out four notes at a time and 3,000 
 sheets a day, or so that the total for the nineteen 
 was 228,000,000 crowns in one day. On the next 
 day these nineteen machines might work on 50- 
 crown notes, so that the average would be reduced. 
 These machines were Naderny's invention. Four 
 men turn out twice as many notes with one of them 
 as six men used to turn out with the old-type ma- 
 chine. Naderny showed me the offset printing 
 room. Offset printing is an American invention. 
 In another room sheets of 50-crown notes were 
 cascading out of a wooden chute by the thousands, 
 and men were staggering round, carrying great piles 
 of sheets. 
 
 Americans in eastern, southeastern, and central 
 Europe enjoy an enviable reputation, and occa- 
 sionally a hard-boiled or imitation American gets in 
 and tries to trade on that reputation. The Austrians 
 who are now in control of the badly leaking ship of 
 state are an inexperienced and gullible crew. Their 
 dealings with Americans have given them a child 
 faith in everything American. Not long ago the 
 Austrian Finance Minister telephoned to the Hoover 
 outfit in Vienna and asked their advice in regard to a 
 proposition which an American had put up to him. 
 They investigated and found the American was an 
 
 88
 
 HUSKS 
 
 offensive specimen and that his proposition was the 
 rawest of get-rich-quick schemes. The Finance 
 Minister had actually considered the proposition, 
 since it came from an American. 
 
 Another gentleman had a brilliant scheme to get 
 food out of the Relief Administration for nine 
 thousand children belonging to members of the new 
 Austrian army, which is a trade-unionized affair. 
 The army was to give him $2,000, and he was to do 
 the rest. He said he was an American citizen. He 
 even had it on his business cards. " U. S. A. citizen," 
 said his cards, "St. Francisco." The "St. Fran- 
 cisco" was a horrible mistake, because a lot of the 
 Relief Administration people, like Mr. Hoover, went 
 to college in California, and any little slur like a 
 slighting reference to California climate, a mention 
 of earthquakes, or the mispronunciation of the name 
 San Francisco can never be forgiven by a native 
 or an adopted Californian. So when the head of 
 the Austrian army turned over the documents in the 
 case to the Relief Administration it lit on this 
 U. S. A. citizen from St. Francisco like a ton of 
 brick, or even like several tons of brick. It ad- 
 vised him hoarsely to take the words "U. S. A. 
 citizen" off his calling cards unless he was aching 
 to be shot. And it discovered that he was really 
 an Austrian citizen who had never been within 
 three thousand miles of St. or San Francisco. 
 
 Americans in Vienna are anxious to see the estab- 
 lishment of some sort of bureau which will require 
 the registration of all commercial travelers from all 
 nations, and thus make it possible to find out 
 whether or not they represent reputable firms. 
 
 89
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Not only have foreigners stripped the Vienna 
 stores, but they have also dipped heavily into 
 Austrian factories and railroads. The Viennese 
 stockbrokers say that there is five times as much 
 stock-market speculation on the part of the Viennese 
 as there was before the war, but that they are buying 
 and selling small blocks. The only really heavy 
 trading is done by the French, Italians, and British. 
 They are buying in great quantities and buying to 
 hold; so there are some hard-headed people who 
 have faith in Austria's future. Foreign capital 
 bought up all the stock in the Alpine Mountain Iron 
 Works. This stock sold at 800 crowns, or $160 a 
 share, before the war. The last recorded sales were 
 5,400 crowns, or $18 a share. It is still paying 
 dividends of 20 crowns a year from past earnings. 
 French capital has bought the control of Veitscher 
 Magnesit, which used to sell for 300 crowns, but now 
 brings 17,000 a share. French capital is also taking 
 a large interest in the Commercial Bank of Vienna. 
 The Italians have negotiated for large interests in 
 the Depositen Bank of Vienna and in the Commer- 
 cial Bank. 
 
 As I have said, this is all very soft for the for- 
 eigners, but for the Viennese it is little short of a 
 living hell. How they endure it without rushing 
 into the street and tearing the entire city to pieces 
 in their despair is beyond the comprehension of all 
 the onlookers. There isn't any decent food for them 
 to buy, and there hasn't been since 191 7. As for 
 clothes, they can't dream of buying them, because of 
 their expensiveness. I am speaking now of the bulk 
 of the people in Vienna. In Vienna, as in every 
 
 90
 
 HUSKS 
 
 other city, there are war profiteers and speculators 
 who have made money. A few thousand out of the 
 two and a quarter million can buy clothes and enjoy 
 the few luxuries that Vienna affords ; but more than 
 two million are helpless and, to all intents and 
 purposes, penniless. Two million people, all in one 
 city and all practically unable to obtain heat, light, 
 clothes, or any sort of food except the poorest and 
 most meager sort of victuals, is sufficient to give one 
 pause when he comes in contact with it. It is even 
 sufficient to give one a number of long, ruminative 
 pauses. 
 
 To lack fuel of every sort throughout a winter 
 must be a very terrible thing. Stop and think of it 
 for a moment, think of being unable to purchase the 
 coal or the wood or the gasoline or the kerosene 
 that one needs in order to cook food each day. 
 Think of having no place to sit, day after day and 
 night after night, except a room as cold as a refriger- 
 ator. Yet hundreds of thousands of Vienna people 
 are in that position. In one way the cold is worse 
 than the hunger. A person's stomach protects 
 itself against continued hunger by shrinking; when 
 the Hoover people started to feed the Vienna chil- 
 dren, hundreds of them were unable to eat the al- 
 loted ration; their stomachs wouldn't hold it. But 
 cold is a different proposition, especially when the 
 person exposed to it is badly nourished. 
 
 The Vienna people make strenuous efforts to get 
 fuel. They accomplish unbelievable feats. For 
 example, they walk out to the Wiener Wald and cut 
 down trees and chop them up and load them on their 
 backs and walk back home. It sounds easy. But 
 
 7 9i
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 suppose it's the young wife 01 a postal official who's 
 doing it. She's twenty-three years old and not over- 
 strong because she had a baby a year ago. She 
 hasn't had enough to eat for more than two years. 
 She takes a saw and a sack, and she goes five miles 
 out to the Wiener Wald, and she saws down a tree 
 and saws it up and loads it into her sack — fifty or 
 sixty pounds of it — and straps the sack on her back 
 and returns to the city, jostled and trampled on 
 by the thousands of people who are doing likewise. 
 It isn't the height of relaxation and enjoyment for 
 such a person to go through such an experience, but 
 thousands upon thousands endured it week after 
 week all through last winter. 
 
 The Wiener Wald, which is merely the German 
 way of saying Vienna Forest, starts on the western 
 outskirts of Vienna and stretches over the valleys 
 and hill slopes for several miles. When the fuel 
 shortage became acute the city of Vienna permitted 
 the residents to go into the forest and cut the trees. 
 This method was selected because the city govern- 
 ment feared that any other method of distribution 
 would be attended by serious riots. So any citizen 
 of Vienna can get a pink piece of paper which en- 
 titles him to go to the Wiener Wald four times and 
 cut down sixty pounds of wood at each trip. He can 
 have one of these slips every two weeks. 
 
 Every day the people flock to the forest by the 
 thousands. I went over one Friday afternoon in late 
 January, just at sundown. The people were coming 
 home in droves, and each person had approximately 
 sixty pounds on his back. There were old, old men 
 and little boys; there were girls ten and twelve and 
 
 92
 
 HUSKS 
 
 fifteen years old ; there were women of forty and fifty 
 and sixty. There were shopkeepers and laborers 
 and street-car conductors and soldiers and post- 
 office officials. There were people who, up to four 
 years ago, had had luxuries and refinements and easy 
 living. Each one had a sack of wood on his back, 
 and each one was bent almost double under it. The 
 road which led out to the forest from the edge of the 
 city was solid with these laden people, so that it 
 looked like a street leading to a football field just 
 before a big game. They had been cutting wood all 
 the afternoon. They had been hacking down real 
 trees with little handsaws. I stopped four girls in 
 succession and looked at their hands. Each girl 
 was about fifteen years old. The hands of three of 
 them were covered with blisters, some of which were 
 broken and some of which were not. The hands of 
 the fourth one were tied with bloody rags. It was 
 her first trip. Her brother always had gone. The 
 last time he went a falling tree had broken his arm. 
 Yes, it was hard work. She would prefer to be cold. 
 But her father was sick. 
 
 They came down the road by the thousands, all 
 kinds and conditions of them, each stooped under his or 
 her sixty-pound load. They would stop before stone 
 walls and rest their packs on the wall and hunker 
 down to ease the strain on their aching backs. And 
 then they would struggle up and plod on again. 
 Thousands of them. Never a day went by last 
 winter that 15,000 people didn't go out from Vienna 
 to cut wood in the Wiener Wald, and never a Satur- 
 day passed that 30,000 of them didn't go out to cut. 
 If Dante should come back to earth he could get 
 
 93
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 out of Vienna some excellent additional cantos for 
 his "Inferno." 
 
 Many of the woodcutters have to walk only a 
 mile and a half or two miles with their sixty-pound 
 sacks, because the city runs street cars out to the 
 city limits — street cars without windows, so that the 
 packs can be rested on the window ledges. But 
 some of them wait for hours to get a place in a car, 
 and aren't successful, so they have to walk all the 
 way in. Little boys and little girls and old men and 
 old women walking four miles with sixty-pound sacks 
 on their backs! 
 
 Salaries and wages in Vienna are hopelessly in- 
 adequate. The President of the Austrian Republic 
 receives 40,000 crowns a year. That, at the rate 
 which prevailed in January, was equivalent to about 
 $135 in American money. A well-paid bank em- 
 ployee, such as a department manager, a cashier, or 
 a head bookkeeper, received 30,000 crowns a year 
 if he had been with the bank more than fifteen years. 
 A high-grade newspaper man was paid 24,000 crowns 
 a year. A te'acher in a high school received 19,000 
 crowns a year. The best stenographers earned 
 12,000 yearly. The best-paid clerks in department 
 stores were paid 10,000 crowns a year. A railway 
 conductor got 7,000 crowns a year. At the same 
 period a good suit of clothes cost 10., 000 crowns. So 
 did a good bead bag. And the conductor's salary 
 would have bought a dinner for twelve people at the 
 best Vienna restaurant. 
 
 Street-car fares have risen in Vienna from 14 
 hellers before the war to 2 crowns at present. If a 
 man lived on the outskirts of the city and rode to 
 
 94
 
 HUSKS 
 
 and from his work 300 days a year he would pay 
 1,200 crowns. This would put something of a 
 crimp in a railway conductor's salary. 
 
 I sat down one morning with the head of the 
 foreign department of a big Vienna bank to figure 
 on living costs. Our figuring was based on the 
 needs of a couple with one child. They were people 
 of modest tastes, who lived in the simplest manner. 
 They ate most frugally, they had almost no new 
 clothes, they never rode in street cars, they never 
 went to a theater or had a meal in a restaurant, and 
 they never went to the doctor or the dentist. We 
 pared our figures down more than we should have; 
 but the total yearly budget of that imaginary family 
 amounted to 62,000 crowns — 22,000 crowns more 
 than the President of Austria is paid. It was also a 
 good many thousand crowns more than the salary 
 of my friend the bank official, and it was nearly ten 
 times the salary of a railway conductor. 
 
 "Now look here," I said to the bank official, "if 
 these figures are anywhere near right, as they are, 
 how can you get along when your salary isn't nearly 
 so large?" 
 
 His eyes wavered a trifle. "To tell you the 
 truth," he said, "I have a little business of my own 
 on the side — a little export business. If it weren't 
 for that I couldn't get along." 
 
 "Then it's all right for you," I said, "but how 
 about the two million others?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "Most of them are 
 buying or selling on the side," he said. "If they 
 aren't they're starving." • 
 
 I investigated and found that his statement came 
 
 95
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 very near to being true. The number of people who 
 have something to sell or who are willing to buy- 
 something on the chance of selling it at a higher 
 price is enormous. A foreigner who goes into a 
 restaurant to eat will be approached by people with 
 all sorts of things to sell. One of the waiters will 
 offer cigarettes ; a stranger will come up and extract 
 watches from every pocket in an endeavor to interest 
 you ; another man will ask if you wish to sell French 
 francs or English pounds or Italian lire or American 
 dollars; still another will whisper that he knows a 
 place where a fine tapestry can be bought. One 
 hears no conversation — none — which doesn't deal 
 with buying and selling. The people have got to 
 have the money. They become so dotty on the 
 subject of buying and selling that they will blindly 
 buy things which don't exist and gayly dispose of 
 them to other frenzied financiers. 
 
 This has given rise to the expression "Lujt 
 Geschaft," or air business — a business which exists 
 only in the air. For example, a Vienna air trader 
 passes into a trance and emerges with the statement 
 that he has a carload of coal. He is overheard, 
 and somebody immediately makes him an offer for 
 it. He accepts and collects the money. The second 
 man in turn sells the carload to some one else, who 
 sells it to a fourth man, who works it off on a fifth, 
 who disposes of it to a sixth. The sixth man really 
 wants a carload of coal for immediate use, so he tries 
 to get delivery. But there isn't any coal and never 
 was any coal. It was purely air coal. And since it 
 is illegal to deal in coal privately, he has some reluc- 
 tance about making an uproar over the affair. He 
 
 96
 
 HUSKS 
 
 is, as the Viennese say, "chased by the hounds." But 
 occasionally, a man who has been stung in a dirty 
 bit of air business takes his troubles into court and 
 the judge almost goes mad trying to unravel the 
 problem. 
 
 Almost every person that one passes on the street 
 in Vienna is talking money. During the second 
 year of the war all Vienna talked of apartments and 
 the difficulty of getting them. During the third 
 year of the war the universal talk was of clothes and 
 boots. During the fourth year the talk was all of 
 food; but now all the talk deals with money — 
 money which must be had in order to pay the awful 
 prices. Stenographers, clerks, young boys, waiters — 
 they all talk money. They are all speculating in 
 something. They are all buying shares. They 
 are all playing the state lottery. I followed the 
 crowd one day and invested 208 crowns in ticket 
 Number 50,050 of the German-Austrian State 
 Lottery, Fourth Class. I liked the number — fifty- 
 fifty. This ticket might win 100,000 crowns. It 
 has one chance to do that; one chance to win 50,000; 
 one chance to win 30,000; three chances to win 
 10,000; eight chances to win 5,000; sixteen chances 
 to win 2,000; thirty -five chances to win 1,000; 
 forty chances to win 800 ; fifty-five chances to Vin 
 600; and 2,590 chances to get its money back. 
 The Fifth Class Lottery is even higher; at the top 
 is a capital prize of 700,000 crowns; and at the 
 bottom are 39,798 prizes of 200 crowns each. Every- 
 one figures that he'll at least be lucky enough to get 
 his money back. 
 
 The selling of foodstuffs which are supposed to be 
 
 97
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 government controlled is known as "Schlcich- 
 handel," or underhand dealing; and a man who sells 
 food illegally is a Schleichhandler. If a man does 
 enough Schleichhandling he is promoted to the 
 rank of Schieber. One of the worst features of 
 Schleichhandling is the manner in which the 
 Schleichhandlers sell to one another before dispos- 
 ing of their goods to the ultimate consumer. A 
 Schleichhandler might go out into the country and 
 get a lot of eggs, for example, and then sell them to 
 another Schleichhandler, who would sell them to 
 another, and so on. This is known as Kettenhandel, 
 or chain dealing. 
 
 Most of this selling and buying takes place in 
 cafes. Certain cafes get the reputation of being 
 Schieber cafes, and one goes to them to buy or sell 
 anything from Chinese tapestries and Czechoslova 
 money to a pound of cheese. The Vienna people 
 have a great joke among themselves. They declare 
 solemnly that a man went into the biggest Schieber 
 cafe in the city and announced that he had two car- 
 loads of snow, and that another man immediately 
 offered to buy them. This statement always pro- 
 vokes shrieks of merriment. 
 
 On Saturdays almost every tenth man that one 
 meels in Vienna has a canvas knapsack strapped to 
 his back and is headed out into the country to get 
 food of some sort from the farmers. The farmers 
 are extremely averse to sending their produce to 
 Vienna for sale. There are several reasons for this. 
 For one thing, money means nothing to the farmer. 
 He can't get enough in return for his produce to buy 
 clothes or tools, so he scorns it. But he is willing 
 
 98
 
 HUSKS 
 
 to barter. Offer an Austrian farmer a pair of pants, 
 and he'll trade anything he owns for them. So 
 the Viennese take old shirts and second-hand under- 
 clothing and trousers into the country and trade 
 them for butter and eggs and meat. Part of the food 
 they keep themselves, and part they sell to the 
 Schleichhandlers. All the Vienna hotels are sup- 
 plied with food by Schleichhandlers; and a person 
 who walks the Stygian streets of the city late at night 
 will see them, bent under their loaded knapsacks, 
 clumping toward the hotels in little groups of three 
 or five. It would be no good to seize this food from 
 the farmers and distribute it equally ; for even under 
 normal conditions the total food production of 
 Austria as it exists at present is only 30 per cent of 
 the amount which the people require. If such a 
 distribution were attempted nobody would have 
 nearly enough; whereas at the present time the 
 farmers can feed themselves and sell a little to the 
 Schleichhandlers. 
 
 The farmers hate the Viennese. Vienna is a 
 socialist city, and the farmers are anti-socialist. 
 The Social Democracy which obtains among the 
 Vienna workmen is perilously akin to Bolshevism; 
 whereas the farmers, owning their land, are de- 
 cidedly unsympathetic toward the radical views of 
 those who have been unable to show enough thrift, 
 iniative, and gumption to obtain possessions of their 
 own, and who therefore advocate seizing the posses- 
 sions of more industrious citizens. The Austrian 
 farmer, moreover, declares that the Viennese are 
 not Austrians at all, but hybrids — an indistinguish- 
 able mixture of Hungarian, Rumanian, German, Slav, 
 
 99
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Hebrew, and Italian. And the farmers are right. 
 The people of Vienna are Viennese first and Austrian 
 afterward. They are good-natured, easy-going, lov- 
 able, brilliant, and shiftless. "The fundamental 
 features of the character of the people," says Lech- 
 ner's Guide to Vienna, published in Vienna in 1913, 
 "are justly considered to be joviality and good na- 
 ture. The Viennese has a sympathizing heart, and 
 he is happiest when he has it in his power to be kind 
 and indulgent. He is fond of music and dancing 
 and loves to spend his leisure hours in merry com- 
 pany. In places of public amusement, be they ever 
 so numerously attended, everything goes off in 
 harmless and innocent enjoyment." 
 
 If the Viennese consent to go without food and 
 without shoes and without clothes without making an 
 uproar, then they deserve the palm as the most 
 easy-going people who have ever existed. Such an 
 attitude may w r ell be designated the height of 
 joviality and good nature — the very peak of harm- 
 less and innocent enjoyment — the apotheosis of 
 kindness and indulgence. But whatever a person 
 wants to call this peculiar Viennese trait, it has kept 
 them from erupting in a series of outbreaks that 
 would wreck the city. 
 
 1 ' I have had a very intimate knowledge of Central 
 European affairs for a year or more," said an 
 American army officer in Vienna, "and I know that 
 no other city in Europe would have remained quiet 
 under the same conditions that have obtained in 
 Vienna; but even these easy-going people may take 
 to anarchy unless measures are soon adopted for 
 their relief." 
 
 100
 
 HUSKS 
 
 Vienna is a city of palaces, cafes, and antique shops. 
 The cafes and the antique shops are about on a par 
 numerically. Every fifth doorway in Vienna admits 
 one either to an antique shop or a cafe. The Vienna 
 cafes exist solely as loafing places for the kind and 
 indulgent Viennese. They sell only tea, coffee, and 
 chocolate. The Viennese flock to them early in the 
 morning, get their cups of tea, coffee, or chocolate, 
 and then sit round and talk or read newspapers or 
 write letters or sell things to one another until late 
 in the evening. The cafes are always full, for 
 they are about the only places in the city that 
 are warm. 
 
 In every antique shop there is always somebody 
 who is selling his belongings in order to get enough 
 money on which to exist. The people come in with 
 little newspaper-wrapped bundles under their arms 
 and sell the contents for about one fortieth of their 
 value. The antique dealers in turn sell them to 
 foreigners at about one tenth of their value — in 
 foreign money. The leading newspaper of Vienna 
 carried a full-page advertisement while I was there, 
 addressed, "To the People of Austria" and signed, 
 "A Friend." "If you must sell," read the adver- 
 tisement, "sell only for food and actual necessities 
 of life or for materials and instruments to work at 
 your trades." 
 
 There is an institution in Vienna known as the 
 Dorotheum. It is a big stone building, with many 
 offices, large showrooms, imposing reception rooms, 
 and a general air of security. It is a government 
 pawnshop founded in 1707 by Kaiser Joseph I. It 
 has sixteen branches in different parts of Vienna; 
 
 ior
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 and the amount of business that it does is tremen- 
 dous. I went in and took a look at the people who 
 were waiting in line to pawn their belongings, and 
 then I hunted up the manager and asked him to tell 
 me about it. 
 
 "In the old days," said the manager, "we actually 
 had more articles pawned with us each week than 
 we do now; but the reason is simple. In the old 
 days the people who patronized us most were work- 
 ingmen. They would come on Monday and pawn 
 their clothes. On Saturday they would redeem 
 them. On Sunday they would wear them and on 
 Monday they would come and pawn them again. 
 This went on week after week, so that our books 
 showed an enormous amount of business. 
 
 ' ' To-day our books show about one third as much 
 business as before the war; but the workingman 
 comes to us no longer. His spare clothes have gone 
 for good. He has only what he wears on his back. 
 He has nothing to pawn. Now the people who come 
 are middle-class people. They are pawning the last 
 of their possessions — either the things that they have 
 hitherto treasured too much to pawn or the things 
 which they considered useless. And they never re- 
 deem. Never. The workmen pawned and re- 
 deemed each week. The middle-class people pawn 
 once, and that's the end. 
 
 "The people who come now are ex-army officers 
 and small government officials and physicians and 
 lawyers. Their misery is indescribable. There is 
 one infallible sign of extreme poverty, and that is a 
 pawned wedding ring. Scores of women are pawn- 
 ing their wedding rings each day. They are pawning 
 
 I02
 
 HUSKS 
 
 them to get food. The wedding ring is always the 
 last to go. I know; for I have watched the people 
 come and go for many years. When a person has 
 parted with everything and has no more money and 
 can get no food, what can happen?" 
 
 The little blue-uniformed manager of the Doro- 
 theum looked at me with worried eyes. Then he 
 asked me a question that hundreds of Viennese asked 
 me during my stay. He asked because he really 
 wanted information. He asked because, like all the 
 others, he didn't know. He asked because he was 
 afraid. 
 
 "What do you think will become of us? " he asked. 
 "What do you think is going to happen to us?" 
 There was no trace of a whimper in his voice. But 
 he was afraid. He hoped, as did the others, that I 
 would have a consoling answer at hand. But I had 
 no answer. 
 
 I went down to the pawning lines. A refined- 
 looking elderly woman pawned ten old china plates 
 for 10 crowns — enough to buy one egg. A young 
 girl pawned a silver mesh bag, a cigarette case, and 
 a silver watch for 800 crowns. An old man pawned 
 three kitchen knives and a pair of shears for 20 
 crowns, or the equivalent of ten street -car rides. 
 A woman pawned a wedding ring for 500 crowns. 
 Another woman pawned a gorgeous aquamarine 
 with a diamond at each corner for 5,000 crowns — 
 $16; and it couldn't have been bought anywhere in 
 the United States for less than $700. Another 
 woman pawned a baby's silver teething ring and a 
 silver mug for 50 crowns, or the equivalent of one 
 meal at a cheap restaurant. No wonder they ask 
 
 103
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 what is going to become of them. No wonder they 
 find the problem a mystifying one. 
 
 Practically the only individuals in the city of 
 Vienna who are receiving good food are the very 
 badly undernourished children, who are being fed by 
 the American Relief Administration — the Hoover 
 people. Not all the Vienna children are fed by the 
 Americans; merely the very undernourished ones 
 under the age of fifteen. In Vienna, for example, 
 there are 340,000 children under fifteen years of age. 
 Of these children 332,540 are undernourished — 
 nearly 98 per cent. The number of Vienna children 
 who are fed by the Americans each day is 147,000, 
 or about 44 per cent. In all Austria there are 
 930,000 undernourished children under fifteen years 
 of age, or nearly 79 per cent of the total number 
 under fifteen years old — 1,182,000. In all Austria, 
 including Vienna, the Americans feed 270,000 
 children every day. 
 
 The four Americans — all former army or navy 
 officers — who do the administrative work of the 
 child feeding are thoroughly trained in the American 
 and the Hoover idea of hurdling difficulties. When 
 necessary they work all night. While I was in 
 Vienna one of the American kitchens burned down 
 at night; 14,000 children were fed by that kitchen. 
 The Americans got up early in the morning and 
 plowed in a little harder, and consequently not one 
 of the 14,000 children lost a single meal. This is 
 not the Austrian system. The Austrian system is 
 based on the theory that one should never put off 
 until to-morrow anything that can be put off Tor a 
 couple of weeks. In Lower Austria there is a peasant 
 
 104
 
 HUSKS 
 
 proverb which says, "If God had appointed a 
 Vienna commissioner to create the world it would 
 not yet have been created." The Americans at- 
 tached the can to all commissioners who got in their 
 way. For a time they were hampered by a com- 
 mittee for child help who were passionately addicted 
 to a form of vice known as a "Sitzung." They 
 would get the Americans over to the Reichstag and 
 have Sitzung after Sitzung. A Sitzung consists of 
 sitting round a table and giving vent to a lot of hot 
 air which accomplishes nothing. 
 
 The Americans stood these Sitzungs for a week, 
 and listened carefully to protracted discussions con- 
 cerning the political situation in Vorarlberg, an 
 Austrian province which was then on the verge of 
 seceding from Austria and joining Switzerland. At 
 the end of the week the head of the American Child 
 Feeders rose to his feet and addressed the meeting. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said he, "we have come to Austria 
 to feed your children. Your conversation is prob- 
 ably of some value, but it feeds no children. Since 
 you cannot come to any decisions, we shall act as the 
 situation seems to us to demand, and if we need your 
 advice we will ask for it." The Americans then 
 walked out and went to work. They never went 
 back. The committee, having nothing to sitzung 
 about, fell into decay and evaporated. 
 
 The Austrian imagination was greatly stimulated 
 by the arrival of the Hoover people. One Austrian 
 had a precious scheme for solving the country's food 
 troubles by feeding the population fruit and oatmeal. 
 The great drawback was that Austria had neither 
 fruit nor oatmeal. Another Austrian had figured that 
 
 105
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 everything could be fixed by turning the country 
 over to the wholesale production of frogs. The 
 mayor of the city of Baden, who evidently was under 
 the impression that America was going in so keenly 
 for relief work that it would even support Europe's 
 hungry live stock, addressed a long letter to the 
 "American Animal Stuff Feeding Commission" and 
 said that Baden could feed its children if the Amer- 
 icans would help the city raise goats. The letter 
 agreed that Baden particularly deserved help be- 
 cause "every year before the war broke out the 
 municipality of Baden put the big assembly rooms 
 of the Kurhaus and the public playgrounds at the 
 disposal of the American colony for the celebration 
 of the anniversary of the Day of Independence; 
 and the colony was always received at Baden by the 
 mayor." 
 
 The Hoover representatives attend to the im- 
 portation, the distribution, and the control of the 
 American food. Doctor Pirquet, an Austrian who 
 was formerly a professor at Johns Hopkins Univer- 
 sity, supervises the selection of the undernourished 
 children to be fed. Doctor Pirquet has a system 
 for determining the undernourishment of a child; 
 and after taking a child's sitting height and its weight 
 he can toy with the figures awhile and tell you the 
 exact dimensions of the child's intestines. From 
 this he evolves the child's nourishment in terms of 
 figures. Thus, ioo is the average figure for a well- 
 nourished child; 105 is the figure for a fat, very 
 well-nourished child; 88 means a badly nourished 
 child; and 85 a very badly nourished one. Below 
 85 a child needs hospital treatment; and if its nour- 
 
 106
 
 HUSKS 
 
 ishment figure gets as low as 76 it almost invariably 
 dies. Doctor Pirquet divides the children into three 
 classes: badly nourished, quite badly nourished, and 
 very badly nourished. This last class of children, 
 known as Number Three, contains those whose 
 nourishment figures are as low as 85. They are 
 the ones whom the Americans feed. 
 
 There are hundreds of feeding stations scattered 
 over the city, mostly in schools. There is one in 
 Schonbrunn, the palace of the ex-Emperor, and 
 another in Belvedere, the palace of the Archduke 
 Ferdinand, who was assassinated in Sarajevo in 191 4. 
 
 I don't wish anybody any hard luck, but I wish 
 that every American could go to Vienna Kitchen 
 Number Thirty-one, where the American Relief 
 Administration prepares food for 7,000 children and 
 feeds 3,000 on the premises, so that he could have an 
 idea of the good that has been accomplished through 
 the efforts of the man to whom a gruff regular-army 
 officer in Vienna refers as "The most humane, the 
 best-informed, the most practical, and the biggest- 
 brained man not only in the United States, but in the 
 world to-day — Herbert Hoover." Mr. Hoover has 
 some stanch supporters in Central Europe. It is 
 due entirely to Hoover's conception and foresight 
 that the children of Central Europe are not dying off 
 like flies, and the future of devastated, discouraged, 
 and practically bankrupt Europe will not be left in 
 the hands of a generation of weaklings and inefficients. 
 
 At Kitchen Number Thirty-one the children come 
 into the feeding station in long lines — the boys on 
 one side and the girls on another. Each one carries 
 a cup or a battered pitcher for his ration. They look 
 
 8 107
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 somewhat scrawny, but not distressingly so. But 
 their clothes are very bad. A large percentage of the 
 boys are dressed in old Austrian uniforms cut down 
 to fit them. Their shoes are awful — mere rags of 
 shoes, broken open and home patched. 
 
 The day on which I visited Kitchen Number 
 Thirty-one was cold and raw and rainy. Just out- 
 side the feeding station was a child who had lost his 
 card. He had no shoes, and he was standing bare- 
 footed in the slush, waiting for his friends to come 
 out. They don't look so bad until one asks their 
 ages. Then one discovers that little shrimps of boys, 
 who look not a day over six years old, are ten 
 and twelve and thirteen years old. Fourteen-year- 
 old children, who ought to be fairly sizable, look 
 just about large enough to be in kindergarten instead 
 of the last grade of the grammar school. And 
 children who look as though they had just learned to 
 talk a few weeks before are in reality seven and 
 eight years old. 
 
 Several children were wearing clothes of a peculiar 
 texture. We asked them about it. They were the 
 children of former army officers, and the clothes 
 were made out of window curtains. One boy was 
 wearing a suit made out of one of his mother's old 
 dresses. Girls in many instances were wearing 
 dresses which had been made from tablecloths, bed- 
 spreads, and the heavy stuff which the Austrians 
 hang over the lower part of their windows in the 
 winter to keep out draughts. One had on a suit 
 made out of a light-weight carpet. 
 
 I was in Vienna several weeks. I got one piece of 
 butter; but there were three weeks when I couldn't 
 
 108
 
 HUSKS 
 
 buy it. White bread was never served in restaurants. 
 For about 200 crowns one could occasionally buy a 
 large loaf in devious and underhand ways; and 
 when one did that he could always wrap it up in a 
 newspaper and lug it with him whenever he went to 
 a restaurant. People who attended select dinner 
 parties would appear with bundles under their arms — 
 bread or butter which they had bought from Schleich- 
 handlers. The white bread was always made with- 
 out milk, and it tasted a great deal like well-ground 
 birch sawdust in a semi-petrified state. There was 
 next to nothing in the markets except evil-looking 
 apples, spinach, cabbage, and beets. The markets 
 whose stalls were once filled with the finest meats 
 and fresh fish displayed occasional attenuated sec- 
 tions of strange animals and a few pallid and sickly 
 salted fish, but their prices were far beyond the 
 reach of the majority of Viennese. For example, 
 corned beef cost 200 crowns a kilogram in January. 
 A kilogram is about two pounds — one meal for a 
 small family. If a family had only one such piece 
 of meat once a week for a year, the total cost would 
 be 10,400 crowns, or more than the entire year's 
 salary of a railway conductor. 
 
 The children whom the Americans feed receive 
 each day a cup of chocolate, made with milk and 
 sweetened with sugar, and a huge slice of white bread 
 made with milk and honey, or something equally 
 good. Possibly an Austrian millionaire could have 
 such a meal; but I couldn't buy it when I was in 
 Vienna — and anyone with a few American dollars 
 in Vienna is as good as a millionaire. At Kitchen 
 Number Thirty-one the supervisor gave me a cup of 
 
 109
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 chocolate and a piece of bread so that I could taste it. 
 I affected polite interest. I ate the chocolate and 
 bread in rather a detached way, as though I were 
 merely doing it to put the supervisor at her ease. 
 But it was the first — and it was the only — real food 
 I had had in Vienna. If anyone had come up and 
 tried to take it away from me I would have snarled 
 and snapped at him. 
 
 The hospitals can't feed their patients. An 
 Austrian came to an American in Vienna to ask for 
 help. His wife had tuberculosis. She was in a 
 hospital. For breakfast she got black coffee; at 
 ten o'clock she was given soup; at noon she had 
 soup and black bread; for dinner at night she re- 
 ceived black bread and black coffee. No milk, no 
 fats, no delicacies. There are thousands and thou- 
 sands in Vienna on the same diet. 
 
 The children whom the Americans feed are com- 
 paratively well off, but there are nearly 56 per cent 
 of the undernourished Vienna children under the age 
 of fifteen who aren't receiving any food from the 
 American kitchens. And in all Austria, out of the 
 total number of undernourished children under 
 fifteen years of age, 71 per cent eat what their 
 parents are able to buy them. Great numbers of 
 people must live on their government food rations; 
 and how any person can keep life in his body on 
 Vienna food rations is a mystery. Here's what one 
 person can buy at government prices: 3 pounds 
 of bread a week; yi pound of flour; % pound of 
 beans or peas ; X pound of margarine — maybe, and 
 maybe not; l / s pound of meat, and 1 pound of 
 potatoes every other week. Lay that amount of 
 
 no
 
 HUSKS 
 
 food on a table and look at it. It's scarcely a square 
 meal for a small dog. If a New York woman were 
 told that her Pomeranian would have to live on that 
 amount of food for a week she'd have hysterics. 
 There are thousands of Viennese who have been 
 living on such rations for a long, long time, and 
 who may have to live on them for a much longer 
 time. People have pawned their furniture, their 
 clothes, their carpets, and even their beds to buy 
 food. When everything has gone they live on the 
 government rations and die very slowly. The 
 death rate among children from tuberculosis is almost 
 ioo per cent greater than before the war. The death 
 rate has risen to such an extent and the birth rate 
 has fallen so abruptly that Doctor Pirquet estimates 
 that if this condition should continue for another 
 fifteen years the population of Vienna would be 
 wiped out. I have heard Americans say: "But 
 people can't live on so little food ! It can't be done ! " 
 They get excited. "If they are trying to live on 
 that, why don't they go away?" they say. "Why 
 don't they move to other countries? Why don't 
 they get land in the country? Why don't they do 
 something?" Those are some of the questions they 
 usually ask; and they're easily answered. They 
 can't go away because they haven't enough money 
 to go with; and, besides, other countries don't want 
 them. There's no room for them on Austrian farms. 
 There's nothing that they can do — but starve and 
 hope for better things. 
 
 The hoping, I don't mind saying, is at a very low 
 ebb in Vienna. The bulk of the people are abso- 
 lutely down and out. I walked into scores of homes 
 
 in
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 in search of information, and asked the most inti- 
 mate questions concerning their finances and their 
 manner of living. Never once did I meet with a 
 rebuff. 
 
 I have no room in this chapter for the scores of 
 cases which fill my notebooks. I can quote a few: 
 
 Baron Rineland was an officer in the Austrian 
 army. Before the war he maintained a large es- 
 tablishment for his wife and twenty-year-old daugh- 
 ter. His total income now, from pension and sal- 
 ary, is 8,400 crowns a year. It takes over 60,000 
 crowns, remember, to live frugally. He sold his 
 horses; then he sold his silver; now he is selling his 
 furniture. His daughter gives music lessons at 
 6 crowns a lesson — 2 cents. The baroness does her 
 own work. Comparatively speaking, they're not 
 badly off, though they get their food at the Vienna 
 public feeding stations. 
 
 In a room whose temperature was around thirty- 
 eight degrees sat a woman and a young girl making 
 little baskets out of colored tissue paper. The 
 woman was the wife of a captain in the Austrian 
 army. He was an Austrian, but lived in Galicia, 
 which is now Poland. His wife was a Viennese, 
 but by marrying a man who lived in Galicia, she 
 now ranks as a Pole. Every Austrian officer, before 
 marrying, had to have a capital of 48,000 crowns. 
 Her husband had only 24,000. He got a special 
 dispensation from the Emperor to marry with the 
 24,000-crown capital. The money is deposited with 
 the government, and the interest comes to the 
 couple. The husband was killed. The wife, being 
 a Pole, cannot get the 24,000 crowns, which through 
 
 112
 
 HUSKS 
 
 depreciation is now worth about $80 instead of the 
 $5,000 that it used to be worth. She has applied 
 to change her citizenship, but she can get no action. 
 She has two children. The boy is over fifteen years 
 of age and therefore cannot be fed by the Americans. 
 He is starving, though his sister deprives herself of 
 food for him. The woman's expenses last year were 
 11,690 crowns; and her total earnings were 10,025. 
 She made up the difference by selling her furniture 
 and belongings. Her earnings will be the same this 
 year, but her expenses, owing to increased prices, 
 will be much higher. She and her two children live 
 entirely on government rations ; week after week they 
 exist on bread, beans, and cabbage. The average 
 cost per week is 250 crowns. The material of each 
 basket which they weave costs 5 crowns, and they 
 receive 9 crowns for it. Each one takes two hours 
 to make. She wanted only two things: help for 
 her son, and help to become an Austrian citizen so 
 that she could get her 24,000 crowns. My taxicab, 
 on the morning that I visited this family, happened 
 to cost exactly what the mother spends for food in 
 one week. 
 
 Director Amsuss is an official in the Court of 
 Justice. He is paid 4,800 crowns a year. For 
 thirteen years he was in the navy, so he also receives 
 a pension of 4,800 crowns, making a total of 9,600 
 crowns. He had a wife and a son and two daughters. 
 One of the daughters, Rosalie, who was eleven years 
 old, was dying of starvation. She was dying in the 
 next room. You have probably never heard a child 
 dying of starvation — or seen one. I hope you never 
 will. I saw Rosalie Amsuss and heard her. Her 
 
 113
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 face was like a bird's skull, and every little while she 
 would gasp a few times. I think I shouted at the 
 director to know why some one wasn't doing some- 
 thing. I think I may have sworn quite a good deal. 
 I asked him why the Americans didn't feed the 
 child. He said that they had. For some time she 
 had gone to the feeding stations, but she had been 
 too undernourished. Soon she had had to go to 
 bed. The Americans broke their rules and allowed 
 food to be taken to her, and the doctor from the 
 Americans came every day, but it was no use. Now 
 she couldn't eat — to-night she would be dead — he 
 had asked for an advance of pay to bury her. There 
 were Christmas greens still hanging on the chande- 
 lier, and the noonday sun threw a bright splotch on 
 the green carpet — and she was dying of starvation in 
 the next room. Director Amsuss made no appeal 
 for help, but big tears welled out of his eyes and 
 ran down his cheeks. I asked him if there was 
 anything I could do for Rosalie. He shook his 
 head. She wanted nothing but rest until she 
 died. But his son — his son was a doctor of laws. 
 He was thirty years old and received 4 crowns a 
 day — his wife had just had a baby — all three of 
 them were starving. 
 
 Four crowns a day ! A cent and a third ! 
 
 The director went with me to the door. Rosalie's 
 mother and sister came to say good-by and when they 
 spoke they wept. The director merely said that it 
 was a very unhappy world. He had thought that 
 when he was an old man his children would sustain 
 him, whereas he saw them dying and could do 
 nothing to help.
 
 HUSKS 
 
 Every apartment house has its tragedy — fre- 
 quently its scores of tragedies. I found them wher- 
 ever I turned. 
 
 No American understands how the people endure 
 these things silently. No outbreak would help them ; 
 but usually, under such conditions, people resort to 
 violence. 
 
 I hunted up and discussed this matter with Karl 
 Tomann, the leader of the Communist or Bolshevik 
 party in Austria. Tomann is a short, thin, sallow- 
 skinned, nervous man about thirty-five years old. 
 He was in the Austrian army early in the war. 
 He was wounded and captured on the Russian front 
 in 1 91 5, was sent to hospitals in Kieff and Moscow, 
 and was then sent east by slow stages until he 
 reached Omsk. He was put to work in various Ural 
 mines, and after that he was made a farm laborer. 
 In the long days of the Siberian summer, he said 
 he and the other prisoners were made to work from 
 three in the morning until eleven at night — twenty 
 hours. When they weakened from fatigue they 
 were flogged. With Kerensky's rise to power 
 things were better for a time, but eventually much 
 worse than under the Czar. When the revolution 
 came he was freed and went to Moscow. He worked 
 with Lenine in person from April, 191 8, to December, 
 191 8, when he left Russia to take up the work in 
 Austria. Speaking of Siberian prisoners, there are 
 thousands still in Siberia. They have been there for 
 four or five years. They can't get home. So far 
 as they know, they may be there for life. It's rather 
 tough on their families. 
 
 Tomann, in January, was in almost daily com- 
 
 115
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 munication with Moscow by courier. He was re- 
 ceiving regular reports from the Bolsheviks in the 
 United States. 
 
 America, Tomann said, was far more ripe for 
 Bolshevism than is Europe. The people who come 
 back from America say that the outlook is good. I 
 asked him what he meant by good, and he replied 
 good for Bolshevism. I asked him if he was sending 
 agitators to America as well as getting them back. 
 He hesitated, and finally refused to answer. I asked 
 him what he meant by saying the outlook was good 
 for Bolshevism in America. He said the high rate 
 of exchange made it impossible for Europe to buy 
 from America. As a result America would soon be 
 overproduced and the factories would have to shut 
 down, thus throwing great numbers of workmen out 
 of positions. When this happened the workmen 
 would go Bolshevik. He looked for America to go 
 Bolshevik in about two years' time. 
 
 Tomann wasn't at all convinced of America's 
 idealism. From his point of view the help which 
 America was giving to Austria was being given 
 by American capitalists for purely capitalistic rea- 
 sons. They will help, he thinks, just so long as 
 there is some advantage to be gained from helping. 
 I asked him what advantages he was talking about. 
 He replied that there were two things to be dragged 
 out of Austria. One was the waterworks, the other 
 was the children, who in the future will be able to 
 work and be the slaves of American capital. That's 
 what he thought American capital has in mind — 
 the enslaving of the Austrian children. I told 
 Tomann that I supposed he thought American cap- 
 
 116
 
 HUSKS 
 
 ital helped the victims of the Messina earthquake 
 and the San Francisco fire so that it could enslave 
 the Italian and the Californian children. He was 
 full of some ripe Bolshevik ideas, was Tomann — 
 about as ripe as a Roquefort cheese. 
 
 He talked himself round in a circle about as rap- 
 idly as it could be done. Bolshevism was coming in 
 America because the European nations couldn't buy 
 from the capitalists, and because the factories would 
 therefore have to close from overproduction. The 
 capitalists were trying to avert this, but couldn't. 
 Note that, please; and then note the following 
 statements which Tomann also made: Wilson has 
 been disavowed by the Senate, which is composed 
 of capitalists. He was disavowed because he fa- 
 vored the League of Nations. The capitalists con- 
 sidered that the League hindered capitalist expan- 
 sion. Why did it hamper capitalist expansion? 
 Very simple! Because it was founded to save the 
 impoverished states of Europe from ruin. The 
 saving of them would have cut into capitalistic 
 pockets, and therefore they are against it. Clear? 
 It's as clear as a hard-boiled egg! 
 
 "Look here, Tomann," said I, "if the capitalists 
 could save the impoverished states of Europe from 
 ruin the states could buy from the capitalists, and 
 then none of the factories would have to shut down, 
 and America would be in no danger of Bolshevism. 
 How about that?" 
 
 "The war," replied Tomann, dodging the question 
 nimbly, "has created whole poor countries. The 
 war was caused by capitalistic-anarchistic produc- 
 tion. States which were once creditor states are now 
 
 117
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 debtor states. Practically all Americans believe 
 that they belong to the class which possesses money ; 
 and they think that Bolshevism won't come because 
 the workmen don't suffer." 
 
 "Whither do we drift?" I asked. "Let's get off 
 that capitalistic-anarchistic stuff and get back to 
 talk that means something. Why doesn't Austria 
 go Bolshevik?" 
 
 "Capitalism," Tomann answered, ignoring my 
 question, "can never help Austria. The feeding of 
 children by Americans may avert an immediate 
 revolution, but it can have no lasting good." 
 
 "Well," said I, "is it better to let the children 
 starve and have a revolution, or feed the children 
 and avert a revolution?" 
 
 "That question is difficult to answer," said 
 Tomann. "Feeding the children is a great bene- 
 ficial action at the moment, but it can have no last- 
 ing good. I am against the extension of credits to 
 Austria, but I am neither for nor against the feeding 
 of the people." 
 
 "What do you mean — neither for nor against?" 
 I asked. "You are either for or against everything. 
 You like dogs or you don't like dogs; you are in 
 favor of rotten eggs or you are not in favor of 
 them; you think Emma Goldman is either a help 
 or a hindrance to society." 
 
 "Ah yes," said Tomann. "That is a very im- 
 portant point. In theory I am against feeding, 
 because it is not good that a poor man's child should 
 receive alms. But in this instance I am forced to 
 disregard my theories. Theoretically I'm against it, 
 but actually I'm not." 
 
 118
 
 HUSKS 
 
 "And why," I repeated, "doesn't Austria go 
 Bolshevik?" 
 
 "We are waiting for some neighboring nation to 
 go," he said. "Our greatest hope is Italy. When 
 she goes Austria will go." 
 
 "You had a grand chance," I reminded him, 
 "when Hungary went Bolshevik on one side of you 
 and Bavaria set up a people's republic on the other 
 side. What more could you want than that?" 
 
 "The time was not ripe," said Tomann, passing 
 his hand wearily over his brow. "And now I have 
 much work to do." So I came away. 
 
 But even the weakness and stupidity of the Bol- 
 shevik leaders and the smallness of the Bolshevik 
 party in Austria do not explain why the people 
 do not rise in rage against the intolerable conditions 
 under which they are living. 
 
 The American Relief Warehouse in Vienna will 
 do much to relieve misery and distress. This 
 scheme, which was worked out by Hoover, makes it 
 possible for a person in the United States to buy a 
 food draft at an American bank. This draft is sent 
 to some person in Vienna by registered mail, and 
 that person presents it at the American Relief 
 Warehouse and receives good American food for it. 
 If money alone were sent, he couldn't buy decent 
 food in the open market. In the first ten days after 
 the announcement of the new warehouse scheme 
 140,000 Viennese sent postcards to relatives and 
 friends in America asking that food drafts be sent 
 to them. 
 
 Austria is a little country, but she holds about as 
 much misery to the square inch as any other nation 
 
 119
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 ever held. The Peace Conference, as I said at the 
 beginning, has stripped her of everything she needs 
 in order to exist, but it has left her with enough 
 hunger to supply all the other nations with a liberal 
 amount. It's the only thorough and complete job 
 that the Peace Conference did.
 
 Ill 
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 TET us suppose that a low tennis shoe of the 
 L' variety familiarly known as a sneaker has been 
 worn for a number of months until it has become 
 soft and flabby and slightly bulged in spots. Let 
 us then suppose that a dog has joyously discovered 
 this sneaker and appropriated it and dragged it 
 round by the toe in a spirit of gay and careless 
 abandon until the toe has been bent down — down 
 dejectedly. After this maltreatment the profile 
 of the sneaker would be very similar to the Czecho- 
 slovak state as it appears on all maps issued since 
 the Peace Conference took its first convulsive and 
 enormously successful steps toward making a mess 
 of Europe. The heel of the Czechoslovak sneaker 
 rests heavily on Austria. The rear end of it — and 
 the opening at the top through which the foot is 
 inserted — snuggles into Germany. The eyelets for 
 the shoe laces are the rich coal districts of Upper 
 Silesia and Teschen. Poland presses down on the 
 eyelets and on the entire toe. The ball of the shoe 
 rubs irritatingly on Hungary, and the tip of the 
 toe is applied snugly to Rumania. 
 Such a wealth of technical detail is, I fear, apt to 
 
 121
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 confuse and bore the reader. But the condition 
 which exists within Czechoslovakia is so closely- 
 connected with the peculiarly wandering shape of the 
 country that I am forced to be technical against 
 my better judgment. 
 
 Czechoslovakia, then, is shaped like an old tennis 
 shoe which has undergone great vicissitudes. The 
 heel section is a bowl rimmed with hills and moun- 
 tains. At the bottom of the bowl, which goes by the 
 name of Czeski or Bohemia or Bohmen, live the 
 Czechs, or Bohemians — 6,000,000 of them; and on 
 the rim of the bowl, forming a palpitating and 
 irregular fringe to the 6,000,000 Czechs, live 3,000,- 
 000 Germans. The Germans do not care for the 
 Czechs. They hate them in good German fashion. 
 Nor is the hating in Central Europe confined to the 
 Germans alone. The Czechs are also first-class 
 haters. Say what you will about the peoples of 
 Central Europe, but do not try to cast any reflections 
 on their hating abilities. 
 
 So the Czechs and the Germans in the heel section 
 of Czechoslovakia hate one another. It would be 
 unfair to say that the Germans hate the Czechs 
 more than the Czechs hate the Germans. In any 
 sort of official hating contest they would probably 
 tie for first place, along with all the other dominant 
 nationalities in Central Europe. Some people in 
 that section of the world talk loosely about an 
 organization of countries which shall be known as 
 the Danube Federation, but such an organization, I 
 believe, might more expressively be termed the 
 United Hates of Central Europe. The Czechs hate 
 the Germans in the heel of the shoe because the 
 
 122
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 Germans for many hundreds of years oppressed or 
 tried to oppress or talked about oppressing them. 
 And the Germans hate the Czechs because the 
 Czechs are giving them a little taste of their own 
 medicine. They are, as the uncultured sometimes 
 remark, handing it back to the Germans. The 
 Germans are not — or were not in February, 1920, 
 when I visited Czechoslovakia — allowed to have a 
 voice in the framing of the laws under which they 
 must live; and the Czechs frowned on anyone who 
 spoke German. They instructed German business 
 houses to write letters in the Czech language, and 
 to cut out the German. The Germans were getting 
 up an hour earlier every morning and going to bed 
 an hour later every evening so that they could 
 indulge in as much daily hate against the Czechs 
 as the situation seemed to them to demand. 
 
 The toe section of the shoe is Slovensko, or Slo- 
 vakia, which is inhabited largely by Slovaks. There 
 are about 2,000,000 Slovaks in the toe section. But 
 along the sole of the shoe there are upward of 
 700,000 Hungarians, or Magyars, all busy at the 
 great Central European pastime of hating. Strangely 
 enough, the Hungarians do not hate the Slovaks. 
 But they are filled with a passionate and searing 
 hate for the Czechs who have come down into 
 Slovakia to rule the Slovaks and the Germans and 
 the Hungarians and anyone else who may happen 
 to be within the boundaries of Slovakia. The 
 Hungarians hate the Czechs because they have come 
 down out of Bohemia and driven about 15,000 
 Hungarians out of Presburg, the ancient Hungarian 
 capital on the Danube, where the kings of Hungary 
 
 9 123
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 were crowned for upward of four hundred years. 
 They hate them because they have seized some very 
 choice territory which Hungary claims has always 
 been Hungarian and is Hungarian and always will 
 be Hungarian. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Czechs endure all 
 this hating with equanimity. It is not the custom 
 of Central European nations to turn the other cheek 
 or love their neighbors as themselves or anything 
 like that. Any nation that turns the other cheek in 
 Central Europe is almost sure to have its ear torn 
 off, its eye blackened, and its gold-plated collar 
 button and its moss-agate cuff links purloined before 
 it can say Jack Robinson, or even refer warningly 
 to that august assemblage, the Peace Conference. 
 Many people ask why it is that the Peace Conference 
 should be referred to as an august assemblage or an 
 august body. The reason is very simple. August is 
 a month which makes everybody in Central Europe 
 hot, and so does the Peace Conference. 
 
 But as I was saying, the Czechs do not remain 
 quiescent under the storm of Hungarian hate. No 
 Hungarian can outhate a Czech so long as the 
 Czech's hater has a single cylinder on which to run. 
 The Czechs not only hate the Hungarians in return, 
 but they advertise their hates extensively. Late 
 in February, 1920, in the second year following the 
 great war, the Czechs had erected on the Hungarian- 
 Slovakian border before Presburg great stretches of 
 barbed- wire entanglements, twenty feet in width, 
 against the Hungarians; and behind the entangle- 
 ments they had dug trenches of the most approved 
 design, and at fifty-yard intervals there were ma- 
 
 124
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 chine guns. Along the roads there were Czech 
 trenches and barbed wire, as well as along the electric 
 railways and the railroad; while for miles up and 
 down the Danube the bushes on the river bank were 
 laced and entwined with Czech barbed wire. 
 
 There were Czech guards and Czech sentries every- 
 where; and when I started down the Danube from 
 Presburg to Budapest I saw an American woman in 
 uniform — a duly accredited worker for an American 
 relief organization — being searched down to the skin 
 by a woman searcher on the orders of Czech customs 
 officials. 
 
 The situation is complicated in Slovakia by a 
 number of fairly well-developed hates which exist 
 between the Slovaks and the Czechs. 
 
 The Czechs and the Slovaks are both Slav races, 
 but they are divided by the Little Carpathian Moun- 
 tains which run diagonally across the country from 
 the top of the shoe laces to the front edge of the 
 heel, so that there is a natural division between the 
 two peoples in spite of the similarity between their 
 languages. But there are other serious differences; 
 such, for example, as the difference in character. 
 The Slovaks are hard-working, patient, ignorant, 
 lovable, conservative, and very religious people. 
 The Czechs are hard, socialistically inclined, and 
 rather contemptuous of religion. 
 
 The Czechs are running Slovakia, and Slovakia 
 is full of Czech officials. Like all socialists, the 
 Czechs want to socialize everything in sight, and the 
 Slovaks are not poignantly eager to be socialized. 
 Slovakia is full of Czech soldiers. There is friction 
 here and friction there ; friction over this and friction 
 
 125
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 over that. The Czechs are amateurs in some lines 
 of endeavor, but they are highly gifted in the art of 
 rubbing everybody the wrong way. 
 
 Possibly a great deal of this is due to the sudden 
 exaggeration of national feeling which has swept over 
 the Czechs in the first flush of their freedom, so 
 that Czech culture and Czech ideas and the Czech 
 language and the Czech people seem to them the 
 finest and most beautiful things in all the world; 
 and possibly this national feeling will become less 
 pronounced with the passage of time. But what- 
 ever the reason, there is friction in Slovakia between 
 the Slovaks and the Czechs, as well as a vicious, 
 penetrating, outsize, hair-raising hate between the 
 Czechs and the Hungarians. Since the Czech press 
 agents, of whom there are many, will damn me in 
 ear-splitting tones and call me upward of fifty-seven 
 different varieties of a liar for these statements, I will 
 return to them and elaborate on them at another 
 point in my narrative. 
 
 The extreme toe of the Czechoslovak shoe is the 
 supposedly self-governing state of Rusinia, or Car- 
 pathian Russia, inhabited by some 700,000 Rusins, 
 or Ruthenians, or Little Russians. The Rusins have 
 always been known as Ruthenians, but as soon as 
 they obtained their freedom they decided that they 
 wanted to be known as Rusins. I do not know why 
 this is so, and neither, apparently, do the Rusins. 
 But if they wish to be called Rusins they should be 
 called Rusins, for that advantage appears to be 
 the only one which the Rusins obtained from the 
 Great War and the tireless activities of the Peace 
 
 Conference. 
 
 126
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 I have no doubt that the average American is in 
 the same box as myself as regards Rusinia. I had 
 not only never heard of it before starting my Euro- 
 pean wanderings, but after I had heard of it I 
 couldn't find it on a map. None the less, there are 
 700,000 of these Rusins; and the supposedly self- 
 governing state of Rusinia forms the extreme, down- 
 drooping toe of the Czechoslovak sneaker; and it 
 has — or it did have in February, 1920 — an American 
 president. I am going to tell you about Rusinia 
 at greater length than its size and importance 
 deserve, because its story forms a remarkably fine 
 advertisement for the extreme acuteness, omnis- 
 cience, fair-mindedness, augustness, and studiousness 
 of the Peace Conference. It also forms an excellent 
 groundwork for a three-act comedy. Nothing is 
 lacking. You have the young American who talks 
 Pittsburgh slang and becomes president of a Central 
 European state ; you have the natives in picturesque 
 embroidered vests, high black boots, and loose white 
 pants with fringes on the bottom; you have an old 
 castle on a hilltop in the dual capacity of seminary 
 and a president's home; you have equal parts of 
 intrigue and scenery; you have everything, in fact, 
 except Mr. George M. Cohan. 
 
 The northern boundary of the toe of the Czecho- 
 slovak sneaker is the Carpathian Mountains. On 
 the southern side of the mountains live the Rusins. 
 On the northern side of the mountains, in that 
 section of Poland known as Galicia, are the Rutheni- 
 ans. The Ruthenians and the Rusins are the same 
 people, but they can't get together, because of the 
 mountains between them. If each Rusin were 
 
 127
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 equipped with an airplane he could hold regular 
 communication with the Ruthenians across the 
 mountains. Not having airplanes, the Ruthenians 
 and the Rusins cannot mix. 
 
 Not being able to trade or mingle with their blood 
 brothers on the northern side of the mountains, the 
 Rusins had all their dealings with the Hungarians 
 to the south. Rusinia is practically a solid mass of 
 mountains, which are covered with pine forests. 
 The valleys, all of them, run down into Hungary. 
 The Rusins took their wood down the valleys, which 
 was the only direction in which they could take it, 
 and sold it to the Hungarians; and the Rusin 
 peasants went down into the fertile Hungarian plains 
 each year, helped to gather the harvests on the 
 Hungarian farms, and went back into Rusinia each 
 autumn with enough foodstuffs to last them through 
 the winter — foodstuffs which the mountainous na- 
 ture of their own land made it impossible for them 
 to raise. Rusinia was a part of Hungary. Hun- 
 gary depended on Rusinia for pine wood for building 
 and for mine timbers, and the Rusins depended on 
 Hungary for their food. The Rusins had no dealings 
 with the Czechs and no dealings with the Slovaks. 
 
 The Rusins have always been much given to emi- 
 grating to the United States. There are 700,000 
 Rusins in Rusinia, and in the United States there 
 are another 500,000 of them. During the time that 
 America stayed neutral the Rusins in America seemed 
 unconcerned over the land of their birth. But as 
 soon as President Wilson came out with his pregnant 
 remarks concerning the rights of small nations the 
 American Rusins sat up and took notice. They 
 
 128
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 decided immediately that they wanted Rusinia to be 
 free. Never before had this idea attained any 
 prominence in Rusin circles. But President Wilson's 
 remarks rilled every Rusin-American breast with a 
 passionate longing for a free Rusinia. This move- 
 ment originated in America and stayed right where it 
 started for a long, long time. The Rusins in Rusinia 
 knew nothing about it. In June, 191 8, the Rusins 
 in America got together and elected an American 
 National Council of Uhro-Rusins, and toward the 
 end of July the twenty-three members of this council 
 met and prepared a memorandum to be presented to 
 President Wilson. This memorandum demanded 
 complete independence, or at least autonomy, for 
 Rusinia. Having prepared this memorandum, the 
 Rusin councilors did nothing for nearly three months. 
 But at the end of that time they held another 
 meeting and elected as representative a young man 
 named Gregory Satkovich. By so doing they in- 
 jected upward of seven quarts of jazz into the move- 
 ment for Rusin independence, and the movement 
 immediately attained such impetus that almost no- 
 body who originally laid hands on it has since been 
 able to let go of it. 
 
 Gregory Satkovich is a Pittsburgh lawyer. He 
 was born in Holubina, Rusinia, in 1886. His father 
 was a notary and the head man of a small district. 
 The elder Satkovich was very pro-Russian in his 
 beliefs, and since Rusinia was a part of Hungary the 
 Hungarians could see very little advantage in his 
 pro-Russian views. Consequently they made things 
 unpleasant for him and he promptly packed up and 
 emigrated to America. That was in 1890. In 1891 
 
 129
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 he sent back to Rusinia for his wife and the six 
 children, and the whole Satkovich family moved to 
 America. The elder Satkovich edited a Rusin news- 
 paper in Homestead, Pennsylvania, for twenty-five 
 years. The children received good schooling. Greg- 
 ory, who was next to the youngest, went to the 
 De Witt Clinton High School in New York, and then 
 to Duquesne University, where he received an 
 A.B. degree in 1907. In 19 10 he was graduated 
 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. 
 He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar the same 
 year, and practiced steadily until he got tangled 
 up with the movement for Rusin independence in 
 October, 191 8. 
 
 Prior to October, 191 8, Gregory Satkovich was con- 
 cerned only with such things as the independence of 
 the Satkovich family, the batting average of Honus 
 Wagner, and the annoying rise in the price of lamb 
 chops. But with his election to the American 
 National Council of Uhro-Rusins his mind was 
 promptly filled with plans for a free Rusinia. He 
 was a solid American citizen. Rusinia was only a 
 name to him, for he had left the country when he 
 was five years old. He didn't know what the 
 Rusins in Rusinia wanted, or why Rusinia should be 
 free, but he was a young American and an energetic 
 American, and he had been elected to an organiza- 
 tion that was trying to get freedom for Rusinia. 
 So he threw up his law practice and sailed into the 
 job of obtaining Rusin independence. 
 
 He translated the memorandum of the national 
 council into English, gathered a few prominent 
 Rusins, and rushed to Washington. He saw McAdoo. 
 
 139
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 He saw his Congressman. And on October 21st 
 he saw President Wilson in the Blue Room. 
 
 "Dog-gone!" said Mr. Satkovich, reminiscently, 
 as we sat together over a pitcher of beer in the 
 capital of Czechoslovakia. "Dog-gone! I remem- 
 ber it yet! I was spokesman. I slipped him the 
 memorandum. He took to it very kindly and 
 promised to help us. He said we couldn't be in- 
 dependent, but he promised to help us get our 
 autonomy . Dog-gone ! ' ' 
 
 The Rusins of America then asked President 
 Wilson for help, and President Wilson promised to 
 assist Rusinia in becoming autonomous. President 
 Wilson also thought it would be expedient for the 
 Rusins to seek membership in the Mid-European 
 Union — a union of eleven small nationalities of 
 Middle Europe who were banded together in 
 America for the purpose of cementing the moral and 
 material forces of small oppressed nationalities 
 against the enemies of the Entente. The president 
 of this Mid-European Union was Thomas G. 
 Masaryk, who is now President of Czechoslovakia. 
 So the Rusins sought membership in this union, and 
 requested recognition of Rusinia as a separate 
 nationality. All this was graciously granted by the 
 Mid-European Union on October 23, 191 8. 
 
 In November the Rusins in America decided that 
 Rusinia should line up with Czechoslovakia as an 
 autonomous state. A plebiscite of Rusins in Amer- 
 ica was held, and showed that 66 per cent were in 
 favor of joining the Czechs, 20 per cent were in 
 favor of joining the Ruthenians, and that the rest 
 favored being just plain independent, And a,ll the 
 
 '3*
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 while the Rusins in Rusinia were plodding along in 
 the same old way — just Rusing along, so to speak. 
 
 In February, 191 9, Mr. Satkovich, accompanied 
 by one other Rusin- American, arrived in Paris and 
 submitted the results of the plebiscite to that august 
 body, the Peace Conference. The august body ac- 
 cepted the plebiscite, and as a result Rusinia became 
 an autonomous state under Czechoslovakia. 
 
 When President Satkovich told me the story of 
 Rusinia's rise he didn't refer to the Peace Conference 
 as an august body. His opinion of the Peace Con- 
 ference for accepting the plebiscite was not high. 
 
 "What," I asked President Satkovich, "did the 
 men in Paris know about Rusinia or about the merits 
 of Rusinia's claims?" 
 
 "Not a damned thing," said President Satkovich. 
 
 So Rusinia became an autonomous state under 
 Czechoslovakia, and Mr. Satkovich went down to 
 Uzhorod, the capital of Rusinia, to break the glad 
 news to the native Rusins. 
 
 He had his troubles traveling through Czecho- 
 slovakia, as almost everyone does. The Czechs 
 don't make it easy for travelers even now. When 
 Mr. Satkovich was doing his traveling the Hun- 
 garians in Slovakia were celebrating a national 
 holiday and were on the verge of rebelling against 
 the Czech soldiers who were scattered promiscu- 
 ously over the countryside. The Czech soldiers 
 were, consequently, not only on the qui vive, but 
 were jumping nervously up and down on it. Once 
 when the Satkovich automobile didn't stop quickly 
 enough they shot his rear tires full of holes. 
 
 "Boy, oh, boy!" said President Satkovich, in 
 
 132
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 describing the incident, "I certainly thought they 
 had me dead!" 
 
 But they didn't. He reached the capital of 
 Rusinia at night. It was dark and lonesome. He 
 climbed up the hill to the castle, which was built 
 some seven hundred years ago and is still habitable. 
 His cousin lived in it, being connected with the 
 seminary which now occupies it. His cousin didn't 
 know him. So he introduced himself and announced 
 that he had come to tell the Rusins that they were 
 free. His cousin was unimpressed. It was a de- 
 pressing evening. 
 
 In the morning when Mr. Satkovich rose and 
 looked out of the window of his mediasval bed- 
 chamber he looked down on the Ung River, stretch- 
 ing straight down the valley from the castle. It was 
 a lovely castle. It was a lovely view, but it was 
 somewhat impaired by the fact that the Hungarian 
 Bolsheviks were in the valley, and that the Czechs 
 were holding one side of the river while the Bol- 
 sheviks held the other. The lines were being held 
 by agreement, and there was no fighting. But 
 every little while one of the Czechs in an outburst 
 of national enthusiasm would empty his rifle, and the 
 bullet would usually hit the castle. So Mr. Sat- 
 kovich left the castle and went down into the town 
 and informed the Rusins that they were free. They 
 were pleased with the news, but they doubted it. 
 
 Eventually they believed. The work of their 
 American brothers was highly commended. Mr. 
 Satkovich was made President of the Directorate 
 of Rusinia. 
 
 President Satkovich is paid 5,000 Czechoslovak 
 
 133
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 crowns a month, and that amount, when I met him 
 in February, 1920, was equal to about 65 American 
 dollars. 
 
 "I have to dig into my own pocket every month," 
 he said, sadly. "If I hadn't salted away some coin 
 before I came over here the country would have gone 
 bankrupt long ago" 
 
 Since the population of Rusinia is more than 80 
 per cent illiterate, the ordinary type of election 
 ballot can't be used. President Satkovich has de- 
 vised a new sort — a regular American ballot, with a 
 photograph in place of every name. If a voter 
 hasn't met a candidate he must vote according to the 
 manner in which he is impressed by the candidate's 
 picture. If he leans toward socialism he picks the 
 hardest-looking picture. 
 
 The photographic ballot gives rise to some delicate 
 problems. Shall it be illegal for a candidate to have 
 his photograph retouched? Shall he be permitted 
 to be photographed in his Sunday clothes, or will he 
 be obliged to wear his everyday garments? Shall 
 the picture be full length, exposing the wrinkles in 
 the trousers, or shall it be only head and shoulders, 
 exposing the wrinkles round the ears? These are 
 questions which cannot be answered offhand. 
 
 President Satkovich said that Rusinia was going 
 to have a parliament and a constitution modeled 
 after one of our state constitutions. I asked him on 
 what state constitution the Rusin constitution would 
 be modeled. 
 
 "Pennsylvania, I suppose," said he. "It's the 
 only one I know anything about, but it's so dog- 
 gone rotten that I hate to use it for a model." 
 
 i34
 
 HANDING IT BACK i 
 
 He has five Cabinet ministers : a Minister or Direc- 
 tor of Culture, a Minister of the Interior, a Minister 
 of Finance, a Minister of Law, and lastly, a Minister 
 of Religion and Commerce. The last seemed an 
 odd combination. It brought up pictures of money 
 changers in the temple. I asked the President about 
 it, and he explained satisfactorily by saying that 
 being Minister of Religion didn't provide enough 
 ministering for any active Minister, so that he 
 doubled in commerce, as one might say. 
 
 There is a police force in the Rusin capital, but 
 there seems to be a strong inclination on the part 
 of some of the Rusins, police officers included, to go 
 back to their old position as a part of Hungary 
 instead of remaining a part of the Czechoslovak state. 
 Consequently, a Czech soldier accompanies every 
 Rusin policeman when he is on duty. I asked the 
 President why it should be so. i 
 
 "Safety first," said he, shrugging his shoulders 
 enigmatically. 
 
 He added that the Hungarian propaganda to 
 separate Rusinia from Czechoslovakia was very 
 strong; that there were many posters depicting the 
 better food conditions which would exist under 
 Hungarian rule, and that the Czechs didn't trust the 
 Rusins. 
 
 I have dealt at this undue length with Rusinia 
 because its position explains one or two of the rea- 
 sons why Americans in Central Europe develop 
 flushed faces when they mention the Peace Con- 
 ference. The Peace Conference, knowing nothing 
 about Rusinia, granted autonomy to it on the 
 representations of ex-Rusins who were American 
 
 135
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 citizens, who had been out of touch with their former 
 country for years, and whose views had conse- 
 quently mellowed in retrospect. And here is the 
 situation which existed early in February: 
 
 The ignorance and poverty in Rusinia are of such 
 nature that the Rusins are wholly incapable of gov- 
 erning themselves. Rusinia was formerly a part of 
 Hungary. To-day it is separated from Hungary by 
 a boundary line which is guarded by barbed wire 
 and Czech soldiers and a rigid passport control. 
 The Rusins cannot follow their old custom of going 
 down into the Hungarian plains and earning their 
 winter supply of food by the sweat of their brows. 
 They are dying of starvation daily in the mountains 
 of Rusinia, and they are locked in by the new border 
 with which the Peace Conference in its magnificent 
 and awe-inspiring wisdom has furnished them. 
 Their pine trees no longer roll down the valleys to 
 the natural market in Hungary, and the Czechs 
 have no facilities for rolling them across the moun- 
 tain slopes into Slovakia. 
 
 The American Relief Administration sends food 
 into Rusinia for the children, but in some districts 
 the adults appropriate it and use it to eke out their 
 own miserable rations of grass and vegetable flour. 
 The Rusins are helpless and hopeless. 
 
 Czechoslovakia, then, is shaped like an old tennis 
 shoe. The Czechs, surrounded by Germans, are 
 in the heel; the Slovaks are in the front part of the 
 shoe, and they have a patch of Hungarians along 
 the sole — a very squeaky and troublesome patch. 
 In the extreme toe are the Rusins. Between the 
 Bohemians and the Slovaks are the Moravians — 
 
 136
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 a gentle, kindly, religious, agricultural people. At 
 the top of the shoe laces are the Teschen and Upper 
 Silesian coal fields, mostly inhabited by Poles. 
 Everywhere through Czechoslovakia are Czech sol- 
 diers — in Bohemia, in Moravia, in Slovakia, in 
 Rusinia, and especially round the coal districts. 
 And along the Hungarian border there are trenches 
 and machine guns and acres of barbed- wire entangle- 
 ments and Czech soldiers. 
 
 Czechoslovakia is a beautiful country, a rich 
 country, a country well worth fighting for. Its 
 fertile farm lands lie in broad valleys and on softly 
 swelling hills. Its villages are quaint and clean 
 and substantial. Its towns and cities are satisfy- 
 ingly picturesque. In the windows of all its pro- 
 vision stores the hungry wayfarer, who drops in from 
 starved Austria and stripped Poland, sees butter 
 in tubs and countless eggs and fat Rouquefort and 
 cream and Cheddar cheeses; he sees slabs of bacon 
 and frosted cakes and sweet chocolate; and his eyes 
 glisten at the wealth of the country. Factory 
 chimneys are smoking bravely — a noteworthy sight 
 to persons fresh from Austria, where every stack is 
 cold — and there are plenty of them. 
 
 Of the industries which were claimed before the 
 war by the entire Austro-Hungarian monarchy, 
 Czechoslovakia now has 95 per cent of the sugar 
 industry, 95 per cent of the wool-textile industry, 
 82 per cent of the cotton-textile industry, 78 per 
 cent of the machinery manufactures, 65 per cent of 
 the iron foundries, 50 per cent of the distilleries, all 
 of the china industry, 98 per cent of the glass in- 
 dustry, and 85 per cent of the shoe factories. She 
 
 i37
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 has the coal fields which used to supply the entire 
 Austro-Hungarian Empire with its coal. Czecho- 
 slovakia was the top layer of the old Austria- 
 Hungary. It is as though Austria-Hungary had 
 been a receptacle full of rich milk. All the cream 
 formed at the top, and this cream was skimmed off 
 and given to Czechoslovakia, leaving a very watery 
 fluid for the other people interested. 
 
 Czechoslovakia seems to have everything she 
 needs, with the single exception of raw materials. 
 She is far better off than most of her neighbors. 
 In fact, one might go so far as to say that there is 
 nothing at all the matter with Czechoslovakia except 
 the bad rate of exchange, a small coal shortage, a lack 
 of discipline among government employees and 
 soldiers, a lack of trained officials, too many Ger- 
 mans, too many Hungarians, too many Rusins, low 
 wages, high prices, too much socialism, a shortage of 
 railway cars, too much Peace Conference, too many 
 neighbors who don't care passionately for the 
 country, too much suspicion, too much hatred, too 
 many soldiers, too much boundary, and too much 
 politics. Outside of these few things, which the 
 passage of years will do much to remedy, Czecho- 
 slovakia is all right. 
 
 Prague was the capital of the kingdom of Bohemia 
 and is now the capital of the brand-new Czecho- 
 slovak state. There is a poem which begins with 
 lines to the general effect that, "The man whom I 
 pity knows naught of the city — the wonderful city 
 of Prague." There is some reason for this exuber- 
 ant statement, for Prague is so well stocked with 
 mediaeval towers and palaces and sky lines that 
 
 138
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 nine tenths of the city looks like well-constructed 
 stage scenery instead of a regular town. In every 
 block there is something that was built back in 
 thirteen hundred and something, or fourteen hundred 
 and something, or fifteen hundred and something; 
 and wherever one wanders there are tablets or 
 statues to commemorate somebody's bravery against 
 the Turkish army more than four hundred years ago, 
 or somebody's else historic defense of Prague against 
 the Swedes, or What's-his-name's bold feat of throw- 
 ing a couple of disliked councilors out of a second- 
 story window, or the discovery of fifty or sixty new 
 stars by Tycho Brahe round 1599, or a few of the 
 gallant deeds of the famous king, Ottocar II, who 
 died back in 1278 after living up to his name by 
 traveling far and fast and breaking down with a loud 
 report at the end. 
 
 Lovers of the antique frequently fall into swoon 
 after swoon because of the beautifully carved door- 
 ways and columns and wrought-iron work which 
 ornament the humblest dwellings of Prague; while 
 artists of great poise and experience often burst 
 into tears at their first sight of the spire and walls 
 and towers and battlements of the royal palace and 
 the cathedral rising in a glorious jumble from the 
 heights above the river Moldau. 
 
 The stagy effect of the mediaeval Prague buildings 
 is heightened on Sundays and holidays by the na- 
 tional costumes which the women wear. They are 
 exactly the type of costume which the glorified 
 dairymaids wear in such popular successes as "The 
 Duchess of Discobolus" or "The Prince of Prunella." 
 The skirts are brilliantly red or blue and come only 
 10 139
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 to the knee, and the waists are gracefully puffed and 
 incrusted with beautiful embroidery, and there is a 
 frothy white or red headdress, a purely decorative 
 embroidered apron, and a brilliantly colored shawl 
 which is caught loosely over the arms according to 
 the ideas of the best-known chorus directors. 
 
 Early in February I stood in the Old Town Square 
 of Prague, sometimes known as John Huss Square, 
 to watch the Czech legionaries return from Siberia. 
 Under all conditions the Old Town Square looks like 
 the work of an imaginative artist. There is the 
 mediaeval church of the Hussites at one end, with 
 two high Gothic towers; and midway up the high- 
 pitched roof of each tower are four diminutive 
 towerlets stuck against the slope in such a manner 
 that they look as though they were going to fall 
 off in about six seconds. There is the Kinsky Pal- 
 ace, and a Gothic town hall, and rows of porticoes, 
 and queer old-fashioned buildings with carvings and 
 painted figures and balconies and columns on their 
 fronts. 
 
 With all this as a background, the square began 
 to fill with soldiers. Czechs in American uniforms 
 on which the United States army buttons still re- 
 mained, debouched from one street ; Czechs in French 
 birettas and American uniforms debouched from 
 another street; from a third came a column of two 
 hundred and fifty Czecho-Americans in olive-drab 
 uniforms, headed by two big American flags and 
 singing a Czech marching song as they came. They 
 lined up round the square. From far off there came 
 the bang and the crash of a Czech band. All the 
 bells of Prague went to tolling, the white and red of 
 
 140
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 Czechoslovakia fluttered at all the windows; and 
 into the square marched the Siberian Rifles, re- 
 splendent in twany-brown uniforms purchased in 
 Japan — the first of the Czech units to return from 
 Siberia. 
 
 Incidentally these Czech fighters are the best 
 advertisement that Czechoslovakia has ever had. 
 They are the cream of the Czech fighting forces — 
 finely drilled, husky, hard-fighting, upstanding 
 troops. None of the other Czech military units 
 compares with them. For five years their homes 
 had been only a name to them. They had en- 
 dured the unendurable and surmounted the in- 
 surmountable. 
 
 So the bands blared, the people cheered, along- 
 side the Siberians ran hundreds of Czech women and 
 girls in their national costumes — short skirts, em- 
 broidered aprons, glistening headdresses, foamy 
 waists brilliant with embroidery, beautiful shawls. 
 One expected the women to burst into some such 
 song as "We're the Dainty Dairymaids" or "The 
 King Is Returning To-day, Hurrah!" 
 
 The women in their opera costumes crowded round 
 the statue of John Huss in the center of the square, 
 the Siberian Rifles lined up round three sides of it, 
 the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister and a French 
 general and several officers advanced and kissed 
 the regimental flag decorated with the Russian 
 Cross of St. George — regular stage stuff, aside from 
 the lighting effects. 
 
 As a result of the war and the splitting up of Central 
 Europe into small nations, the national spirit of the 
 different peoples has been greatly intensified. This 
 
 141
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 is particularly true ot the Czechs, who take the atti- 
 tude that nothing is any good unless it is Czech. 
 The Czech idea of a riotously good time is to put 
 on the Czech national costume and walk up and 
 down the street, giving the frigid and unmistakable 
 Czech razz to anybody who tries to talk anything 
 but Czech. There was a period during the early 
 months of iqiq when a person who couldn't talk 
 Czech simply couldn't get anywhere at all in Prague. 
 The Czech national feeling was so strong that 
 Czechs who spoke perfect German or French refused 
 to speak anything but Czech. In fact, people who 
 spoke German were frequently mobbed. This is 
 quite understandable, of course, for the Germans 
 and the Czechs have been at one another's throats 
 for hundreds of years. For more than six hundred 
 years the Germans and the Austrians have been 
 trying to Germanize the Czechs. The attempt al- 
 most succeeded round the year 1380, but John Huss 
 stepped forward and reminded the Czechs who they 
 were, whereupon they became violently chauvinis- 
 tic, so to speak; chauved viciously in all directions 
 and brought forth the Hussite wars, as a result of 
 which the Czech language and literature obtained 
 the ascendancy over the German products for a 
 time. The Hapsburgs made another determined 
 stab at Germanizing the Czechs all through the 
 nineteenth century, and as a result the bitterness of 
 the feuds between the Czechs and the German- 
 Bohemians since 1861 would make the bitterest 
 Kentucky feud look like a strawberry festival. 
 
 So the Czechs can scarcely be blamed for wanting 
 to Czechize everything. Having been Germanized 
 
 142
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 by the Germans and Austrians, they now propose to 
 Czechize the Germans and Austrians in turn. 
 
 "Hand it back!" That's the slogan which might 
 to good advantage be inscribed on most Central 
 European coats of arms. 
 
 All of the cities and towns in Czechoslovakia 
 which used to have German or Hungarian names 
 have now been given Czech names. This causes 
 embarrassing happenings. The capital of Slovakia, 
 for example, has appeared on all maps for the past 
 few hundred years as Presburg. This was the Ger- 
 man name for the town, and in parentheses after 
 the German name usually appeared its Hungarian 
 name, which was Pozsony. The city was inhabited 
 almost entirely by Germans and Hungarians. With 
 the creation of the Czechoslovak state the Czechs 
 came down to Presburg, seized it, and began to drive 
 out the Hungarians. They also gave the town a 
 Czech name — Bratislava. Consequently the capital 
 of Slovakia now has three names : Presburg, Pozsony, 
 and Bratislava. The Czechs frequently refuse to 
 recognize the city by any name other than Bratislava. 
 If one wishes to catch a train from Prague to Pres- 
 burg his inquiries concerning the train are apt to be 
 met by apparent ignorance on all sides because of the 
 unwillingness of the Czechs to admit that there is 
 any such place as Presburg in existence. The same 
 thing has happened to a less tongue-twisting degree 
 to the Slovak city whose German name is Kaschau, 
 whose Hungarian name is Kassa, and whose Czech 
 name is Kosice — which is pronounced Koseetsy. 
 
 This sudden accession of national feeling on the 
 part of the Czechs has made them very brusque 
 
 U3
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 and belligerent toward all their neighbors. They 
 are ready at any moment of the day or night to enjoy 
 a free-for-all fight with either the Hungarians or the 
 Poles, and all of their neighbors accuse them of all 
 sorts of contract breaking and cruelty. The Aus- 
 trians, for example, say that the Czechs do not live 
 up to their agreement to send a certain amount of 
 coal daily into Austria. The Czechs admit this, 
 but say that when they made the agreement they 
 overestimated the amount they could let Austria 
 have. They also say that if the conditions were 
 reversed Austria would let Czechoslovakia freeze 
 rather than give her a single ton of coal. This state- 
 ment, in the light of what Austria has done to the 
 Czechs in the past, is not at all unreasonable. 
 Czechoslovakia is merely handing it back. One of 
 the most prominent men in Czechoslovakia — himself 
 an enthusiastic Czech — made the following interest- 
 ing statement: 
 
 "The Allies don't realize or appreciate all that the 
 Czechs did to contribute to the fall of Austria-Hun- 
 gary. We taught our railway conductors to steal, 
 our freight officials to divert shipments, our postmen 
 to open letters ; we taught our accountants to falsify 
 accounts; we encouraged all sorts of cheating and 
 crookedness and chicanery, so that the economic 
 situation of the old monarchy might be undermined. 
 We taught Czech soldiers to disobey orders and to 
 mutiny, so that the discipline of the Austro- 
 Hungarian army might be undermined. We were 
 successful. But to-day we are paying the cost, for 
 the things which we taught our people cannot be 
 untaught in a short time." 
 
 144
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 This man, I believe, was unduly severe toward his 
 own people. All through Central Europe there is 
 an enormous amount of loafing, cheating, stealing, 
 graft, debauchery, and starvation. Throughout 
 Central Europe at least 90 per cent of the people find 
 it absolutely impossible to live decently on their 
 salaries. They are demoralized by years of war. 
 They are further demoralized by the new and in- 
 efficient governments that are trying to hang on to 
 the reins of those strange wild horses, International 
 Politics and Affairs of State, and whose arms are 
 almost being pulled out by the roots in the attempt. 
 Want plus demoralization results in many unpleas- 
 ant things. 
 
 Though Czechoslovakia seems on the surface to 
 be far better off as regards food than all her neighbors, 
 her city dwellers are really suffering almost as much 
 from lack of it as are the people round about her, 
 because of the high cost of everything in crowns. 
 
 The Czechoslovak crown, when I was in Czecho- 
 slovakia in February, 1920, was worth \\i cents, 
 as compared with a pre-war value of 20 cents. 
 Before the war one got 5 crowns for a dollar. 
 In February, 1920, one got 75. Yet this queer 
 condition existed: the rate of exchange for Cen- 
 tral Europe is fixed in the Swiss banking center 
 of Zurich. At the same time that one dollar could 
 be changed for 7 5 Czechoslovak crowns in Czechoslo- 
 vakia the Zurich rate was 100 Czechoslovak crowns 
 for a dollar. This was due to the fact that the 
 Czechoslovak foreign exchange office fixed the in- 
 ternal exchange rate for Czechoslovakia and kept 
 it unnaturally high, for fear that the people would 
 
 i4S
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 start a few riots if the value 01 their money was 
 allowed to slump too rapidly. 
 
 If I had exchanged American dollars for Czecho- 
 slovak crowns in Switzerland, and then rushed over 
 into Czechoslovakia with my crowns, I could have 
 bought a third again as much as could a person who 
 exchanged American dollars in Czechoslovakia. 
 Such an arrangement might be very nice if the 
 Czechs could put up a high barrier so that nobody 
 from the outside world could come in and spend 
 money in their country. But they can't do that, 
 so that their peculiar attempts to regulate their own 
 money only result in assisting their own people to 
 get it where the chicken got the ax. 
 
 Since Czechoslovakia used to be a part of Austria- 
 Hungary, the new republic started with the old 
 Austro-Hungarian currency, to which a small 
 Czechoslovak stamp had been attached. Since one 
 could get 330 Austrian crowns for a dollar at the 
 same time that one was getting 75 Czechoslovak 
 crowns for a dollar, one of the great outdoor sports 
 consisted of forging stamps and attaching them to 
 Austrian money, thus making Czech money out of it. 
 It was an easy sport and a great money maker. 
 But it didn't help the value of the Czech crown to 
 any noticeable extent. The Czechs are replacing 
 the old money with beautiful new money made in 
 America, and when it is all replaced there will be 
 no more counterfeiting. 
 
 One of the largest banks in Prague had a display 
 of American securities in its window to stimulate 
 confidence in prospective depositors. The securities 
 were all made out in the name of the bank. There 
 
 14G
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 was a certificate tor one share of United States 
 Steel Common, a certificate for one share of Penn- 
 sylvania Railroad, and a certificate for one share of 
 Anaconda Copper. These are all excellent securities, 
 but classed, I believe, as a business man's risk rather 
 than a bank investment. Encouraged by the 
 American securities, I sought an interview with one 
 of the highest officials of the bank and urged him 
 to explain the whys and wherefores of the peculiar 
 Czechoslovak financial situation. Out of the flux of 
 words which he emitted I gathered only one thing: 
 with the foreign exchange office fixing the ex- 
 change rate at 75 when the Zurich rate was 100, 
 anybody who sold American dollars in Czecho- 
 slovakia lost money, and anybody who bought them 
 made money just like finding it. All a buyer had 
 to do was to hold his dollars until they reached the 
 Zurich level, which they would inevitably do. 
 
 Any European banker who attempts to explain 
 foreign exchange nowadays talks like a phonograph 
 playing a worn-out record with a toothpick as a 
 needle. But many European bankers are making 
 more money every month by speculating in money 
 than they ever made before in all the years of their 
 life put together. 
 
 Since I got no results from the oanKer, I inter- 
 viewed Mr. Benes, the Foreign Minister of Czecho- 
 slovakia, on the subject. 
 
 "The problems of Czechoslovakia," said Mr. 
 Benes, "like the problems of many other govern- 
 ments in Central Europe, are particularly puzzling, 
 because the problems which naturally confront a 
 new republic are accentuated and intensified by the 
 
 m
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 awful rate of exchange. This exchange rate makes 
 it absolutely impossible for European nations to 
 buy abroad. Ultimately the United States will find 
 herself in precisely the situation which we are now in. 
 The value of the American dollar is too high. When 
 there is overproduction, as there will be when Amer- 
 ica cannot sell to Europe, the factories will have to 
 close. Then there will be troubles among the work- 
 men, and the value of the dollar will fall. 
 
 "The only remedy is stabilizing the rate of ex- 
 change. The most terrible feature about the money 
 of Central Europe is the manner in which it fluctu- 
 ates. If any country could know that its money 
 would be stationary to any point it could get along 
 somehow. But the rate of exchange can only be 
 stabilized by international agreement." 
 
 I advanced the theory that speculation had more 
 to do with the fluctuation of foreign money than 
 anything else. 
 
 "Certainly," said Mr. Benes. "Whenever Czecho- 
 slovakia attempts to improve the value of its money 
 Germany throws millions of Czechoslovak crowns 
 on the market and the value of our money falls 
 again. It is not to the advantage of Germany to 
 have our money worth more than the German 
 mark." 
 
 "Then the nations of Europe are harpooning 
 one another," I said. "Each one is grabbing all he 
 can while the grabbing is good?" 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Benes, with a pitying smile 
 at the childish innocence of my remark. 
 
 One of the most puzzling things about European 
 affairs to an American wanderer is the enormous 
 
 148
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 amount of energy devoted by the nations of Europe 
 to proving that the United States must raise the 
 value of European money by loaning money to 
 Europe, and the complete absence of any attempt 
 to stabilize exchange by agreement. Suppose a 
 gentlemanly burglar were removing the loose change 
 from the pocket of a helpless wayfarer; and suppose 
 at the same time that the burglar were shouting 
 over his shoulder to a distant friend of the way- 
 farer that the wayfarer was losing money and must 
 be given more at once. I make no comments and 
 draw no conclusions, but if your supposers are in good 
 working order just do a little supposing along those 
 general lines. 
 
 But as I started to say some time back, the high 
 cost of everything in crowns makes living very 
 difficult for the city dwellers of Czechoslovakia. 
 An unskilled laborer in Prague gets from 7,000 
 to 8,500 crowns a year, while a skilled laborer gets 
 from 14,000 to 20,000 crowns a year if he works six 
 days a week and is never out of a job. A bank 
 employee who has been with the same bank for 
 thirty years also earns 20,000 crowns a year — or the 
 equivalent of about $265 in American money. The 
 average wage of the clerks, the teachers, and the 
 small government official is about 7,500 crowns a 
 year. 
 
 A good suit of clothes in Czechoslovakia costs 
 2,500 crowns, or one-third of the yearly income of a 
 white-collar man. Poor men who must buy new 
 clothes or go round in rags can get shoddy suits for 
 600 crowns, or $8 American, but such a suit won't 
 endure three months of reasonable wear without 
 
 149
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 falling to pieces. A pair of workingman's shoes costs 
 about 280 crowns. The cheapest sort of shirt costs 
 70 crowns. Almost nobody in Czechoslovakia wears 
 underclothes any more, because of their high cost. 
 But shirts must be worn, and cheap shirts have a 
 bad habit of disintegrating after a few washings. 
 Consider, then, the cost of a shirt in the eyes of the 
 average Czechoslovak. The average wage is 7,500 
 crowns a year. The price of the cheapest shirt is 
 70 crowns. It's the same as though a man who 
 earned $1,800 a year in the United States had to pay 
 $17 for a single shirt. 
 
 I was talking living costs with a Czech government 
 official who received a salary of 19,000 crowns a year. 
 In the middle of our talk a small boy entered with a 
 package. The official opened it shamefacedly. It 
 contained one slice of ham on a small slice of black 
 bread. 
 
 "There you are," said he. "That piece of ham 
 and bread cost eight crowns. If I had it every day 
 for a year it would cost me nearly three thousand 
 crowns." 
 
 I asked him how much he paid for his meals. 
 
 "For breakfast," said he, "I pay four crowns, 
 and get a piece of cheese, some tea, and some bread. 
 My lunch costs fifteen crowns, and for that I get a 
 soup, a small piece of meat, a vegetable, and a 
 pudding. My dinner costs thirteen crowns, and I 
 have soup, meat or fish, a vegetable, bread, and a 
 glass of beer. That represents a yearly expenditure 
 of eleven thousand six hundred and eighty crowns 
 for food alone, and I am always hungry. Every day 
 I have to send out for little things to eat." 
 
 150
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 When a single man pays 11,680 crowns in the 
 course of a year for nothing but three frugal meals 
 each day, it can be seen that a yearly salary of 
 8,000, 10,000, or 12,000 crowns hasn't a heavy pur- 
 chasing power for an entire family which has to 
 figure on clothes, heat, light, and rent, as well as on 
 food. For further depressing financial details I refer 
 the reader to my preceding articles on Poland and 
 Austria. Though the suffering in Poland and Aus- 
 tria is far greater and more widespread than in 
 Czechoslovakia, the sudden drop in the value of 
 Central European money has created in all these 
 countries a condition which is very similar. 
 
 Americans find the living very inexpensive in 
 Czechoslovakia. I sampled the best rooms in the 
 leading hostelries of Wittingau, Prague, and Konig- 
 gratz in Bohemia, Brunn in Moravia, and Presburg 
 in Slovakia, and in none of them was I obliged to 
 pay more than 30 American cents for my night's 
 lodging and breakfast the next morning. One 
 person could have a sumptuous repast in Prague for 
 70 or 80 cents, while the wine list presented some 
 bargains that would make even a soda fountain hang 
 its head in shame. From the Rhine-wine list one 
 could have a large bottle of Hochheimer or Lieb- 
 fraumilch, for example, for 40 cents. A magnum of 
 Hungarian champagne set the reveler back 90 cents 
 and provided him with at least $10 worth of head- 
 ache. To top off a dinner one could have his choice 
 of a small shot of Benedictine, Chartreuse, cherry 
 brandy, or Curacao for 5 cents a glass. 
 
 And while on the subject of forbidden fruit it 
 should be recorded that Czechoslovakia is the only
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Central European country whose beer tastes at all 
 like beer. Even in Czechoslovakia the resemblance 
 between the beer which one gets and the beer which 
 one ought to get is none too startling. Yet the 
 Pilsener beer — Pilsen now being a Czech city with 
 the name of Pizen, just as Budweis is a Czech city 
 with the name of Budejowice — is quite recognizably 
 bitter and beery. But all other German, Austrian, 
 Czech, and Hungarian beers are the most annoying 
 burlesques on beer into which a thirsty man ever 
 thrust his nose. 
 
 The near beer which was so common in America 
 during the doubtful or almost arid era was powerful 
 and potent compared with the present-day German 
 and Austrian beer. It looks like beer and it smells 
 like beer. It is a beautiful golden yellow in color, 
 or a rich brown, and it is crowned with a creamy 
 collar that makes the air whistle shrilly through the 
 parched throat. It looks, as I say, like the real 
 thing, but it tastes like some sort of ditch water that 
 would be nasty if it had enough strength, but that 
 hasn't even enough strength to quench a thirst. 
 Its percentage of alcohol must be considerably 
 smaller than that of buttermilk, but I cannot give 
 any figures on this phase of the matter, because every- 
 one was so disgusted with the beer that he was un- 
 willing to talk about it. 
 
 A traveler in Bohemia quickly learns that there 
 are certain things which are essentially Bohemian — 
 or Czechish. There is a belief in the neighborhood 
 of Washington Square, New York, that true Bo- 
 hemianism consists of wearing the finger nails in 
 deep mourning, scattering cigarette ashes on the 
 
 152
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 floor late at night, not paying the rent on time, 
 placing all successful people on a verbal griddle, and 
 talking a great deal about art. 
 
 This, however, is not truly Bohemian. True 
 Bohemians eat enormous quantities of caraway seeds 
 and goose, use the most uncomfortable bedclothes 
 in the world, and go to bed at eight o'clock at night. 
 A natural disinclination to be quiet before two or 
 three o'clock in the morning would consequently 
 prevent the Washington Square Bohemians from 
 resembling the true Bohemian to any marked 
 degree. 
 
 The Bohemian has the same passion for caraway 
 seeds that the southern Italian has for garlic. When 
 a Bohemian cook prepares anything she instinctively 
 reaches into the caraway-seed box and heaves a hand- 
 ful of seeds into the dish. She uses caraway seeds 
 with the hors d'ceuvre, soup, fish, meat, vegetables, 
 desserts, and cakes. One American in Prague carries 
 a pair of small silver tweezers with him, and when- 
 ever he sits down to eat a meal he draws the tweezers 
 from his pocket and starts to pick the caraway seeds 
 out of his bread with them. He spends twice as 
 much time in picking caraway seeds out of his food 
 as he does in eating, and the doctor says that he will 
 have a nervous breakdown if he can't get food that 
 has no caraway seeds in it. The advantages which 
 accrue from the use of caraway seeds in food are not 
 known except to the Czechs and the Germans. I 
 asked a Czech what it was about caraway seeds that 
 made them so popular. He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Why does an Arctic explorer love the Arctic 
 regions?" he countered. 
 
 iS3
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 It was an unanswerable counter which answered 
 all things. 
 
 The national dish of Bohemia is unquestionably 
 goose. Americans in Prague declare that the Czech 
 coat of arms should be a goose couchant on a 
 knildliche surmounted by three caraway seeds ram- 
 pant. The knildliche is a ball of half-cooked dough 
 about as large as a baseball, and it is highly es- 
 teemed as a food in Bohemia. If the Czechs ever 
 fight the Hungarians they could use the knildliche 
 as an offensive weapon to good advantage, for it 
 would perform terrible execution if thrown with 
 any accuracy against the enemy. Anybody who had 
 the misfortune to be struck by a knildliche would 
 think that a house had fallen on him. Strangers who 
 eat an entire knildliche for the first time have the 
 sensation of having swallowed one of the Pyramids 
 of Gizeh. 
 
 As for the goose, it is a common food in Bohemia 
 because everyone raises geese. I made a trip by 
 automobile up through Bohemia, across Bohemia to 
 that portion of the country known as the Sudetenland, 
 where the German inhabitants set up a republic 
 called the Sudetenland Republic after the armistice, 
 and down through Moravia; and in that trip I saw 
 more geese than I had dreamed were in existence. 
 Geese rushed out from every house to voice their dis- 
 pleasure of automobiles by undulating their necks 
 and hissing ferociously; geese gathered in solemn 
 conclaves in our path and honked their loathing of 
 us to high heaven; geese materialized from nowhere 
 and flapped out from under our fenders. Wherever 
 we stopped for food the food consisted of goose — 
 
 iS4
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 goose soup, goose liver, goose breast, roast goose, 
 chopped goose, sliced goose, stewed goose, and just 
 plain goose, with an occasional hors d'aeuvre of pdte 
 de foie gras Goose is a fine food for Christmas and 
 holidays, but goose for lunch and goose for dinner 
 and goose for supper day after day and week after 
 week is a bird of another feather — a bird, in fact, 
 completely covered with variegated feathers. After 
 a few days of this fare the mere sight of a goose is 
 sufficient to send a wave of nausea through the most 
 enthusiastic goose lover, while the distant honk of a 
 goose is enough to give him a nervous chill. 
 
 Probably the enormous numbers of geese that are 
 killed annually in Czechoslovakia account for the 
 feather bedclothes. Every little house in the coun- 
 try, every apartment, and almost every hotel room 
 in Czechoslovakia boasts feather bedclothes. The 
 contraption resembles a flimsily made feather mat- 
 tress. When retiring for the night one throws him- 
 self on the bed and allows the feather covering to 
 fall heavily and clingingly on top of him. It is 
 musty and adhesive and oppressive. It isn't so 
 bad when the weather is bitterly cold and one can 
 succeed in prying open one of the windows which 
 Central Europeans so religiously seal down during the 
 winter months, but when the weather is at all warm 
 the feather bedclothes are excessively heavy. It is 
 a case of all or nothing. The entire wad of goose 
 feathers must be endured, for if it is thrown off there 
 is nothing left — sometimes not even a sheet. 
 
 Some of the more advanced hotels have substituted 
 blankets and a quilt for the feather bedclothes, but 
 even in such cases tradition is too strong for them. 
 11 155
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 The top of the quilt has a row of buttons down each 
 side and across the foot, and the sheet is pulled up 
 on to the top of the quilt and carefully buttoned to it, 
 so that the bedclothes are a compact and slippery 
 mass. In order to remove the quilt on a warm 
 evening one has to do as much unbuttoning as 
 though he were assisting all the inmates of an orphan 
 asylum out of their pinafores. And when the bed- 
 clothes are buttoned up any sudden movement on 
 the part of the person who is reclining beneath 
 them is sufficient to cause the entire mass to slide 
 off the bed and on to the floor. 
 
 The head of the Hoover Child Feeders in Czecho- 
 slovakia is Capt. Arthur C. Ringland, a former 
 American army officer, who used to be in the 
 Forestry Service round the Grand Canon. With 
 five American assistants Captain Ringland has 
 divided Czechoslovakia into 200 districts, with 
 local feeding committees scattered through each 
 district. Thus there are 200 district committees 
 and 3,000 local committees; and through this or- 
 ganization the American food goes to some 550,000 
 children. 
 
 The Americans, of course, are not interested in 
 Czechoslovak politics, except as the politics tend 
 to hinder their work. They don't even care about 
 talking Czechoslovak politics. They are in Czecho- 
 slovakia to see that the children who are suffering 
 from malnutrition, in the opinion of competent 
 physicians, are fed. They don't care what race a 
 child may belong to or what its parents' creed may 
 be. If the child is hungry they aim to feed it. The 
 people among whom they work, however, don't 
 
 156
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 always feel that way about it. In many towns 
 which have Czech majorities the Czechs frequently 
 try to fix things so that German children won't be 
 fed. In towns with German majorities the Germans 
 often take steps to deprive the Czech children of 
 food. 
 
 The American Relief Administration has been 
 forced to recognize this condition, and they have 
 to be very careful that the feeding committees are 
 carefully mixed. Each committee must have an 
 equal number of Czechs and Germans on it, or of 
 Slovaks and Hungarians, or of whatever national- 
 ities the district may be comprised. In the town 
 of Novi-Paka, for example, a party representing one 
 nationality succeeded in grasping the reins of power. 
 Its first move was to insist that only the children 
 of that party be fed. The examining doctors were 
 assailed by a mob which demanded that their 
 children be put in C class — C class representing the 
 worst cases of malnutrition and the only class to be 
 fed — without regard for their actual physical state. 
 
 All of this has been a great shock to the Americans 
 in Czechoslovakia, who had come to the new re- 
 public expecting to find all the inhabitants of the 
 young Czechoslovak state pulling together in en- 
 thusiasm and accord. They had forgotten, of course, 
 the messy condition which existed in the United 
 States after the Revolutionary War, to say nothing 
 of the odorous state of affairs after the Civil War. 
 They had forgotten that Czechoslovakia was being 
 guided by politicians and diplomats who had donned 
 the official silk hat of statesmanship for the first 
 time on October 28, 191 8, admired themselves in the 
 
 i57
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 mirror for a few moments, and then strolled up to the 
 palace and wondered how to start running a republic. 
 
 The internal squabbles which distress the Amer- 
 icans to such a degree and make them so pessimistic 
 are old, old stories. So, too, are the attitudes which 
 the Czechs adopt toward their friends and enemies. 
 Historians and observers who have been notoriously 
 pro-Czech have for many years written the Czechs 
 down as being over-aggressive, as well as painfully 
 shortsighted and narrow in their political outlook. 
 One of their greatest admirers has declared that, 
 though the progress of the Czechs in fields other than 
 political has been altogether admirable, they have 
 always lacked political leaders of eminence, so that 
 they have allowed themselves to squander time and 
 energy over barren linguistic brawls, to overdo the 
 policy of the mere wrecker and obstructionist, and so 
 to destroy their prestige and reputation for political 
 foresight both at home and abroad. 
 
 The squabbles between the Czechs and the Ger- 
 mans are so old that, in the low patois of the late 
 American army, they have whiskers on them — long, 
 flowing white whiskers. Both the Germans and 
 the Czechs claim, of course, that they got to the 
 country first. But when two different nationalities 
 in Europe get to arguing over a bit of real estate, 
 the first move of each people is to prove that they got 
 there first. The Rumanians and the Hungarians 
 can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they 
 got to Transylvania ahead of the others. The 
 Hungarians and the Slovaks lie rings round one 
 another on a similar question. The Czechs and the 
 Germans go back thousands of years to prove their 
 
 158
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 claims to Bohemia. If put to it, the Germans could 
 probably prove conclusively — conclusively to them- 
 selves, that is — that they were the original in- 
 habitants of Canada, Mexico, and the North Pole, 
 and that the effete government of the Incas of Peru 
 resulted from their rejection of German culture. 
 
 As a matter of fact, outsiders don't much care who 
 got there first. If the Dutch tried to take New 
 York away from the United States on the ground 
 that the original settlers of New York were Dutch, 
 they would probably receive one of the loudest and 
 most resonant guffaws that ever emerged from 
 human lips. But it is a matter of history that there 
 was a Czech state in Bohemia twelve hundred years 
 ago, or upward of eight hundred years before the 
 late Christopher Columbus borrowed money on the 
 quaint theory that the earth was round enough to 
 permit him to discover America. At that time — 
 twelve hundred years ago — the Czechs were indulging 
 in passionate and ferocious wars with the neighbor- 
 ing German tribes. Sometimes the Germans would 
 come out on top and the Czech state would dry up 
 to a small peanut. At other times the Czechs would 
 get the Germans on the run, and at such times the 
 Czech state would swell out like a wet sponge. 
 Always — century after century and sometimes gen- 
 eration after generation — the Czech-German racial 
 struggle came off with absolute certainty, albeit with- 
 out the same regularity as Christmas or the Allen- 
 town Fair. 
 
 It is this same old racial struggle which is going 
 on to-day. The Germans used to hand it to the 
 Czechs; and now the Czechs are handing it back 
 
 iS9
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 to the Germans. They aren't getting on a bit 
 better than they have ever got on; and it is highly 
 probable that they aren't getting on any worse, 
 either, in spite of the assurances of the Germans 
 that they simply can't endure the Czechs another 
 minute. 
 
 The Germans — a ring of three million round the 
 six million Czechs — are roaring ferociously. They 
 are complaining that they have no representation 
 in the laws under which they must live; that their 
 schools are being taken away from them; that they 
 are being forced to speak the barbarous Czech lan- 
 guage; that they are being discriminated against 
 in business; and that they cannot and will not 
 stand it. 
 
 Over against their hair-raising howls is the fact 
 that the Bohemian, or Czech part of Czechoslovakia, 
 is a geographical unity. It is a plateau fringed with 
 mountains — a natural fortress. It is Czechland, and 
 anybody who doesn't like it is at liberty, as the 
 saying goes, to lump it. If the Germans don't like 
 it they can lump it. If a large crowd of Americans 
 should emigrate to Bohemia, and should start to 
 make a protracted and poignant yelp because they 
 didn't like something, they also could lump it. 
 Czechs in the United States who don't like American 
 customs and American laws and American ideas — 
 and American schools — are also at liberty to lump 
 it or get out. 
 
 With the Czechs it is a case of Bohemia for the 
 Czechs. It is also apparently a case of Slovakia, 
 Rusinia, and part of Hungary for the Czechs as well. 
 But just at present we are talking about Bohemia, 
 
 160
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 which is a Czechland and a geographical unity — a 
 natural nation. "Bohemia for the Czechs," then — 
 that is their cry. 
 
 There is a fly in the consomme, however. Ger- 
 many lies to the north of Bohemia and Austria 
 to the south. If Austria joins with Germany, as she 
 might, and if between them they had a keen desire 
 to crush Bohemia out of business, the three million 
 disgruntled Germans in Bohemia would not be much 
 of a hindrance. 
 
 The Czechs have been great promisers during the 
 past year or so, but their neighbors and a good many 
 of their own people claim that they don't live up to 
 their promises. The Germans have been promised 
 equal rights and schools and all sorts of things, but 
 in February, 1920, every German with whom I 
 talked in Czechoslovakia declared openly, loudly, 
 and contemptuously that none of the promises had 
 been kept. 
 
 I interviewed Mr. Tusar, the Czechoslovak Prime 
 Minister, on this subject among others. Mr. Tusar 
 admitted the great differences between the Czechs 
 and the Germans, but spoke in words which were well 
 coated with diplomatic salve and Prime-Ministerial 
 optimism. He declared that the Czechs and the 
 Germans are still overshadowed by the past, and 
 that the leaders, grown up in the traditions of petty 
 national strife, find it difficult to renounce their old 
 attitude — meaning their attitude of excessive hate 
 and loathing. He said that the Germans weren't 
 to be punished for their past sins, however, and that 
 they were to be granted more liberty of policy, 
 nationality, and culture than the Peace Treaty ever 
 
 161
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 thought of granting them. He didn't say when 
 they were to be granted all this. He disposed of the 
 school question by saying that privileges of an edu- 
 cational nature for the Germans had to be restricted 
 for budget reasons, and sorrowfully observed that 
 the Germans unjustly misunderstood this. 
 
 "Finally," said Mr. Tusar, "through mutual 
 economic interests, in time, life for the two national- 
 ities living side by side will grow more pleasant and 
 a lasting agreement result some day." 
 
 It is more to the advantage of the Germans in 
 Czechoslovakia to be citizens of Czechoslovakia than 
 to be citizens of Germany or Austria. There are many 
 Czechoslovaks who fought loyally in the Austrian 
 army to the very end of the war, but who are as free 
 from dislike or restrictions, so far as the outside world 
 is concerned, as though they had fought against 
 Germany all their lives. There is no moral boycott 
 against any part of Czechoslovakia. This is a valu- 
 able asset in Central Europe, and the Germans in 
 Czechoslovakia appreciate it. They are willing to 
 be placated, even though most of them say that they 
 aren't. The desire of the Czechs to have Bohemia 
 entirely Czechized can readily be understood, 
 especially by thorough Americans. But even the 
 most thorough Americans in Czechoslovakia pre- 
 dict trouble for the Czechs if they don't soon start 
 handling the Germans with softer gloves than they 
 have hitherto used. 
 
 The situation in the Slovakian toe of the Czecho- 
 slovak sneaker is one that causes a newcomer to hold 
 his head in his hands and call weakly for a head- 
 ache powder. In the cant phrase of the political 
 
 ?6?
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 student, it is a sweet mess. " It is as complicated 
 as a perpetual-motion machine, and the League of 
 Nations could unravel it about as easily as a hippo- 
 potamus could crawl through a stick of macaroni. 
 
 The Slovaks aren't a very well-known people. 
 The American idea of them is that they are content 
 to live fifteen or twenty in a room and in the most 
 squalid surroundings. I have been into a good 
 many Slovak villages, and I have found the Slovak 
 peasants among the most attractive and lovable 
 peasant people of the many I have seen. Their 
 cottages are simple and neat and comfortable. 
 Every Slovak peasant woman has embroideries 
 which she designs and works herself — waists and 
 skirts and aprons and shawls and headdresses and 
 sheets; and for beauty of design and fineness of exe- 
 cution they are unrivaled. Every Slovak peasant 
 woman has these things. Almost all the Slovak 
 women paint the plaster walls of their kitchens and 
 living rooms with free-hand designs so symmetrical 
 and daring and colorful that they nearly knock out 
 the eye of the unprepared beholder. In other words, 
 they are almost without exception people of excel- 
 lent taste and with a love for the beautiful. 
 
 The great drawback about the Slovaks is their 
 illiteracy. For nearly one thousand years Slovakia 
 has been a part of Hungary, and during this time the 
 Magyars — as the true Hungarians are always known 
 in Central Europe — oppressed all things Slovakian. 
 That is to say, the Magyars prevented the Slovaks 
 from developing as Slovaks. The only schools 
 which taught the Slovak languages were the primary 
 schools, If a Slovak wanted higher education he had 
 
 163
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 to go to a Magyar high school and college. Slovaks 
 who learned the Magyar language were favored 
 by the Magyars and given public offices. 
 
 Thus practically all of the educated Slovaks are 
 Magyarized. Some people say very harsh things 
 about the Magyars for refusing to allow the Slovaks 
 to have their own high schools and colleges. Yet in 
 America we don't allow different nationalities to 
 have their own schools. We Americanize everyone 
 so far as we are able, so that we may have unity and 
 accord. 
 
 At any rate, the Slovaks who didn't go to Magyar 
 schools are illiterate. The Slovaks who went to 
 Magyar schools are Magyarized and frequently 
 speak Magyar fluently, but don't speak Slovak. 
 These Magyarized Slovaks have always made opposi- 
 tion politics to the Magyars, but the only thing which 
 they have sought in the past has been autonomy 
 under Hungary — never independence or autonomy 
 under Bohemia. 
 
 Once a person makes opposition politics over a 
 long period of time it gets in his blood. He is "agin" 
 all government. He specializes in destruction and 
 never irt construction. Many of the parties now in 
 power in Central Europe are made up of men who 
 have alws^s made opposition politics and who there- 
 fore cannot originate constructive policies. Being 
 themselves the government, with only themselves 
 to oppose, they promptly proceed to oppose them- 
 selves. In this they are like those constitutional 
 fighters, the Montenegrins, who, lacking a common 
 enemy to fight, choose up sides and fight one another. 
 The Slovaks are makers of opposition politics. They 
 
 164
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 Were against the Magyars. Now they are against 
 the Czechs — not violently, but just against them. 
 They haven't yet reached the point where they 
 want to break away from the Czechs. As a matter 
 of fact, the Slovaks don't know what they want, be- 
 cause of their newness and rawness. There are four 
 political parties in Slovakia, and not one of them 
 has a definite program. 
 
 As for the Czechs, their policy is to make the 
 Czechs and the Slovaks into one people, and this is 
 particularly galling to the Slovaks. The Czechs, 
 as I said earlier in this article, are hard. Religion 
 cuts no great figure in their lives. Czech soldiers 
 have knocked down many of the Slovak shrines 
 which dot the countryside, and while I was in 
 Presburg Czech soldiers entered the cathedral there 
 and hacked off parts of a Magyar shrine on the 
 cathedral wall. Then, too, the Czechs are Socialists. 
 Bohemia is largely Social- Democratic, and the Social 
 Democracy which obtains in Germany, Austria, 
 Czechoslovakia, and parts of Italy is perilously close 
 to Bolshevism. Some people refer to Social Democ- 
 racy as creeping Bolshevism. Its foundation, despite 
 the denials of the Social Democrats themselves, is 
 class warfare and the socialization of everything. 
 Put that in your pipe and smoke it and you'll find 
 that the smoke comes out a bright, Bolshevistic red. 
 
 All of these things offend the Slovaks. The 
 Slovaks are mild, conservative, and very religious. 
 Many of them own their land, and consequently 
 want nothing of Socialism. There are not enough 
 educated Slovaks to fill 10 per cent of the govern- 
 ment and school positions in Slovakia. The va- 
 
 165
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 cancies are filled with Czechs who have been sent 
 down from Prague. In many cases these imported 
 officials are incompetent. Lots of them resemble 
 the carpetbaggers who went from the North into 
 the South after our Civil War. Many of these new 
 officeholders are aggressive and arrogant. They 
 don't think much of the Slovaks and they don't 
 hesitate to show it. This helps to give the Slovaks 
 a long, lingering pain. 
 
 The Czechs refuse to listen to any talk of au- 
 tonomy for Slovaks, because Slovakia has such a 
 scrambled population that an elected Slovak parlia- 
 ment might suddenly vote to join Hungary. One 
 of the leading Slovaks explained it this way: "Fifty- 
 four per cent of Slovakia's population is Slovak, 
 thirty-one per cent is Magyar, eight per cent is Ger- 
 man, and seven per cent is Rusin. In the Slovak 
 parliament there would be about one hundred and 
 sixty Slovak members and about one hundred and 
 forty others; and not all the Slovaks would be 
 loyal. Some are Magyars at heart. So we couldn't 
 be sure of a majority in parliament, and conse- 
 quently Slovakia cannot be autonomous." 
 
 Competent observers seem to think that the situa- 
 tion between the Slovaks and the Czechs can be 
 calmed if the Czechs adopt a less aggressive, more 
 tolerant, less suspicious attitude. Claims are made 
 in Slovakia that the country is infested with Czech 
 spies. The competent observers also hold the 
 opinion that if the Czechs aren't able to place any 
 confidence in the Slovaks they'd better get rid of the 
 country. 
 
 The Slovak-Czech situation, muddled and dan- 
 
 166
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 gerous as it is, fades into insignificance beside the 
 Czech-Magyar situation in Slovakia. 
 
 The Czech-Magyar hatred is an excellent sample of 
 the magnificent, unparalleled, ioo-per-cent hatreds 
 which the Peace Treaty has loosed in Central Europe 
 and which have turned Central Europe into a greater 
 collection of Balkan states. 
 
 The states which have been formed out of the 
 old Austro-Hungarian monarchy are maintaining 
 nearly twice as many soldiers as the old monarchy 
 needed to keep the peace before the war. Every 
 border is guarded and triple guarded. Every piece 
 of luggage is investigated minutely at every border. 
 
 No longer can a traveler in Central Europe say, 
 "On such and such a day I shall travel to such and 
 such a place." The United Hates of Central Europe 
 will not permit any such freedom of movement. 
 
 Nowadays a traveler goes when he can get his 
 visis and his police permits, and not before. On 
 arriving in a city he must inform the police. On 
 leaving the city he must inform the police. When 
 leaving a country he must have the permission of the 
 country which he is leaving, the country to which 
 he is going, and the countries through which he must 
 travel. It sometimes takes an entire day to get a 
 single vis$. Americans, who are the most highly 
 favored of all travelers, are sometimes forced to pre- 
 sent letters stating that they are not involved in 
 politics before they are permitted to travel into a 
 country on an American passport. Special visH 
 are frequently required in order to go to different 
 parts of a single country. Most good trains are 
 under military control, and military permits are 
 
 167
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 required in order to ride on them. All reservations 
 on trains possessing reservable seats or compart- 
 ments are made from one to three weeks in advance. 
 
 Journeys which used to take three or four hours 
 before the war frequently take from fifteen to twenty 
 hours to-day because of passport restrictions and 
 border difficulties. To go from Prague in the west 
 of Czechoslovakia to Uzhorod in the east used to 
 take ten or twelve hours. Now it takes two days. 
 From Vienna to Budapest used to be a five-hour 
 train ride. To-day it takes fourteen hours. Train 
 travel in Central Europe is exactly the same as train 
 travel between Boston and New York would be if 
 one needed a vise to go from Massachusetts into 
 Rhode Island, from Rhode Island into Connecticut, 
 and from Connecticut into New York, and if one 
 had to endure a searching customs examination on 
 leaving Massachusetts, entering Rhode Island, enter- 
 ing Connecticut, and entering New York. 
 
 Exaggerated ? The case is understated ! Coming 
 from Poland into Austria I saw five people thrown 
 off the Entente express — people of some conse- 
 quence, too — because they had failed to get police 
 permission to leave Poland. In spite of having 
 paid their fares, they had to go all the way back 
 to Warsaw and go through many hardships and 
 inconveniences because of their oversight. Coming 
 from Hungary into Austria I saw two hundred 
 travelers jammed into one small room for five hours 
 until each one of the two hundred had satisfied the 
 customs requirements. 
 
 I saw an American citizen in the American Lega- 
 tion in Prague almost weeping with rage because the 
 
 168
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 Czechs at the border, in examining him for money 
 and suspicious papers, had ripped his coat open with 
 such violence that every button on it had been half 
 torn off. I have seen the Italian consul in Vienna 
 refuse to vis$ an American passport to Italy until 
 the owner of the passport produced a letter from the 
 American Mission in Vienna stating that he was not 
 concerned in politics; and at the same time as a 
 matter of principle, the American Mission in Vienna 
 refused to accede to this demand on the part of the 
 Italian consul and would not supply any American 
 citizen whatever with any such letter. In other 
 words, American citizens could not proceed from 
 Vienna to Italy, in spite of having good American 
 passports. 
 
 No; the difficulties of travel in Central Europe 
 are hard to exaggerate. My references to them 
 have barely scratched the surface. Some day I will 
 really tell you about it, and as you read the white 
 hairs will come crowding in among your raven locks. 
 Every state in Central Europe hates every other 
 state with enough bitterness to sour eau de Cologne, 
 and a few of them, not content with hating everyone 
 else, hate themselves. 
 
 The hot box of the Czech-Hungarian hate is the 
 city of Presburg, or Pozshony, or Bratislava. I call 
 it Presburg because under any other name it can't 
 be found on an American, English, French, or Ger- 
 man map. 
 
 Presburg is the capital of Slovakia. It used to be 
 the old capital of the Magyars. For hundreds of 
 years the Magyar kings were crowned there. It was 
 inhabited chiefly by Germans and Magyars, with a 
 
 169
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 smattering of educated or Magyarized Slovaks. 
 The tombstones in the cemeteries of Presburg bear 
 nothing but Magyar and German names. 
 
 To-day it is a Czech city. Fifteen thousand 
 Magyars have been prodded out of their homes and 
 jobs to make room for imported Czech officials, 
 Czech school teachers, and Czech merchants, and 
 have been shipped down into Hungary. The Mag- 
 yar professors have been thrown out of the ancient 
 Magyar university at Presburg. The name of the 
 city has been changed to a Czech name. The street 
 signs and the shop signs have been done over into 
 Czech. 
 
 In front of the city, on the side facing the Austrians 
 and the Hungarians, are the barbed- wire entangle- 
 ments and the trenches and the machine guns and 
 the soldiers that I spoke about earlier in this article. 
 
 A street-car line used to run from Vienna to 
 Presburg. To-day travelers going by that line have 
 to get out of the cars one hundred yards before they 
 reach the border, walk up to the barbed-wire entan- 
 glements that the Czechs have erected, go through 
 the customs, and then walk another one hundred 
 yards on the other side of the border and get into 
 another street car. No more cars can run through. 
 Common sense and rapid transit have received a 
 severe kick from national hatred. 
 
 The Magyars are so ferociously angry at the Czechs 
 that the mere mention of the name Czech is enough 
 to make most of the Magyars within hearing have 
 near-apoplexy. They claim that the Czechs have 
 seized Magyar territory to which they have no right 
 at all. The Hungarian army vanished into thin air 
 
 170
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 just after the armistice, and it was then, or soon 
 afterward, that the Czechs occupied Presburg with- 
 out resistance. The Magyars claim that they could 
 never have done it if there had been any Magyar 
 army left. 
 
 The Czechs took Presburg because it is a part of 
 Slovakia. True, it is a Hungarian city, but none 
 the less it is part of Slovakia. It is also a port on 
 the Danube, and the Czechs have got to have a port 
 on the Danube. In addition to taking the city of 
 Presburg and the solidly Magyar parts of Slovakia, 
 the Czechs also took a big stretch of land known as 
 the Grosse Schutt, which is a rich territory between 
 two branches of the Danube. It is sixty miles long 
 and thirty miles broad. Its population consists of 
 more than 100,000 Magyars and only a few hun- 
 dred Slovaks. It is neither part of Slovakia nor 
 occupied by Slovaks, but the Czechs declare that 
 they must have it in order to control their part of the 
 Danube. The Magyars are fairly tearing their hair 
 out by the roots because of it. Exactly the same 
 tension exists between the Czechs and the Magyars 
 over Presburg as exists between the Italians and the 
 Jugoslavs over Fiume. The Fiume situation, how- 
 ever, has received more advertising. 
 
 The Magyars say that there are 700,000 Magyars 
 whom the Czechs have taken into Czechoslovakia 
 by main force and against their wills. They say 
 that they will never endure it. They froth at the 
 mouth and gasp hoarsely when discussing the matter. 
 They issue posters declaring that Presburg is the 
 Magyar Strasburg. They say that it's Alsace- 
 Lorraine all over again. They get out propaganda 
 12 171
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 maps showing the gluttonous Czech minority which 
 is controlling Czechoslovakia. They declare that 
 they must and will have the city of Presburg and the 
 700,000 Magyars back again in Hungary. They dis- 
 seminate passionate propaganda among the Slovaks. 
 
 The Czechs meanwhile are not idle. They erect 
 barbed-wire entanglements and dig trenches. They 
 get out propaganda of their own, showing stalwart 
 Slovak farmers sweeping the Magyar rats out of 
 Slovakia. They say that they need the territory 
 which they have taken, and that they intend to 
 keep it in spite of all the Magyar protests and all 
 the Magyar threats. 
 
 They have instituted a censorship which goes 
 through letters coming in to Magyars living in 
 Presburg. Many Magyars claim that they can get 
 no letters at all from the outside world. 
 
 The Magyars are accused by the Czechs of financ- 
 ing Bolshevik agitations in Slovakia. The Czechs 
 are accused by the Magyars of harboring Bolsheviks 
 who helped to wreck Hungary, as well as of spreading 
 stories of Magyar intrigue in order to gain sympathy. 
 The Magyars claim that the Slovaks can't under- 
 stand the Czech language. The Czechs claim that 
 the Magyars stole all their culture from the Slovaks 
 — a charge which causes the Magyars to burst into 
 horrid peals of wild laughter and almost go mad 
 with fury. The Magyars say that all Slovaks loathe 
 the Czechs and love the Magyars. The Czechs 
 claim that all Slovaks despise the Magyars and 
 worship the Czechs. And so on through day after 
 day and night after night, so long as there is anyone 
 to listen. And when there isn't anyone to listen it 
 
 172
 
 HANDING IT BACK 
 
 is generally believed that they talk to themselves. 
 It is interesting, but somewhat dazing. 
 
 I asked Prime Minister Tusar what he thought the 
 outcome of the bad blood between Bohemia and 
 Slovakia would be. 
 
 "The relations with Slovakia are simply a problem 
 of patience," said Mr. Tusar. "One must wait 
 until the Magyar agitation there loses ground. Then 
 matters will be finally settled of their own accord." 
 
 I asked Magyar leaders in Slovakia why they 
 didn't stop their ructions, let the Czechs take what 
 they want, settle down to work and try to get along 
 somehow. 
 
 "Isn't there some way that you can arrive at an 
 understanding with the Czechs?" I asked. 
 
 The Magyar leaders, one and all, pounded the 
 table with their fists. 
 
 "No! No! Never!" they shouted. "No! No! 
 Never!" 
 
 I know that there are many people in America 
 who think that the Peace Conference did a pretty 
 good job, and that Central European affairs can be 
 regulated by the League of Nations. I had occasion 
 to remark on that fact to an American who has 
 been going up and down in Central Europe for the 
 past year on official business. 
 
 "I know that there are people like that," he said, 
 wearily and tolerantly, "but you want to remember" 
 — and here he heaved a sigh that blew the ash from 
 his cigar — "you want to remember that those 
 people don't know anything about Central Europe."
 
 IV 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 THROUGHOUT Hungary, on blank walls, public 
 buildings, railroad stations, signboards, shop 
 windows, and other convenient surfaces, there are 
 large posters, medium-sized posters, and small 
 posters depicting a cracked, blood-red object and 
 bearing the words, "New! Nem! Soha!" 
 
 The newcomer to Hungary is puzzled by them. 
 He doesn't know whether the cracked, blood-red 
 object represents a new sort of waffle iron, a picture 
 puzzle, or a highly efficacious brand of mustard 
 plaster. 
 
 So the newcomer waits until he catches an English- 
 speaking Hungarian, and then he questions him. 
 
 "Could you tell me," he asks, "the meaning of this 
 'Nem! Nem!' stuff?" 
 
 "No! No! Never!" shouts the Hungarian, 
 fiercely. 
 
 "But why not?" persists the newcomer. "There 
 can't be any harm in telling. If you prefer you can 
 whisper it to me." 
 
 "No! No! Never!" declares the Hungarian, 
 still more fiercely. Then he takes the newcomer by 
 the arm and leads him to a quiet coffee house, or 
 
 i74
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 kave-haz, as the Hungarians so piquantly spell it, 
 and tells him a long, long story which always begins 
 with the mystic words, "For over a thousand 
 years — " 
 
 In order that we may understand the point of 
 view of the Hungarian, or Magyar — for the Hun- 
 garian always refers to himself and is always re- 
 ferred to by other Europeans as a Magyar — we must 
 put our supposers to work and do a little intensive 
 supposing. 
 
 Let us suppose, for example, that round the year 
 1820 a race of people known as the Grabbonians, 
 who came from the poverty-stricken country of 
 Grabbonia up along the shores of the Black Sea, 
 where nearly every large rock seems to have some 
 sort of half-baked nation clinging to it, had emigrated 
 from Grabbonia to the United States and settled 
 in the state of South Dakota. 
 
 Since South Dakota had only a few Americans 
 within its confines at that time, and since the 
 Grabbonians could converse in only the guttural 
 Grabbish tongue, the Grabbonians formed them- 
 selves into colonies and retained the manners, cus- 
 toms, and speech of far-off Grabbonia. They soon 
 controlled the state officials and the courts of justice, 
 and through them the schools. The Grabbonian 
 language was taught in all the schools of the state, 
 in spite of the fact that it was a part of America; 
 and it wasn't long before the Grabbonians began 
 to think that Americans in South Dakota had no 
 rights whatever. In fact, they frequently talked of 
 driving out the Americans who had the outrageous 
 idea that just because the Grabbonians were living 
 
 175
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 in America they ought to be Americans, too. Be- 
 sides, the Grabbonians were very peevish because the 
 United States wouldn't found a Grabbonian uni- 
 versity for them in South Dakota. They were very 
 peevish indeed over this. They told the rest of the 
 world that they were being frightfully oppressed, 
 and a number of foreign authors wrote books about 
 the American oppression of the Grabbonians, almost 
 skinning the United States alive for its heartlessness. 
 
 And then one fine day — our supposers are still 
 revolving at high speed, of course — America went to 
 war with the Oriental nation of Goulasha. By an 
 unfortunate chain of circumstances America was 
 defeated. And when the terms of peace were an- 
 nounced the state of South Dakota was made a 
 Grabbonian state, with its central government in 
 Grabbonia on the Black Sea; and all because the 
 Grabbonians slightly outnumbered the Americans. 
 It was taken entirely away from the United States, 
 and the United States was instructed that the 
 Americans living in South Dakota would have to be 
 subject to Grabbonia on the Black Sea. 
 
 The Americans both in South Dakota and out of it 
 were almost hysterical with rage over the situation. 
 The things they said about the Grabbonians could 
 scarcely be written on asbestos paper without scorch- 
 ing it. All Americans united in saying that since 
 the American nation had been formed in 1776, and 
 since all United States territory had been obtained 
 fairly by them before the Grabbonians had ever 
 come on the scene, and since the Grabbonians had 
 come to them as immigrants, they had no national 
 rights whatsoever to the land that they occupied, 
 
 176
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 even though they might outnumber the Americans 
 in South Dakota. 
 
 At this point we can shut off the power, gently 
 bring our supposers to a full stop, and get back to 
 Hungary. 
 
 The cracked, blood-red object depicted on the 
 posters which are plastered all over Hungary is a 
 representation of Hungary as it was before the war. 
 The cracks represent the new boundary lines along 
 which the country has been divided by the terms of 
 the Peace Treaty. The words, "Nem! Nem! 
 Soha!" are the Magyar rendering of the English 
 phrase, "No! No! Never!" And the argument on 
 which the Magyars base their feverish and emphatic 
 words is exactly the same argument which Americans 
 would advance if they should lose the state of South 
 Dakota to the hypothetical Grabbonians. 
 
 As to the validity of their argument, I can only say 
 that, so far as I could learn, every American who has 
 been in Hungary during the past year, including 
 General Bandholtz, chief of the American Military 
 Mission, believes that Hungary has been unfairly 
 treated and that the terms of the Peace Treaty as 
 regards Hungary's dismemberment should be revised. 
 
 When one gets back a thousand years and prods 
 round among the dead bones of the tribes that came 
 boiling out of Mongolia and down from Russia 
 and up from the Balkan Peninsula, and chased 
 one another madly up and down the surface of 
 Central Europe — when one gets back into those rare 
 old days one can't be absolutely sure of dates, facts, 
 or anything else. When one states that the eastern 
 Goths moved out of Rumania on or round moving 
 
 177
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 day in the year 452, and that the Gepids came in 
 behind them with such speed that they walked all 
 over the heels of the last eastern Goths to depart, 
 one is taking a long chance on being called a liar by 
 some one who has other, but not necessarily more 
 trustworthy, data in his possession. There is still 
 some difference of opinion in the United States as 
 to which admiral was responsible for the victory at 
 Santiago in 1898, and grave doubt exists in many 
 quarters as to whether the battle of Bunker Hill 
 took place on Bunker Hill or on Breed's Hill. Con- 
 sequently there is a thick, dark-brown haze over a 
 large percentage of the happenings which took place 
 back in the years 907, 1101, 1253, and all other ad- 
 jacent dates, and a wary eye must be cocked toward 
 those people who assure us that such and such was 
 true at any such far-off period. 
 
 It is not necessary to dig into history, however, to 
 discover that Hungary before the war was a natural 
 country, just as Bohemia, the Czech part of Czecho- 
 slovakia, is also a natural country. Its natural 
 boundaries were perfect. On the north, the west, 
 the east, and the southeast it was rimmed with high 
 mountains. On the south its boundary was formed 
 by large rivers. It was — and is — one of the most 
 perfect closed basins that can be found on any of 
 the five continents. The Czechs argue that their 
 country is a natural country and has always belonged 
 to them; therefore the millions of Germans within 
 their boundaries must bow to the will of the Czechs. 
 For the same reason Hungary wants to keep her 
 natural country intact. Strangely enough, there 
 are many people who recognize the justice of the 
 
 178
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 Czechs argument, but who cannot see where a 
 similar argument on the part of the Magyars is 
 worth its weight in sour apples. As a result Hun- 
 gary's boundaries to-day are nothing but red lines 
 on the maps. They are unnatural boundaries, and 
 Hungary is determined to get back most of the parts 
 that have been taken from her. 
 
 In the north Hungary has lost Slovakia and 
 Rusinia — Slovakia being the toe of the shoe-shaped 
 Czechoslovak state, and Rusinia being the extreme 
 tip of the toe. In the east she has lost the huge 
 rough triangle of Transylvania to the Rumanians. 
 In the west she has lost the small strip of German 
 West Hungary to Austria. And in the south she 
 has lost Croatia and Slovenia to the Jugoslavs. All 
 that remains is the Magyar kernel which was the 
 center of the old Hungary. 
 
 There is practically no outcry from the Magyars 
 over the loss of Croatia and Slovenia — the districts 
 behind Fiume and the Dalmatian coast which now 
 make up the upper end of Jugoslavia. The Croats 
 have been a distinct, warlike, and progressive peo- 
 ple for centuries. Until the day of the armistice 
 they fought hard and valiantly against Italy and 
 the Allies on the side of Austria-Hungary. So the 
 Magyars esteem the Croats highly as brother war- 
 riors, whereas they loathe the Czechs. Of all their 
 enemies, the Italians held the Croat regiments of 
 the Austro-Hungarian army in the highest respect. 
 The Magyars have great sympathy and liking for 
 them. For years Croatia has been practically an 
 autonomous state under Hungary. Hungary is 
 sorry to lose Croatia, but so far as I could find, 
 
 179
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 out there is no bitterness over the slicing off of 
 Croatia. 
 
 But over the losses to Czechoslovakia, to Rumania, 
 and to Austria, the Magyars are making such an 
 uproar that the eardrums of any stranger in Hungary 
 are constantly aquiver. They say that the wrench- 
 ing away of these parts of Hungary is comparable 
 only to the partition of Poland and the theft of 
 Alsace-Lorraine by Germany. ' ' For over a thousand 
 years — " they tell you. 
 
 One hears that phrase, "For over a thousand 
 years," so many times in the course of each day 
 spent in Hungary that he finds himself walking along 
 the streets whispering over and over again, in time 
 with his footsteps, "For over a thousand years! 
 For over a thousand years!" He unconsciously 
 fits it to all the tunes the Hungarian orchestras play. 
 The rattle of horses' hoofs on the pavement seems 
 to clack out the words, ' ' For over a thousand years ! 
 For over a thousand years!" They get on the 
 brain. One almost goes mad from hearing them. 
 
 None the less, they are the groundwork of all 
 Magyar arguments. Because of those thousand 
 years the Magyars grit their teeth and ejaculate, 
 li Nem! Nem! Soha!" when asked to submit to the 
 partition of their country. And this is the way of it : 
 
 The Magyars are the direct descendants of an 
 Asiatic tribe of people who hailed from the rich 
 lands round the Sea of Azov, and whose chief means 
 of support consisted of swooping down on a neigh- 
 boring tribe, beating it to a decided and scarcely 
 distinguishable pulp, and appropriating the remain- 
 ing pieces. It is highly probable that if Attila, 
 
 180
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 the well-known Hun, had not damaged his reputa- 
 tion by his loose methods of waging war, the Magyars 
 would claim a distant relationship with Attila's 
 gang. As things stand at present Attila is rather 
 neglected in most stories of Magyar beginnings, 
 and the original Magyar leader is stated to be the 
 great chieftain Arpad, who is represented in all 
 Magyar paintings as being a proud-looking, dark- 
 brown man with a gold helmet, a black curly beard, 
 bracelets round his biceps, and a hand like a Virginia 
 ham. 
 
 However, none of these early ancestors were any- 
 thing to brag about so far as chivalry and loving- 
 kindness were concerned. When a Roman emperor 
 or general came home from the wars with a nice 
 parcel of bush-league kings and generals as captives, 
 and was honored with a triumph for his clever work, 
 the captives were marched through the streets of 
 Rome in chains, and shortly after the procession had 
 passed the reviewing stand the captives were beaten 
 with sticks until their skin was cut to ribbons, and 
 then they were dragged over to the Mamertine 
 Prison and thrown into an underground cell, and 
 finally, as soon as their bruises and cuts had begun 
 to sting, a prominent government official came 
 round and stabbed them to death and threw them 
 into the Tiber. None of the old-timers was a shrink- 
 ing violet ; and to descend from the best of them was 
 about as discreditable as to descend from the worst. 
 
 When we first hear of the Magyars they are swoop- 
 ing hither and yon along the shores of the Black Sea, 
 now taking a fall out of the Petchenegs and again 
 taking a fall out of the Cumanians, but always taking 
 
 181
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 a fall out of somebody. Ever since the beginning 
 of things the Magyars have always been a warrior 
 people. They have always been in a fight with 
 somebody so long as there was anything to fight 
 about. They have fought almost everybody in the 
 world at one time or another, and they show signs 
 of not being through even yet. 
 
 While the Magyars were surging along the borders 
 of the Black Sea, the great natural basin which later 
 became Hungary was being occupied in compara- 
 tively rapid succession by various queer brands of 
 people, all of whom either lived to fight or fought to 
 live, as everyone did in those dear dead days. 
 There were the Sarmatians, the Scythians, the Celts, 
 the Romans, the Goths, the Teutons, the Huns, the 
 Slavs, the Avars, and probably a number of others 
 whose fighting abilities were not sufficient to get 
 their names mentioned in history. But each of the 
 tribes and races which entered the big mountain- 
 rimmed basin made an attempt to consolidate it and 
 hold it — and couldn't. 
 
 In the year 895 the Magyars left the shores of the 
 Black Sea, crossed the mountains, and came into the 
 territory which they have held ever since. Even the 
 Hungarian historians are unable to agree on the 
 reasons which brought them in. Some say that they 
 were invited to come in to do a little high-grade 
 fighting, others say that they were compelled to 
 move in because certain tribes on the outside were 
 too strong for them and kept crowding them. At 
 any rate, all historians agree that it was in the year 
 895 that they moved in. They moved in, took the 
 country, consolidated it and held it, and on this fact 
 
 1S2
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 they base their argument which starts, "For over 
 a thousand years — " Until the Magyars came 
 nobody had ever been able to get a nation started. 
 The Magyars succeeded where everybody else had 
 failed, and for over a thousand years they have kept 
 right on being successful. The few scattered peoples 
 who were wandering round the Hungarian basin 
 were absorbed by the Magyars and became Magyars. 
 
 The ancestors of the Slovaks in the north, the 
 Magyars claim, were colonists who were brought in 
 by contractors two hundred years after the Magyars 
 arrived — contract labor introduced for the purpose 
 of clearing the forests. On this, as well as on the 
 argument that the majority of Slovaks do not wish 
 to be separated from Hungary, the Magyars base 
 their ear-piercing howls against the cutting away 
 of Slovakia from Hungary. 
 
 The Rusins, they claim, were immigrants who 
 crossed the mountains almost five hundred years 
 after the Magyars arrived, for the purpose of pastur- 
 ing their cattle on the Carpathian slopes. 
 
 The Rumanians of Transylvania, declare the 
 Magyars, were wandering shepherds who didn't 
 start crossing the mountains from Rumania into the 
 Hungarian basin until the year 1245. 
 
 As for the Germans who occupy German West 
 Hungary, the Magyars say that they were immi- 
 grants whom the Magyars encouraged to come into 
 Hungary from 1150 to 1250, and again from 171 1 
 until 1783. 
 
 The basis of all European argument is history. A 
 European can dive headlong into a mass of historical 
 facts and semihistorical facts, come up grasping a 
 
 183
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 handful of bleached bones, and rattle them together 
 loudly enough to drown out all other sounds within 
 a ten-mile radius. To Americans who are accus- 
 tomed to regard the founding of Plymouth Colony 
 and the courtship of Miles Standish as the very 
 dawn of history, the European history hound is an 
 incomprehensible and unmitigated bore. He won't 
 talk about anything but history. In the course of 
 twenty minutes' conversation he drags in unpro- 
 nounceable names, dates with six inches of dust on 
 them, tribes of people that haven't done any active 
 tribing since the year 1099, and battles that took 
 place three years before the Norman Conquest of 
 Britain was thought of. He also expects his listeners 
 to have a perfect and complete understanding of 
 everything he is talking about. This habit is not 
 restricted to one or two Central Europeans, but is 
 common to nearly all of them. The Poles, the 
 Czechs, the Slovaks, the Ukrainians, the Magyars, 
 the Serbs, the Croats, the Bulgarians, the Rumani- 
 ans — all of them quote history in support of their 
 claims that they deserve more than they possess. 
 
 Let me give you a sample of the historical dis- 
 course — not to hold up anyone to ridicule, but to 
 explain why it is that an American finds Central 
 European affairs difficult to grasp unless he has read 
 at least two hundred and fifty pounds of assorted 
 histories. I started to discuss with a Magyar the 
 present-day Rumanian invasion of Hungary — the 
 invasion in which the Rumanians stripped Hungary 
 of horses, cows, sheep, seed corn, stores of food, 
 farming implements, railroad cars, and practically 
 everything else that wasn't cemented to the ground. 
 
 184
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 "There are certain parts of Hungary," I said, 
 unwarily, "which have been occupied by Rumanians 
 almost as long as by Magyars, aren't there?" 
 
 That question was all the Magyar needed to set 
 him going. 
 
 "No! No! Never!" he exclaimed. 'The most 
 cruel people in the world were the Beskides, or 
 Bessenyok, and Constantinus Porphyrogenitus says 
 that ..." 
 
 "Hold on, there!" I begged him. "How do those 
 cruel people get into this, and who was that man 
 you mentioned so lightly?" 
 
 "Dear sir," said the Magyar, earnestly, "the 
 Olahs claim ..." 
 
 "Olahs? Olahs? This is the first time I ever 
 heard of them! Who let them into this argument, 
 and what are Olahs?" 
 
 ' ' Dear sir, the Olahs are the Rumanians of to-day. 
 The Olahs, or Rumanians, claim ..." 
 
 "Look here: if the Olahs and the Rumanians 
 are the same thing, why not call them Rumanians 
 and leave out the Olahs? That Olah stuff means 
 next to nothing to me or to any other American. 
 So far as we are concerned, you might as well call 
 them Blups or Glups or Oompahs. If you want us 
 to understand you, you must be simple and concise. 
 Remember, above all else, to be simple." 
 
 "Very well, dear sir. The Olahs, or Rumanians, 
 claim that they have inhabited the eastern end of 
 Hungary continuously since Trajan colonized that 
 territory; but Constantinus Porphyrogenitus ..." 
 
 "Just a moment! Who is this Trajan?" 
 
 "The Roman emperor, Trajan, dear sir. But 
 
 IBS
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 this statement is false and absurd, for Flavius Vo- 
 piscus, Eutropius, and Rufus Lextus ..." 
 
 "Here, here! This is getting too complicated! 
 You have referred to Constantinus Something-or- 
 other. What has this fellow got to do with this 
 crystal maze? And would you mind calling him 
 Con, for short?" 
 
 "Ah yes! Constantinus Porphyrogenitus ! We 
 have his word that ..." 
 
 "But who was he? Who was he? Why quote 
 him? And please call him Con!" 
 
 "Dear sir, Con was a Greek emperor. In nine 
 hundred and fifty Con tells us that the Beskides, the 
 most cruel enemies of the Magyars, lived next to 
 the territory in which the Olahs, or Rumanians, 
 claimed to have lived, so that they couldn't have 
 lived there at all." 
 
 "I don't see it. I don't know what you're driving 
 at. You'll have to make it clearer." 
 
 "Dear sir, because of the extreme cruelty of the 
 Beskides the territory next to them was left unin- 
 habited. The Olahs, or Rumanians, claim that their 
 ancestors lived in that territory when the Magyars 
 entered Hungary in eight hundred and ninety -five; 
 but Constantinus Porphyrogenitus informs us that in 
 eight hundred and ninety-six there was nobody liv- 
 ing there. The Magyars had entered Hungary, but 
 the eastern portion of the land was uninhabited." 
 
 "Well, what did Con know about it? Was he 
 writing for a Greek newspaper, or what?" 
 
 ' ' No, dear sir ! Constantinus Porphyrogenitus was 
 an emperor who personally investigated conditions in 
 Hungary for the sole purpose of investigating." 
 
 186
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 "But isn't there a chance that if Con wrote his 
 report in nine hundred and fifty on conditions which 
 existed in eight hundred and ninety-six, he may 
 have made some bad slips?" 
 
 "It is hardly possible, dear sir. An emperor's 
 position is such that he would have no occasion to 
 distort the truth." 
 
 "There is something in what you say. At any 
 rate, we will allow that point to pass. But you said 
 something about the Emperor Trajan colonizing 
 that territory. How about that?" 
 
 "Dear sir, the Emperor Trajan colonized that 
 territory; but each of the three authors, Flavius 
 Vopiscus, Eutropius, and Rufus Lextus, records the 
 fact that the Roman emperors moved every in- 
 habitant out of that region. The Rumanians, or 
 Olahs, claim that they descended from the Romans 
 living there, but there was nobody living there, so 
 their claims are false." 
 
 "That sounds fair enough. But if the Rumanians 
 didn't descend from somebody who didn't exist, 
 whom did they descend from?" 
 
 "Dear sir, in the year ten hundred and ten the 
 great Saint Stephen, king of the Magyars, sent out 
 Magyars to colonize the uninhabited region which 
 the Rumanians claim to have occupied before our 
 arrival. These colonies were increased from time 
 to time, until the Tartars ..." 
 
 "How did the Tartars get into the story? I 
 thought we were talking about Rumanians." 
 
 "The Tartars, dear sir, swept down from Tartary 
 in the year twelve hundred and forty-five, and mas- 
 sacred great numbers of Magyars. They killed off 
 13 187
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 thousands and thousands of the Magyar colonists 
 in Transylvania and put an end to Magyar expan- 
 sion, so the kings of Hungary permitted wandering 
 shepherds from Rumania and Bulgaria to cross the 
 mountains with their flocks and herds. These wan- 
 dering shepherds are the Olahs, or Rumanians, of 
 to-day. Therefore, if Transylvania is taken away 
 from the Magyars and given to the Rumanians, or 
 Olahs, dear sir, it will be taken from a nation which 
 first made the land safe, and given to the descendants 
 of wandering shepherds who were received in un- 
 suspecting friendship . ' ' 
 
 That, in brief, was the manner in which the Mag- 
 yar presented the case. He referred to many other 
 things in the course of his chat. He proved by 
 philology that the Rumanian language didn't come 
 from the place where the Rumanians claimed that it 
 did. He dragged Albania and Thessaly into the 
 story. He devoted a considerable amount of time 
 to the western Goths, the eastern Goths, the Gepids, 
 and the Avars. He spoke of Krass6-Szoreny and 
 upward of thirty other districts that I couldn't make 
 a note of because I hadn't the slightest idea how to 
 spell them. He worked Saint Ladislaus into the 
 narrative, as well as King Geza II, the Wallon 
 Italians, the Saxons, King Andrew II, the German 
 Order of Knights, King Bela III, the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church, the Greek Church, Rumanian national 
 literature, the lack of culture among the early 
 Rumanians — and all these features, I believe, are 
 quite necessary to a lucid and scholarly presentation 
 of the case. 
 
 If I were to go at all thoroughly into any one of 
 
 188
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 the many moot points which are constantly being 
 mooted by the Czechs and the Slovaks and the Ru- 
 manians and the Jugoslavs and the Magyars on the 
 largest and loudest mooters on which any mooting 
 has been done in modern times, this little thumb- 
 nail sketch would run on to an unconscionable length. 
 Several volumes could be written on the historical 
 claims which the Czechs and the Magyars set up to 
 that part of old Hungary which is now Slovakia. 
 Several more volumes could be written on the 
 Rumanian and the Magyar claims to Transylvania. 
 To cut down the length of any one of these claims is 
 to be accused of being superficial. The Slavs who 
 read these paragraphs will accuse me of being suf- 
 ficiently superficial to float round on a bowl of 
 skimmed milk. 
 
 There is another great point of argument which 
 centers in the old Hungary, and that is the question 
 of oppression. The Rumanians claim that the 
 Rumanians in Hungary were terribly oppressed by 
 the Magyars. The Czechs and some of the Slovaks 
 claim that the Slovaks in Hungary suffered untold 
 agonies from Magyar oppression. The Magyars, 
 on the other hand, claim that these people weren't 
 oppressed at all. In fact, they claim that the per- 
 centage of Rumanian schools for the Rumanians in 
 Hungary was greater than the percentage of Ru- 
 manian schools for Rumanians in Rumania. They 
 claim that the Slovaks and the Rumanians and any 
 other nationalities within the Magyar domain could 
 do as they pleased so long as they weren't guilty of 
 disloyalty to the Magyar nation. It is certain that 
 the Slovaks who have educated themselves in Magyar 
 
 189
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 colleges have risen to high positions in Magyar uni- 
 versity faculties, in Magyar courts, and in the Mag- 
 yar government. The people of Slovakia under the 
 Magyars developed their Slovak arts, learned Slovak 
 in the primary schools, spoke the language without 
 interference, and wore their national costumes when- 
 ever they pleased. The same thing is true of the 
 Rusins and the Rumanians of the old Hungary. 
 The Magyars have tried to educate them along 
 Magyar lines, just as the Czechs will try to educate 
 the Germans along Czech lines, and just as America 
 is trying to educate everybody in America along 
 American lines. Some people point to the illiteracy 
 in Slovakia, Rusinia, and Transylvania as a sign of 
 Magyar oppression. The same type of illiteracy 
 exists in the mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, 
 Virginia, and Maine, and for the same reasons. 
 The peasant people of southern Italy yield the palm 
 to almost nobody in the matter of illiteracy, but 
 they aren't oppressed, and nobody tries to argue 
 that they are. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Magyars were repre- 
 sented by many stupid and cruel governors at various 
 times in various parts of the Magyar kingdom, and 
 that these people behaved toward the people under 
 them as stupid and cruel people always behave. 
 There is also no doubt that a great deal of bun- 
 combe has been written about Magyar oppression 
 by the politicians of those portions of the old king- 
 dom which were seeking to break away. When the 
 Germans in Nebraska are not allowed to have their 
 own schools they are oppressed to a greater ex- 
 tent than, in many cases, the Slovaks and the 
 
 j 90
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 Rusins and the Rumanians were oppressed by the 
 Magyars. 
 
 It is not my object to whitewash Hungary in this 
 brief account, or to convince the readers of this 
 chapter that Hungary is innocent of everything. 
 I merely aim to report what the situation was 
 in Hungary in March, 1920, and the opinion that 
 had been formed by those who had sifted the 
 evidence. That opinion, as I have said before, was 
 almost universally in favor of giving back to the 
 Magyars a large part of the territory which the 
 Peace Conference originally took from them. An 
 American general, after studying the situation care- 
 fully, reported that in his opinion the Peace Treaty 
 should be revised in favor of Hungary. I found no 
 Americans in Hungary who did not hold the same 
 opinion. 
 
 From the London Times of March 4, 1920, comes 
 the following news item: 
 
 The Supreme Council yesterday dealt chiefly with the question 
 of peace with Hungary. Considerable difference of opinion 
 arose between the various delegates, mainly in consequence of 
 an Italian suggestion that the frontiers assigned by the general 
 treaty of peace to Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia 
 should be revised in favor of the Magyars. This suggestion 
 seemed to have received some support from the British repre- 
 sentatives, but to have been opposed by the French, who do not 
 favor the idea of throwing an important part of the general 
 Peace Treaty into the melting pot. 
 
 I must repeat again what I have said before in the 
 chapters on Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. 
 There is scarcely an American in Central Europe who 
 
 191
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 does not regard the Peace Conference and its deci- 
 sions as a gigantic joke. In one country it has dis- 
 regarded ethnographic claims and stuck to geographic 
 claims. In the next country it has done exactly 
 the opposite. Though the Treaty pretends to stand 
 for the self-determination of peoples, there is not a 
 country in which self-determination exists. Austria 
 is not permitted to determine its future. The 
 Germans in Bohemia have as much chance of self- 
 determination as has a bucket of oats in front of a 
 horse. The same thing is true of Magyars in 
 Slovakia, Ukrainians in Poland, Poles in Bohemia, 
 and Magyars in Rumania. These are only a few 
 instances, but they are typical of the work which the 
 Peace Conference has done behind the pretty scenery 
 of self-determination. 
 
 There are, I know, many people in the United 
 States who will object rabidly to any such defamation 
 of that august body. If these people will hark back 
 six or seven harks they will recall that one of the 
 most austere and intense American supporters of the 
 Peace Conference and its works once gave an 
 English newspaper an enormous amount of free 
 advertising. This paper, he said, was the only one 
 he ever read, because of its wonderful grasp of 
 European politics. He was referring to the Times. 
 
 For the first time [says an editorial in the London Times of 
 March 4, 1920] the British public have now seen the European 
 Areopagus — the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference — 
 at work under their eyes. They have beheld its cowardice, its 
 vacillation, its meanness. They have watched it as it jettisoned 
 one doctrine after another as the fears and the hopes of each 
 triumvir for his own electorate seemed to demand. They have 
 
 192
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 observed it fumbling and groping from one subject to another 
 without knowledge to illuminate it or principle to guide its 
 steps. That has been a very wholesome object lesson to them. 
 It has explained to them the character of much that was done 
 in Paris. They understand now how the whole Treaty was 
 made, and they know why it was made so ill. 
 
 There will also be many people who wish to take 
 me to task for what I have said regarding the bun- 
 combe which has been written concerning Magyar 
 oppression of the different nationalities within the 
 borders of the old kingdom. To these people I 
 would like to quote a statement made by Theodore 
 Roosevelt to a prominent Hungarian in 1904. 
 
 "I know the history of Hungary," said Roosevelt, 
 "and I cannot but admire the manner in which the 
 dominant Magyar nation manages so many dif- 
 ferent nationalities and religions — manages to keep 
 them loyal to their country, as they have been for 
 so many centuries. We have the same problem in 
 America, and in this respect we have much to learn 
 from Hungary." 
 
 For all these reasons the Magyars lift up their 
 voices and shout, "Nem! Nem! Soha!" ("No! No! 
 Never!") when they speak of the dismemberment 
 of the kingdom. Hungary is covered with antidis- 
 memberment posters, the most popular one being the 
 blood-red relief map of Hungary as it was before 
 the war, with great cracks running across it along 
 the new dismemberment lines of the Peace Treaty, 
 and with the words "Nem! Nem! Soha!" splashed 
 beneath it. 
 
 But there are many other protesting posters. 
 A new one is issued every few weeks, and all the shop 
 
 i93
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 windows and all the billboards and all the blank 
 walls display it until a new one appears. One shows 
 a relief map of Hungary with a hand plunging a 
 cruel-looking knife into it and carving off huge 
 chunks. "Can we endure it?" asks the Magyar 
 word beneath the map — intimating that the Magyars 
 are practically out of endurance. Another shows a 
 Magyar peasant in his national costume, clasping a 
 map of Hungary to his breast and protecting it 
 against the attacks of birds of prey. Still another 
 shows huge hands grasping at different sides of 
 Hungary. "Thieves' Hands," says the title of this 
 poster. Others show Magyar warriors in full armor 
 defending the industry, the art, and the religion of 
 the western world from the Tartar hordes and the 
 Turkish invasion. The Magyars say that prior to 
 their wars against the onrushing Turks back in the 
 sixteenth century, 85 per cent of the population of 
 Hungary was pure Magyar, but that so many Mag- 
 yars fell before the Turks that at the close of the 
 Turkish wars the population was only 44 per cent 
 pure Magyar. This terrible loss of life took place 
 in only a few decades, and because of it Hungary 
 claims the title of the Ancient Bulwark of Christen- 
 dom. By permitting Hungary's dismemberment, 
 say the posters, Christendom will be making a very 
 evil return for the debt which it owes to Hungary. 
 "He who would dismember Hungary," reads one 
 poster, "is paving the way for a fresh war." "Do 
 you want four Alsace-Lorraines ? " demands another, 
 which represents the four dismembered sections 
 bursting into flames. "Presburg, the Magyar Stras- 
 burg," reads still another, referring to the ancient 
 
 194
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 Magyar city on the Danube which the Czechs have 
 occupied. 
 
 The mental picture which the average American 
 has formed of the Magyar, or Hungarian, I believe, 
 is a somewhat erroneous one. The popular impres- 
 sion of him, if I am not mistaken, is that he is one 
 of the hardest of hard-boiled eggs — a low person 
 with a baroque mustache who gets into violent 
 fights on Sundays. In reality the true Hungarian 
 is one of the most amiable, hospitable, and attractive 
 persons that one can find in Central Europe. On this 
 fact the surrounding nationalities base some of their 
 loudest shrieks. "Everyone who goes to Hungary," 
 they claim, "falls into the clutches of the Magyar 
 aristocrats and is hoodwinked by their fine manners 
 and their fluent lies and their generous hospitality!" 
 
 It is a fact that practically every American or 
 Englishman who goes to Hungary is more favorably 
 inclined toward the claims of the Magyars than 
 toward those of most of the surrounding nationalities. 
 To say, however, that all of them are hoodwinked 
 is to make a statement which cannot possibly be 
 true. There must be quite a number of Englishmen 
 and Americans who are still capable of nailing lies, 
 seeing through fine manners and resisting the de- 
 bilitating influences of hospitality, whether these 
 parlor tricks originate with Magyars, Celts, Slavs, 
 or Germans. Roosevelt liked the Magyars, and it 
 is highly probable that the amount of hoodwinking 
 that was successfully foisted off on him would have 
 discouraged the most hardened foister. 
 
 However, the true Magyar is either an aristocrat 
 or a lover of the pomp and gauds of aristocracy. 
 
 195
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 The newcomer writhes internally when he hears 
 for the first time the form of farewell that is used 
 so frequently by Magyar underlings and shop- 
 keepers — "Ich kiisse die Hande," or, "I kiss the 
 hands." The Viennese, too, have that odd form of 
 expression. One walks out of a restaurant or a 
 theater or a store amid an echoing volley of "I 
 kiss the hands!" It's enough, as the less cultured 
 American is sometimes heard to remark, to get your 
 goat. But the Magyar likes it. He is a monarchist 
 by nature. He wants a king. He is a superiorist; 
 he feels that he is far better than any of the sur- 
 rounding nationalities; and when asked about it he 
 freely admits it. In the perpetual wrangle about 
 culture which is constantly going on in Central 
 Europe, the voice of the Magyar rings out loud and 
 clear above all the others — not necessarily because 
 his culture is so much better than all the others, but 
 because he feels confident that there's nobody with 
 a culture which has his, so to speak, shaded. 
 
 When a Central European gets his legs under a 
 table and starts to discourse on his culture he can 
 run on for hours at a time unless he is forcibly shut 
 off. He argues either that the other nations have 
 no culture or that the other nations stole their cul- 
 ture from his own. The Czechs, for example, snort 
 loudly at Magyar culture, saying that the Magyars 
 stole what little they have from the Slovaks. This 
 makes the Magyars almost wild with rage, and they 
 howl frantically that the Czechs are rude and 
 cultureless, and that the Magyar culture is worth 
 eighteen or twenty cultures like that of the Czechs. 
 They speak of their cultures in much the same way 
 
 196
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 as chiefs of laboratories discuss diphtheria cultures. 
 They mention them as though they could be injected 
 into the forearm with a hypodermic needle. To an 
 outsider who is getting his eightieth or ninetieth 
 cultural earful in the course of about two weeks, 
 most of the Central European culture conversation 
 sounds about the same way as a cultural squabble 
 between the cities of Terre Haute, Kansas City, 
 El Paso, and Elmira would sound. 
 
 The Magyar, however, believes and has good rea- 
 son for believing that he is more advanced in his 
 civilization than are the Slovaks, the Rumanians, 
 and . all the other peoples who have been under 
 Magyar rule for so many centuries. And the Magyar 
 has been a fighting man for centuries. He is a born 
 warrior. He has been accustomed to fight for what 
 is his. Being a superiorist, he believes that it is 
 genuinely better for the nationalities of the old 
 Hungary to be under his rule than to be under their 
 own rule. He sincerely believes that every part 
 of the old kingdom belongs to him as much as 
 Budapest belongs to him. Having been accustomed 
 in the past to fight for what is his, he intends to keep 
 right on fighting for what he considers his. Sooner 
 or later he will fight for all the parts of the old 
 kingdom that have been taken from him — just as 
 we would fight eventually to get back South Dakota 
 if the Grabbonians took it away from us. Germany 
 has no argument to put up over the loss of Alsace- 
 Lorraine and German Poland ; Austria has no ground 
 for protest over the loss of Bohemia ; but Hungary has 
 a large amount of ground on which to protest loudly 
 and persistently against the loss of her integral parts. 
 
 197
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 For this reason the Magyar wails of li Ncm! Nemf 
 Solia!" cannot be sniffed at by any person who 
 hopes to see the peace of Europe in a position where 
 it is not likely to be smashed into a million fragments 
 by a week from almost any Friday in the future. 
 
 For the past six years the Magyars have had as 
 much unwelcome excitement as any nation has ever 
 had in that period of time. According to the Mag- 
 yars, they were forced into the war by Austria against 
 their wills. Hungary, they claim, had nothing to 
 gain and everything to lose. They also claim that 
 they have always had rather more than less sym- 
 pathy for the Serbs — against whom the opening guns 
 in the Great War were fired by Austria-Hungary 
 — and that their admiration for England and America 
 has always been very great. All the Magyars, 
 moreover, say that they detest Austria and have 
 always detested her. Austria, they say, has always 
 made cat's-paws out of them — has always treated 
 them like yokels. It is a fact that Hungarian society 
 would never receive the Austrian and the Czech 
 army officers before the war. The Magyars also 
 claim that they have no use for Germany and never 
 have had — that they were forced into an alliance 
 with Germany in sheer self-defense. Such state- 
 ments, must, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. 
 
 At any rate, the Magyars had nearly four and a 
 half years of war. At the end of the war there was 
 a revolution, and the Social Democrats took over 
 the government. As in all the Social Democratic 
 parties which now control Central Europe, those 
 members of the party who were extremists — or 
 who belonged to the Extreme Left, as the technical 
 
 198
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 phrase runs — were plain Bolsheviks. In all of 
 Central Europe the extremists of every Social 
 Democratic party — which means the political party 
 that is giving Europe to the dogs and frightening the 
 business men to such an extent that they scarcely 
 dare to open their factories or to speed up their 
 industries — have the same bitter hatred of the 
 bourgeoisie and of capital that the Bolsheviks have. 
 In Vienna I went to Dr. Otto Bauer, former Minister 
 of Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Friedrich Adler, a mem- 
 ber of the National Assembly, for certain statements 
 regarding the Social Democrats. These men are 
 leaders of Social Democracy — the ruling class — in 
 Austria. Both men said that they absolutely re- 
 fused to make any statements to the American press, 
 because it was universally bourgeois and capitalistic. 
 The backbone of all Social Democracy is class 
 warfare. 
 
 The Social Democratic government of Hungary, 
 headed by Count Karolyi, was weak. The army, 
 following the armistice, melted into thin air. Karol- 
 yi's War Minister, who apparently was chosen by 
 Karolyi for reasons similar to those which seem to 
 have actuated the choice of some of our own Cabinet 
 Ministers, declared that he didn't care if he never 
 saw another soldier as long as he lived. When the 
 murmurs of the people grew to a thunderous roar 
 Karolyi ran away to Czechoslovakia. Because he 
 let the army go Karolyi is almost universally blamed 
 by the Magyars to-day for their plight. He seems 
 to have thought that the Allies would not allow an 
 unarmed nation to be attacked. If this was the 
 case his thinker was suffering from sand in the gear 
 
 199
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 box. And he ran away under fire. This being the 
 case, the Magyars are entitled to think as they 
 please about him, even though some outsiders 
 claim, as they do, that Karolyi was an idealist and 
 a great man. 
 
 When Karolyi ran away there was a grand upset; 
 and late in March, 1919, the Bolsheviks seized the 
 government. The Bolshevik leaders were men of 
 the lowest, vilest, and most brutal type. They were 
 ignorant and avaricious. Their leader was Bela 
 Kun, or Kohn, and his chief assistants were the two 
 Szamuely brothers — who are always spoken of by 
 the Magyars as "the terrible Szamuely brothers." 
 The Szamuely brothers are dead now. One, trying 
 to flee from Hungary with millions of crowns in loot, 
 committed suicide when he saw that his capture 
 was certain. Another was executed. Bela Kun is 
 imprisoned near Vienna. The Magyars are trying 
 to extradite him so that they can try him for his 
 crimes. 
 
 Under Kun, the Szamuelys, and the most ignorant 
 and avaricious gang of thugs that ever held govern- 
 ment positions outside of Bolshevik Russia, the 
 Hungarian Bolsheviks inaugurated the red terror in 
 Budapest. They murdered large numbers of the 
 Magyar bourgeoisie. They did some very awful 
 things. Under their rule the dregs of the slums 
 rose up and scattered filth in the homes of the hated 
 bourgeoisie. No member of the bourgeoisie was 
 permitted to remain in full possession of his own 
 home. In every home was put the outpouring of 
 the slums — laughing and gloating over their hated 
 enemies, the capitalists. The Bolsheviks printed 
 
 200
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 money in a hurry — in so much of a hurry that they 
 printed the notes on only one side of the paper. 
 In every house they named one of their number to 
 be a man of confidence, and to this man of con- 
 fidence every person in the house had to come in 
 order to obtain permission to have a pair of boots 
 repaired, to buy a shirt, to get a piece of meat to eat. 
 If the man of confidence approved, it was all right; 
 if he disapproved, it was all wrong. 
 
 Stores were closed ; windows were smashed ; build- 
 ings were looted right and left. Persons possessing 
 bank accounts could draw out only 200 crowns a 
 month — and the crown was worth very little at that 
 time. Later this law was altered so that a man 
 could draw out as much as 2,000 crowns a month, 
 but no more. There was only one newspaper — the 
 red newspaper, and that printed nothing but Bol- 
 shevik news. The whole world was represented as 
 going Bolshevik — especially America; and copies 
 of the Socialist paper, the New York Call, bearing 
 across the top of the front page the slogan, "Prole- 
 tarians of the World, Unite," were distributed in 
 Budapest to show that Bolshevism was strongly 
 intrenched in the United States. The bourgeoisie 
 were thrown into prison. Daily lists were issued of 
 the people who were to be shot because of anti- 
 Bolshevik sympathies. A red army was formed, and 
 many workmen were forced into it against their wills. 
 That is to say, some of them were forced in. Many 
 other non-Bolsheviks went in of their own accord. 
 
 A great many non-Bolsheviks shouted for Bolshe- 
 vism in Hungary during the Bolshevik regime, 
 
 because the Magyars are great opportunists. 
 
 201
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 A part of the red army was sent down against the 
 Rumanians, and a part was sent up against the 
 Czechs, for when the_ Rumanians and the Czechs 
 had seen Hungary lying helpless before them with- 
 out an army or any other means of protection they 
 had promptly waded in and helped themselves to 
 whatever they wanted — and their wants were not 
 at all modest. The section of the red army which 
 went against the Rumanians got into action first, 
 and promptly went to pieces. The Rumanians, 
 fairly climbing up the backs of the fleeing Bolsheviks, 
 came all the way across Hungary and into Budapest. 
 That was early in August, 19 19, and on that day 
 Bolshevik rule in Hungary became a thing of the 
 past. 
 
 Terrible as was the Bolshevik rule and the red 
 terror in Hungary, it had one beneficial effect: 
 Hungary, having had a good dose of Bolshevism, 
 is permanently cured. It is the one country in 
 Central Europe where there is no more fear of 
 Bolshevism. "We know what it is now," say the 
 Magyars, "and it can never happen again. Any- 
 thing is preferable to it. It can never get started 
 in the future." 
 
 From August until November, 1919, the Ru- 
 manians occupied the Hungarian capital. Not car- 
 ing to wait for reparations committees to decide 
 what indemnities Rumania should receive from the 
 Central Empires, the Rumanians decided to be their 
 own reparations committee and take what they 
 wanted from Hungary while it was lying helpless on 
 its back. So they went through Hungary with a 
 fine-tooth comb. They took locomotives, freight 
 
 202
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 cars, and passenger cars. They took astronomical 
 instruments, microscopes, and scientific instruments. 
 They took farm tractors and harvesting machinery. 
 They took hoes and rakes and shovels and every 
 other farming tool that they could find. They took 
 corn and wheat and potatoes and all the other food- 
 stuffs that the farmers didn't conceal. They even 
 took from the farmers the seed wheat that had been 
 tested and selected after years of experimenting, and 
 shipped it back to Rumania to be ground up into 
 flour. They gathered up all the horses and cows and 
 sheep that they could find and shipped them back 
 to Rumania. As a result the Magyar farmers lack 
 farm implements, animals to cultivate their fields, 
 and seed with which to plant them. There is a grave 
 possibility that instead of being self-supporting in 
 the autumn of 1920, as the Magyars had expected 
 to be, another year may have to elapse, thanks to the 
 Rumanians, before they can produce enough to feed 
 themselves properly. 
 
 After Bela Kun and his infamous crew had been 
 driven from power, one government followed another 
 with bewildering rapidity. Hungary has always 
 been cursed with politicians, and the post-Bolshevik 
 politicians were representative curses — selfish fortune 
 hunters, for the most part. The governments had 
 no semblance of strength and no power to keep order, 
 and under them the young Magyars ran amuck, 
 took the law into their own hands, and killed a large 
 number of the Bolsheviks who had made life so 
 horrible for the Magyars. This sort of lynch law 
 is only too common in the United States; so if 
 Americans will consider what the Magyars endured 
 14 203
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 from the Bolsheviks, they should have no difficulty 
 in understanding how it was possible for the young 
 Magyars to run amuck. 
 
 There were even posters in parts of Budapest 
 reminding the citizens of the, outrages which they 
 had suffered, and suggesting by implication, though 
 not in words, that the same treatment be accorded 
 to the people who had been responsible for their 
 suffering. 
 
 During the Bolshevik regime a Magyar admiral 
 named Horthy decided that the time was ripe for 
 action and plenty of it. Horthy had served in the 
 Adriatic with distinction during the war, and had 
 received so many decorations that when he put on 
 all of them his left shoulder was five inches lower 
 than his right. He was a popular man and a 
 fighter. Moreover, he came of a fighting race; 
 for five members of the Horthy family died in the 
 great battle of Mohacs in 1526, when the Magyars 
 finally went down to defeat before the Turks. And 
 he had a fighting name — Miklos, which is pure 
 Magyar for Mike. 
 
 Horthy went down to Szegedin, in southern Hun- 
 gary, with a handful of other fighters, and sent out 
 a call for volunteers. Officers and men flocked to 
 him, coming in the most devious ways to escape the 
 Bolsheviks. The Italians helped him and supplied 
 his men with part of the arms which they needed. 
 Horthy's men are well-trained, soldierly-looking 
 troops. The Magyars themselves say that there are 
 30,000 men in Horthy's army. As a matter of fact, 
 there is nearly double that number, at least. 
 
 When the Rumanians moved out of Budapest, 
 
 204
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 Horthy moved in. He demanded order at once, 
 and got it. He had no use for self-seeking, agitating 
 politicians, or for strong-arm methods, and he said so 
 frankly. Just after I arrived in Budapest, late last 
 February, Horthy was made military dictator of 
 Hungary, with the title of chief of state, or regent — 
 the ruler until a king is crowned. Horthy started 
 right out to do the dictating, too. The politicians 
 framed up a set of rules for him to work under, so 
 that they could go ahead picking up all the loose 
 moneys that weren't pasted to the floor. Horthy's 
 only powers were to be the right to kiss his hand to 
 the people on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, 
 attach his name to statements issued to the press, 
 and ride in front of the band on a milk-white charger. 
 The politicians came to Horthy one February morn- 
 ing and said, graciously, "You're elected regent; 
 kindly step out on the balcony and address the 
 populace." The populace, having been tipped off, 
 was in front of the building, shouting itself hoarse, 
 and the politicians figured that Horthy would not 
 dare to refuse the popular demand. 
 
 Horthy, however, knew exactly what he wanted, 
 and he didn't care how long he kept the populace 
 standing in front of his residence. He demanded 
 the right of sending parliament home when it got 
 too windy, of making war without publishing his 
 intentions several weeks ahead of time to the people 
 whom he planned to hit, and of having several other 
 highly dictatorial privileges — and of having them 
 right away. 
 
 "After you have made these little changes," said 
 Admiral Horthy to the waiting politicians with a 
 
 205
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 benevolent smile, "the program will proceed. Until 
 then the eager populace will not be addressed." 
 
 His demands were acceded to with some reluctance, 
 whereupon he gratefully accepted the dictatorship, 
 while the professional politicians started hunting for 
 a soft place on which, as one might say, to get off. 
 
 Before I left Vienna for Budapest several people 
 had occasion to ask me where I was going. When 
 I mentioned Budapest they shook their heads know- 
 ingly. "You'll see a city of madmen," they said. 
 "They're all crazy down there! The city is covered 
 with posters demanding pogroms. The white ter- 
 ror which exists is worse than the red terror at its 
 height." 
 
 I floated down the Danube to Budapest with both 
 eyes wide open for madmen rushing along the banks 
 with knives in their hands. I saw nothing but the 
 swollen brown waters of the Danube, the flat, monot- 
 onous and wonderfully rich Hungarian farm lands 
 and millions of wild mallard ducks. The Danube 
 has worked up considerable of a reputation for beauty 
 and blueness, on account of Mr. Strauss's celebrated 
 waltz. It is, however, not particularly beautiful 
 and not at all blue between Vienna and Budapest. 
 Instead of "The Beautiful Blue Danube," Mr. 
 Strauss should have written a jazz melody entitled, 
 "Down on the Danube There Are Dandy Ducks," 
 or something like that, if he wanted to be strictly 
 up to date and truthful. As the little steamer 
 churned downstream she was constantly surrounded 
 by flocks of ducks which got out of the river ahead 
 of her and circled round behind her to settle again 
 and resume their feeding; blue-winged teal, geese, 
 
 206
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 black swans, widgeon, and mallards, but mostly 
 mallards. There were mallards in twos and tens 
 and hundreds and thousands. They passed the 
 steamer in never-ending flocks. The Danube has 
 from three to eight channels, and innumerable back- 
 waters and bayous all along the flat Danube basin, 
 and the steamer was only kicking the ducks out of 
 the main channel. I strongly recommend the Dan- 
 ube as a duck hunters' paradise. 
 
 Though there were no madmen rushing along the 
 banks of the Danube, there were a number of men 
 on the steamer who became so extremely upset that 
 they might have been called mad by a purist. 
 There were five hundred passengers on that steamer, 
 and there were cabins for only thirty-eight of them. 
 It is only a one-day trip from Vienna to Budapest, 
 but, owing to the aversion of the steamboat officials 
 to overwork themselves, the boats didn't run after 
 nightfall. Consequently the steamer tied up a few 
 miles out of Budapest, and the four hundred and 
 sixty-two people who didn't have cabins had to lie 
 down on the floor with their baggage and try to 
 sleep. During the night some evilly disposed per- 
 sons percolated among the slumberers and stole a 
 large percentage of the baggage. To cap the climax, 
 the purser went ashore during the night with most 
 of the passage money in his pocket, met some low 
 characters, and was relieved of 30,000 crowns. Con- 
 sequently all the passengers had to be searched the 
 next morning — all, that is, except one or two Amer- 
 icans who didn't exactly fancy the idea of being 
 searched and were willing to fight for their fancies. 
 As a result of losing their baggage and being searched, 
 
 207
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 there were a great many persons on the boat who 
 might have been classed as madmen without any 
 undue stretch of the imagination. 
 
 The question of the white terror in Hungary is a 
 delicate one to handle, because a great many of the 
 people who have the most heated views on the sub- 
 ject are the ones who haven't been in Hungary and 
 consequently don't know what they are talking 
 about. They are prone to think that people who 
 base their judgment on personal observation are 
 either mistaken or have been misled or are deliber- 
 ately falsifying. Quite briefly, the white terror is 
 supposed to be the terrorization and murder of 
 Hebrews in Budapest because of the part that 
 Hebrews played in Bolshevik rule. The claim is 
 made that this white terror has the official sanction 
 of the Horthy government. It is claimed that more 
 people are being killed under the white terror than 
 during the red terror. It is claimed that the city 
 of Budapest is plastered with posters inciting the 
 people to kill Hebrews. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there are no anti-Hebrew 
 posters or anti-Bolshevik posters or pro-pogrom 
 posters exposed anywhere in the city of Budapest. 
 I hunted for them very carefully, unwilling to take 
 the assurance of Americans and Magyars alike that 
 such things did not exist. I questioned a large 
 number of people, ranging from college professors 
 down to hotel porters, concerning such posters. A 
 large percentage of the people I asked had never 
 seen anything of the sort and were of the opinion 
 that there hadn't been any such things. From 
 others, however, I learned that anti-Bolshevik post- 
 208
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 ers had been posted up in the city for a short time 
 after the Bolshevik overthrow, and that these post- 
 ers, by picturing the sufferings of the Magyars under 
 Bolshevism, had tacitly encouraged retaliation. At 
 the end of a short time, however, they had been 
 taken down. After considerable effort I secured a 
 copy of the poster admitted by all to have been the 
 most virulent of the Magyar anti-Bolshevik propa- 
 ganda. This poster is now in the possession of the 
 publishers. It is no more rabid than many of the 
 anti-German cartoons which appeared in America 
 during the war. 
 
 As to the number of people who have been killed 
 by anti-Bolshevik persecution since the Horthy 
 forces entered Budapest and a sound government 
 was started, the claims have varied between 200 
 and 2,000, with the average claimant leaning 
 toward 2,000. The Socialists have been the ones 
 who have made the most horrifying claims. Con- 
 sequently the Socialist leaders were the ones to 
 approach in order to obtain definite charges. This 
 was done, and the Socialists furnished a list of the 
 people who had vanished during the first two and 
 one half months of the Horthy rule. This list, 
 furnished by the injured party itself, contained not 
 2,000 names nor 200 names, but 26 names. These 
 26 persons had disappeared. It was implied that 
 they had been murdered, but it was not so stated. 
 Investigation showed that, of the 26, several were in 
 Vienna, where they had fled when they learned of the 
 violence of the anti-Bolshevik feeling in Budapest. 
 Several others were located in Czechoslovakia, 
 where they had fled for the same reason. This list 
 
 209
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 is in the possession of Mr. Grant-Smith, American 
 commissioner to Hungary. 
 
 There is a white terror in Hungary, but it is a good 
 deal like the white terror that obtains in the United 
 States among the reds. We have good reason to 
 want to rid America of reds. We have made the 
 fact very plain, and American Bolsheviks of both 
 the gutter and the parlor variety are watching their 
 steps with unusual care. The Magyars have far bet- 
 ter reason to loathe Bolshevism and the Bolsheviks 
 than America has yet been given, and the Bolsheviks 
 know it. They are adhering rigidly to the straight 
 and narrow path. That is the white terror. Those 
 who can are fleeing to other countries. A few have 
 been killed. But the story that no Hebrew dares to 
 show his face in Budapest is pure piffle. As has 
 been the case for many years, practically all the 
 Hungarian banks, newspapers, politicians, nobles, 
 and large farms are controlled by Hebrews who are 
 as enthusiastic Magyars as any Magyar in Hungary, 
 yet all businesses are running as usual in Budapest. 
 
 I went to Admiral Horthy himself for information 
 concerning the white terror, for it is said among out- 
 siders that the white terror is carried on by officers 
 of Horthy's army. 
 
 "I am trying to maintain order in Hungary," 
 said he, "and my officers and men know it. I have 
 told them — and they understand perfectly — that if 
 any murders take place while I am in power I will be 
 seriously damaged. I know, if I may be pardoned 
 for saying so, my officers' sentiments for me; and 
 I know there is not one of them who would not 
 suffer greatly rather than cause me any embarrass- 
 
 2IQ
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 ment. Whoever the men may be that are respon- 
 sible for the few murders that have taken place, 
 they have made every attempt to throw the blame 
 on the Horthy army, but they have done it in an 
 incredibly clumsy and stupid manner. For ex- 
 ample, there was recently a most unfortunate and 
 terrible affair: a newspaper editor was seized and 
 carried to the country and murdered. His mur- 
 derers traveled in a military automobile, and after 
 the crime had been committed one of the men 
 stood up in the automobile so that he could be seen 
 by passers-by. He was dressed in a uniform, and 
 in a loud voice he stated that he was an officer, and 
 asked to be directed to the barracks. Such actions 
 are ridiculous, for no murderer would brand himself 
 so unmistakably. It was a clear attempt to throw 
 the blame on my officers." 
 
 I asked Admiral Horthy whether his government 
 wished to discriminate in any way against Hebrews, 
 as reports say that it does. 
 
 "In no respect whatever," said Admiral Horthy. 
 'The Hebrews control business and banking and 
 journalism in Hungary because the Magyar aristo- 
 crats, in many instances, have been lazy and prone 
 to regard work as beneath their dignity. Con- 
 sequently we cannot exist without the Hebrews. 
 The only antagonistic feeling among the Magyars is 
 against the immigrants who have come in from 
 Galicia during the war — the parasites who feed on 
 one another and on everyone with whom they come 
 in contact, and who have profiteered in food, so that 
 they have grown wealthy while the price of the food 
 has soared above the reach of our own people/'
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 As regards her money, Hungary is in practically 
 the same position as that in which Austria finds her- 
 self. The reason for this is difficult to understand, 
 for whereas Austria is stripped of factories, coal, 
 farm lands, food, and everything that is necessary 
 for a state's existence, Hungary still has almost 
 everything that she needs in order to be self-support- 
 ing — or will have almost everything as soon as she 
 has recovered from the war, Bolshevism, and the 
 Rumanian invasion. Had it not been for the Ru- 
 manians she would have produced more than enough 
 food for her own needs by the autumn of 1920. 
 Her claims that she cannot exist without the terri- 
 tory which the Peace Conference has taken from her 
 are untrue. It would be hard lines — and unfair lines 
 — if she had to get along without this territory, but 
 she could easily do it. And yet her money is as low 
 as Austria's — or was as low as Austria's early in 
 March, 1920. Why should it be so? I do not 
 know, and I was unable to find out, though I asked 
 everybody I met, from Admiral Horthy down to the 
 hat boy in the Hungaria Hotel, not omitting several 
 of Budapest's prominent bankers. 
 
 Some of it is due to the fluency with which the 
 money is rolling off the printing presses ; but Austria 
 should unquestionably have the most worthless 
 money in the world. She should lead her nearest 
 competitors by several miles. How it is that Hun- 
 gary can run neck and neck with her is a mystery. 
 It is as much of a mystery as the reason why the 
 Magyars always write their names hind side to, 
 or front side back, so to speak. A Hungarian who 
 signs himself Kiralfy Bela is really Bela Kiralfy. An 
 
 212
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 American who signs his name Harry J. Wimpus is 
 at once known to all Hungarians as Mr. Harry, and 
 any telegrams which are received for Mr. Wimpus 
 are put in the unclaimed rack, because Mr. Wimpus 
 has become Mr. Harry and is unrecognized by any 
 other name. Thus, Bela Kun is always referred to 
 by the Magyars as Kun Bela, and if Mr. Irvin Cobb 
 should go to Budapest to live he would have to call 
 himself Cobb Irvin or be classed down in the ruck 
 with the unknown Jones John and Smith Samuel 
 and Brown Charles. What pleasure the Magyars 
 get out of fooling themselves into thinking that 
 "Macbeth" was written by Shakespeare William, and 
 that the character Schoneld Penrod was created by 
 Tarkington Booth is quite beyond the comprehension 
 of the average comprehender. It might add to the 
 beauty of the well-known ballad "Old Black Joe" 
 if it were Magyarized into "Old Joe Black," but I 
 doubt it. 
 
 Nobody knows why these things are so, but they 
 are so. Early in March the person who was for- 
 tunate enough to have American dollars could 
 change them into Hungarian crowns at the rate of 
 250 crowns for each dollar. Since one dollar could 
 be exchanged into only five crowns before the war, 
 the financial expert will be able to reckon that the 
 crown in March was worth one fiftieth of what it 
 used to be worth. 
 
 There is the same amount of money speculation 
 in Hungary as everywhere else in Europe. The re- 
 sult of this on money values is very bad. Round 
 the 15 th of February the money speculators were 
 having a delightful time in Budapest. On the 
 
 213
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 morning of a certain day one dollar would buy 300 
 crowns; at noon of the same day the rate had been 
 forced down to 220 for a dollar — a difference of 
 approximately 25 per cent. Stock speculation 
 damages many people, of course, and is not a par- 
 ticularly savory proceeding, but stock speculation 
 by comparison with money speculation is as innocent 
 and harmless as passing the contribution box. 
 Money speculation reaches and affects every person 
 in the nation. 
 
 Food is plentiful in Hungary, because it is essen- 
 tially an agricultural country. Czechoslovakia and 
 Hungary are the two countries in Central Europe 
 where an outsider with money can buy all the food 
 that he wants, and in almost as great variety as it 
 can be bought in France or Italy. The price of this 
 food, however, is so high that it is almost beyond 
 the reach of the Hungarian. A family of three 
 people in Budapest that wishes to have meat five 
 times a week and set a table that will keep the 
 entire family well fed must spend 10,000 crowns for 
 food each month, or 120,000 crowns a year. It 
 is a difficult thing in Hungary, however, to scrape 
 together 120,000 crowns a year. An assistant pro- 
 fessor in a university receives 1,000 crowns a 
 month, or 12,000 crowns a year, and on that amount 
 of money he is so close to actual starvation that 
 there isn't a trace of humor in the situation. The 
 trick of having a suit of clothes turned by a tailor is 
 the oldest of old stuff in Budapest. They learned it 
 years ago. Now the Magyars are having their 
 turned clothes re-turned, so that one sees some 
 pretty pitiful things in the line of clothes. 
 
 214
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 The workmen who are working are a little better 
 off than university professors, because the average 
 workman's wage is ioo crowns a day. There are a 
 great many out of work, however, because of the 
 universal lack of raw material and also because the 
 Rumanians gutted so many factories of their ma- 
 chinery and tools. Probably the greatest sufferers 
 are the once wealthy people who owned property 
 in what is now Czechoslovakia and Rumania. Once 
 they had incomes; to-day they have nothing. It is 
 bad enough, say the Magyars, to have nothing under 
 the best of conditions, but to have nothing when 
 everything is so frightfully expensive is many times 
 worse. For some little time I was unable to grasp 
 this argument, for it seemed to me that the person 
 who has nothing when prices are low is about as 
 badly off as the person who has nothing when prices 
 are high. "But, don't you see," explained the 
 Magyars, "that when we pawn our belongings in 
 order to live, we have to pawn so very much because 
 of the high prices?" 
 
 The establishments in Budapest which traffic in 
 old silver or jewels are doing an enormous business, 
 and the city is full of them. I went into shop after 
 shop of that nature, and in each one the people were 
 lined up in front of the counter like bargain hunters 
 in American department stores, but all of them were 
 selling, always selling. In all the stores I visited 
 I saw not a single person buying. 
 
 One of the largest shops of this kind was owned 
 and managed by a Hungarian who, years ago, worked 
 for one of the largest silver manufacturers in Amer- 
 ica. That man was one of the busiest men I have 
 
 215
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 ever seen. His shop was full of people from early 
 morning until late afternoon, all eager to sell him 
 heavy old silver services and family jewelry and 
 massive candlesticks, things that collectors would 
 have fits over. 
 
 "I spend millions of crowns each month," said 
 he, "but I haven't nearly enough money to buy the 
 beautiful things that are offered to me. Everybody 
 is selling all that he has in order to get food — selling, 
 selling, selling, always selling. For everyone that 
 comes in to buy, two hundred come in to sell." 
 
 "Then how do you live?" I asked him. "That 
 arrangement isn't very equal." 
 
 "Don't you see," he explained, "that the people 
 who buy are foreigners — Italians and Frenchmen 
 and Englishmen and Americans ? Our money means 
 nothing to you people; so that one foreign buyer 
 makes a great difference. Only a short time ago 
 an Italian gave me two million crowns and told me 
 to buy all that I could get with it. You see, that 
 is eight thousand dollars. Yet for that amount of 
 money I was able to buy for him wonderful old 
 silver that Americans will be glad to pay sixty thou- 
 sand and seventy thousand dollars for when they 
 come to Italy. 
 
 "You ought to buy something," he said to me, 
 insinuatingly. "You could sell it in America for 
 fifty times what you pay for it." 
 
 "What would you suggest that I buy?" I asked 
 him. 
 
 "Anything at all," he replied, cheerfully. "That's 
 the nice thing about it. You can buy blind and 
 still make money." 
 
 216
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 A baroness came in with a bagful of family plate. 
 The silver buyer examined it carefully, accepted 
 several pieces, and handed back a beautiful silver 
 fruit basket. The baroness asked why he hadn't 
 taken it. "It isn't silver," explained the silver 
 buyer. Poor baroness! Her silver wasn't silver. 
 It was more humiliating than having to sell her 
 belongings. I asked the silver buyer about her. 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "Her estates are in 
 Czechoslovakia," said he. "She can get nothing 
 from them. She is selling everything from her town 
 house. When everything is gone ..." He turned 
 up his hands enigmatically. 
 
 An army officer — a colonel — came in and sold a 
 gold ring for 500 crowns; enough to buy six pounds 
 of bacon. "That man," said the silver buyer, "has 
 one of the finest private collections of old gold coins 
 in the world. He cannot take them from the 
 country because the law prohibits it. His constant 
 fear is that he will have to sell them at a small part 
 of their value in order to live." 
 
 A woman of the streets came in, pouting, and 
 tried to sell two gold bracelets and a gold watch. 
 She demanded 5,000 crowns for the watch. The 
 dealer offered her 2,000. She accepted it and went 
 away, still pouting. 
 
 A poorly dressed man came in, detached the chain 
 from his watch and offered it for sale. The dealer 
 questioned him for me. He was employed, he said, 
 in the City Hall, where he received 250 crowns a 
 month and free lodging, heat, and light. But he 
 works part of each day outside City Hall, and 
 labors each night, so that his total yearly earnings 
 
 217
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 are 20,000 crowns. In spite of that he is forced to 
 take 800 crowns from his savings each month in 
 order to get along. And even with that he and his 
 family can never eat meat or have milk. They are 
 vegetarians in spite of themselves, subsisting almost 
 entirely on potatoes, beans, flour, and sugar. As 
 he talked, other Magyars came in to sell little things: 
 one a teapot, one a pair of seed-pearl earrings, an- 
 other a stickpin, one a silver mirror and a pair of 
 cuff links. They gathered round the speaker, 
 nodding their heads with approval at every word. 
 Each one knew the exact price of every commodity; 
 each one was selling his last possessions in order to 
 live. 
 
 The farmers, like the farmers of every country, 
 are in far better shape than the city dwellers. Owing 
 to the difficulty which the city dwellers have in 
 getting food, they barter with the farmers. A 
 roughly dressed farmer came into Budapest, entered 
 the best shoe store in the city, and demanded a pair 
 of shoes. The shoe dealer shook his head. ' ' They're 
 six hundred crowns," he said, "and I think you 
 won't be able to pay it." "Why not?" asked the 
 farmer. "In my grandfather's time and in my 
 father's time and in my time the price of a pair of 
 shoes has always been equal to a pair of chickens; 
 and to-day it is the same. Will you give me the 
 pair of shoes for my two chickens or shall I take 
 them to the market?" The shoe dealer said that 
 he'd better take them to the market. He did so, 
 and soon afterward he returned to the shoe store 
 with 600 crowns — for 300 crowns is the price of a 
 chicken. 
 
 218
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 That, of course, makes it very nice for the farmer, 
 but it helps the city dweller not at all. Figures com- 
 piled by Capt. Gardner Richardson, chief of the 
 Hoover Child Feeders, or, more formally, the Amer- 
 ican Relief Administration, in Budapest, show that 
 on an average the costs of seventeen commodities 
 are sixty-six times as high as they were in August, 
 1914; whereas salaries have not begun to go up 
 proportionately. In other words, the costs of 
 necessities of life have increased 6,600 per cent, 
 whereas salaries have increased only from 400 to 800 
 per cent. Let that sink in, all you people who rind 
 it so hard to struggle along when you find prices in- 
 creased 100 per cent. Picture yourself confronted 
 with a 6,600-per-cent increase in the cost of bread, 
 meat, salt, eggs, shoes, and clothes. It takes some- 
 thing of an imagination. A man's shirt cost 5 
 crowns in Budapest before the war. Now it costs 
 180 crowns. A man's hat cost 8 crowns before the 
 war. Now it costs 650 crowns. A pair of men's 
 stockings used to cost 3/s crown, and now they 
 cost 70 crowns. Americans must imagine them- 
 selves paying about $35 for a one-dollar shirt, $150 
 for an ordinary derby hat, and $10 for a pair of 
 socks before they can feel that their imaginers are 
 working with sufficient smoothness to enable them to 
 get the Magyar attitude. Much is made of the de- 
 preciation of the German mark and the difficulties 
 which the Germans have in getting along, but the 
 Germans aren't within several kilometers of the ter- 
 rible position in which the Poles, the Austrians, and 
 the Magyars find themselves. The Germans are un- 
 questionably entitled to some sympathy, but in 
 15 2I 9
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the League of Central European Nations That 
 Need Sympathy, Germany is pretty well down in the 
 second division. 
 
 The American Relief Administration feeds one 
 meal to 125,000 undernourished Hungarian children 
 each day. Because there is plenty of food in the 
 farming districts the feeding is restricted to the city 
 of Budapest and its suburbs, and to the mining and 
 industrial districts. In addition to the food the 
 Hoover organization has shipped to Hungary 50,000 
 outfits of children's clothing — shoes, stockings, and 
 an overcoat in each outfit. An American Relief 
 warehouse has also been opened in Budapest, so 
 that the Hungarians may receive American food by 
 presenting food drafts from America at the ware- 
 house. No distinction is made as to race, creed, or 
 political affiliation of the children's parents. Stories 
 have gone round outside that Hebrew children are 
 discriminated against. The stories are absolutely 
 untrue. 
 
 Hungary, in March, was one of those extremely 
 rare countries where an American diplomat could 
 live on his salary. Vienna, having received many 
 foreigners within her gates, kept very well in touch 
 with foreign exchange and strove to put prices up 
 to a point where foreigners would pay real money 
 for what they bought. But not so many foreigners 
 had found their way to Budapest when the first 
 warm days of spring came stealing up the Danube; 
 and the prices that foreigners paid were in some in- 
 stances even more startling in their lowness than 
 Vienna prices, which struck Americans as being about 
 the lowest things in the world. 
 
 220
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 I had a large room in the Budapest hotel which 
 the Bolsheviks had honored by seizing for their head- 
 quarters, and which can therefore be unhesitatingly 
 designated as the best. However the Bolsheviks 
 may be maligned, they must always be given credit 
 for wanting to live as the capitalists live. They 
 hate the capitalists, I know, but they dearly love 
 the capitalists' homes and money and automobiles 
 and power. In fact, the only thing about capital 
 that they dislike is the nerve of the capitalists in 
 having what the Bolsheviks want but are incapable 
 of getting by lawful means. 
 
 At any rate, this hotel fronted on the Danube, as 
 do most of the good Budapest hotels. My windows 
 looked across the Danube to the heights of Buda 
 and the fortifications and the great palace of Maria 
 Theresa that tops them. Under the windows the 
 Danube steamers plied up and down, and vessels 
 from Greece and the Black Sea discharged their 
 cargoes. In American money that room cost 17 
 cents a day — or 41 crowns. 
 
 I have before me a dinner card from the Hungaria 
 Hotel, whose restaurant has the reputation of being 
 the best in Budapest — and the best in Budapest is 
 very good. It is dated March 4; 1920, on which 
 date a dollar bill could be exchanged for 250 crowns. 
 Translating the items into an American money 
 equivalent, I find that the following prices obtained : 
 consomme in a cup, 1 1-5 cents; cold assorted meats, 
 12 cents; goose liver in jelly, 13 cents; cold chicken, 
 25 cents; 'cold fish with mayonnaise, 12 cents; sar- 
 dines, 4 cents; carp in red wine, 16 cents; ham 
 omelet, 16 cents; grilled lamb, 18 cents; fried filets 
 
 221
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 of goose liver, 25 cents; goulash en casserole, 8 cents; 
 roast beef, 20 cents; roast lamb, 20 cents; beefsteak 
 hash, 20 cents; potatoes, 2^ cents; creamed spin- 
 ach, 3 cents; Brussels sprouts, 10 cents; salad, 2>£ 
 cents; tarts, 5 cents; and cream cheese, ij< cents. 
 
 Turning carelessly from the dinner card to the wine 
 list, I remark in passing that the best Hungarian 
 still wines, on the same day, cost from 12 cents a 
 quart to 42 cents a quart, while the best of a list of 
 thirty-one Hungarian champagnes nicked the buyer 
 to the extent of $1 . 2 1 a quart. Any person who con- 
 templates packing up and rushing to Hungary to 
 spend the rest of his life should remember, however, 
 that it is very difficult to get there without a good 
 reason for going, that visis are hard to obtain, and 
 that train travel in Central Europe for anyone but 
 officials or persons with influential connections has 
 the same deleterious effect on the human system 
 that being dragged backward through a knot hole 
 would have. 
 
 Another reason that Budapest prices are not so 
 high as Vienna prices lies in the fact that tradesmen 
 are forbidden by law to make more than 1 5 per cent 
 profit on the cost of the article to the dealer. With 
 the falling rate of exchange this frequently makes it 
 rather hard on the tradesman. A furrier, in giving 
 me the prices of various furs in his shop, quoted a 
 red-fox neckpiece, lined with gray satin, at 1,400 
 crowns, or about $5.60 in American money. "We 
 used to be able to buy an undressed fox-skin for 
 five or six crowns," he complained, "but to-day we 
 have to pay two thousand crowns for an undressed 
 skin," 
 
 222
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 "How can that be," I protested, "when you are 
 selling this fox neckpiece for fourteen hundred 
 crowns?" 
 
 "The fourteen hundred crowns," he replied, "rep- 
 resents the original cost of the skin, the cost of making 
 it up, and fifteen per cent profit. A greater profit 
 than that is illegal." 
 
 He deserved great credit for his extreme honesty, 
 of course, but his career as a business man, I fear, 
 is doomed to an early and tragic end. 
 
 The following prices are taken at random from 
 my notebook, with American equivalents for the 
 Hungarian prices: women's hats in the best mil- 
 linery shops, $8; women's hats in the mediocre 
 shops, $1.70; a German-made safety razor with a 
 dozen blades, 35 cents; a box in the diamond horse- 
 shoe of the beautiful Royal Opera House, 85 cents; 
 a German-made vacuum bottle, 40 cents; Hun- 
 garian whisky with a label reading, "Made Ac- 
 cording to the Scotch Manner," 98 cents a quart; 
 frogs' legs in the market, 4 / s cent a pair; Ameri- 
 can canned salmon in 7f£-ounce cans, 24 cents 
 a can; Japanese canned salmon in 16 -ounce cans, 
 24 cents a can; a large can of American pork and 
 beans, 9 cents; a can of American soup of one of the 
 most popular brands, 4 cents. The price of this 
 American soup, which is less than half what it costs 
 in America, is reminiscent of Italian trading with 
 Vienna. Italian salesmen brought sardines to Vienna 
 and sold them at a fine profit. Later, when the 
 Austrian exchange rate fell, the same Italian mer- 
 chants went back to Vienna, bought back all their 
 sardines at greatly increased prices in crowns, shipped 
 
 223
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 them back to Italy and resold them, making a larger 
 profit on the second transaction than they had on 
 the first one. 
 
 However, the Magyars are learning rapidly. A 
 foreigner who asks prices when accompanied by a 
 Magyar is given far lower prices than he would re- 
 ceive if he went alone. An American had an offer 
 of an official residence for 40,000 crowns a year 
 when the landlord wasn't sure of his connections. 
 Later, when the landlord discovered that he was 
 an American official, the price was jumped from 
 40,000 crowns to 300,000, which would put a kan- 
 garoo to blush, as one might say, in the matter of 
 jumping. 
 
 In spite of the tremendous cost of everything in 
 crowns, there are plenty of people in Budapest who 
 are wearing beautiful clothes and filling the restau- 
 rants until midnight every night. They are war 
 profiteers and food profiteers and people who are 
 engaged in smuggling goods out to Switzerland, 
 where they are sold at an immense profit. The 
 hotels are crowded. For a time I slept in the reading 
 room of the Hungaria Hotel — an enormous state 
 chamber with a glass chandelier weighing about 
 seven tons. 
 
 "How about a bathroom?" I asked the manager. 
 
 He looked at me reproachfully. "There is a 
 baron sleeping in the bathroom," said he. 
 
 Wherever a person goes in Hungary he falls over 
 a baron. They seem to be almost as common as 
 are doctors of philosophy and science and law 
 and what not in Germany and Austria. Princesses 
 are also very common in Hungary. A brick thrown 
 
 224
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 at random into any dining room would hit either a 
 baron or a princess. There is something in the 
 Magyar blood that craves these little fringes and 
 advance guards of royalty, just as there is something 
 in their blood which demands a king to wear the 
 sacred crown of Saint Stephen. They have a lost, 
 uncompleted feeling without a king. I took the 
 matter up in some detail with a number of Magyars, 
 and the impression that I gathered from them was 
 that a Magyar without a king felt a good deal like 
 a man on Main Street without his trousers. 
 
 The sacred crown of Saint Stephen, to the Mag- 
 yars, is a very potent emblem. If America had some 
 particular object in which were blended the Liberty 
 Bell, the Monroe Doctrine, the American eagle, 
 Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg, and the American- 
 ism of Theodore Roosevelt, it would be held in the 
 same high esteem in which the sacred crown of 
 Saint Stephen is held in Hungary. It is a neat- 
 looking dome-shaped crown topped with a cross 
 which is bent over as though one of the earlier 
 wearers of it had knocked it off the bureau. It was 
 presented to the first apostolic king of Hungary, 
 Saint Stephen, by Pope Sylvester II; and Saint 
 Stephen had himself crowned with it in the year 
 iooi. All the kings of Hungary have been crowned 
 with it ever since. When Austria and Hungary 
 were joined together it wasn't enough for the emperor 
 of Austria-Hungary to be crowned in Vienna. 
 He had to come down to Presburg or to Budapest 
 and be crowned with the sacred crown of Saint 
 Stephen before the Magyars considered that the 
 
 job had been properly completed. Little replicas 
 
 225
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 of the crown are sold in all Hungarian jewelry 
 shops. 
 
 The hated double eagle of Austria has been dis- 
 carded as an emblem by the Magyars and sup- 
 planted by the sacred crown of Saint Stephen. It 
 is stenciled in silver on the fronts of the steel helmets 
 of Horthy's army. 
 
 To the Magyars, a king adorned with the sacred 
 crown of Saint Stephen means security and safety. 
 I asked many Magyars why they wanted a king, 
 and that is the answer which was made by all of 
 them. "A king means security and safety." It is 
 safe to say that 90 per cent of the Magyars want to 
 be ruled by a king. "We have tried a republic," 
 they say, "and we have had a taste of Bolshevism. 
 Now we want a king back again." 
 
 The Magyars really don't care whether they have 
 a good king or a bad king, a strong king or a weak 
 king, so long as he's a king. Their problem is a 
 bit difficult, because they can't go out and pick up a 
 capable-looking college professor or general or drug- 
 store proprietor and make him king. They must 
 have a man who is thoroughly familiar with the 
 kinging business, who can employ eighteen or 
 twenty thousand courtiers and maintain a dozen 
 castles and palaces without caring anything about 
 the expenses, and who knows the members of all the 
 royal families of Europe by their first names. This 
 requires a man with royal blood in his veins; and 
 because of the fact that so many people of royal 
 blood are either marooned in Switzerland or hived 
 up in Holland for the rest of their lives, the Magyars 
 are having a hard time of it. Admiral Horthy has 
 
 226
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 been mentioned for king several times, but the men- 
 tions are not received with any enthusiasm. Horthy, 
 say the Magyars, is a brave man, a strong man, a 
 lover of law and order, and just the man to restore 
 and maintain order in Hungary. But he has no 
 royal blood in him. Therefore the Magyars do not 
 want him for king. He represents exactly what the 
 Magyars ought to have in the king line, but since 
 he isn't royal the Magyars would prefer some half- 
 baked kinglet. Horthy is the regent of Hungary — 
 the uncrowned king. When the time comes, say 
 the Magyars, he will name the king who is to rule, 
 but he can never have the sacred crown of Saint 
 Stephen blocked to fit his head. That's what the 
 Magyars say, but they have received surprises in 
 the past year, and they are apt to have more. 
 
 At dinner parties, in coffee houses, on street cor- 
 ners — everywhere the argument over a king is al- 
 ways raging. It is an involved and, to an American, 
 an incredible affair. One party, the Legitimists, 
 wants Hungary to be ruled by the former Austrian 
 Emperor Karl. Karl is not only a weakling, an 
 incompetent, and a trimmer, but he is a Hapsburg; 
 and Hapsburgs are forbidden by the Peace Treaty. 
 None the less, the Legitimists want him, because he 
 was once crowned with the sacred crown of Saint 
 Stephen. Consequently they claim he is still 
 Hungary's king. It makes no difference to them that 
 Karl, just before the end of the war, in spite of 
 having sworn to protect the integrity of Hungary, 
 said to the Croats, "Take from Hungary what you 
 will; only remain under my scepter." The Legiti- 
 mists can stomach anything so long as it's royal. It 
 
 227
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 is hard to reconcile the Magyars' declarations of 
 love for the Entente and their professed hatred for 
 Germany and Austria with the equanimity and even 
 eagerness with which, by their own confession, they 
 would welcome a Hapsburg king. 
 
 The anti-Legitimists, who outnumber the Legiti- 
 mists five to one, lean in several different directions 
 where a king is concerned. At leaning they are 
 heavy rivals of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They 
 are particularly given to leaning toward Prince 
 Joseph, who is living quietly in Budapest at the 
 present time and saying nothing in a very cagy and 
 royal manner. Prince Joseph is also a Hapsburg, 
 but a Hapsburg, according to the Magyars, who 
 has always been against the Hapsburg policies and 
 the Hapsburg intrigues. He is also related to the 
 Belgian royal family through an aunt, a great-great- 
 grandmother, a third cousin, or some other near and 
 dear relative; and the anti-Legitimists are relying 
 on this relationship to take off the Hapsburg curse 
 so far as the Entente is concerned. In the war he 
 first commanded an army division, then an army 
 corps, then he was given command of the Transyl- 
 vania front, and finally wound up on the Italian 
 front. He is said by the Magyars to have led his 
 men into action under heavy fire repeatedly, and to 
 have been that unusual combination, a very popular 
 commander and an excellent disciplinarian. 
 
 It is a rather sad specimen of royalty, however, 
 who is not mentioned at least twice a week as a 
 possible king of Hungary. A few of the royal 
 brotherhood even go so far as to hire press agents 
 to take up a residence in Budapest and see that 
 
 228
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 their employers are mentioned. There is loud talk 
 of an English prince, for the Magyars are very fond 
 of the British. In fact, the British are the most 
 popular foreigners in Hungary, with the Americans 
 running them a close second. The young King 
 of Bulgaria has had a large amount of quiet but in- 
 tense propaganda thrust forward in his behalf; and 
 the Rumanians thought it would be very nice if 
 the King of Rumania, who is not at all overworked 
 at home, owing to the activities of the Rumanian 
 queen, should occupy his spare moments by holding 
 down the Hungarian throne. This suggestion, it 
 should be added, roused as much merriment in Hun- 
 gary as a new Chaplin film. The Serbians started 
 a little campaign in behalf of their king for the 
 Hungarian throne, but it didn't get across very well. 
 The Hungarians have heard too many tales about 
 the manner in which the preceding king of Serbia 
 met his death, so it flivved. Young Prince Charles, 
 second son of King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of 
 Belgium, also gets his name in the Hungarian papers 
 regularly as a likely candidate. I heard no mention 
 of the Sultan of Sulu or the King of Abyssinia as 
 possible occupants of the Hungarian throne, but 
 almost every other ruler, near ruler, and would-be 
 ruler was mentioned. As to the question of who the 
 unlucky man will be, you are at liberty to make 
 your own guess. Whoever it is, the Hungarians 
 will be thoroughly satisfied so long as he's a regular 
 king. 
 
 The Magyars have swung too far in their reaction 
 against Bolshevism, just as Czechoslovakia and 
 Austria have swung too far in their reaction against a 
 
 229
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 monarchy. They're all sick and in need of a large 
 amount of doctoring. 
 
 I found one man in Central Europe who is optimis- 
 tic over the future relationship between the nations 
 of Central Europe, Hungary included. This was 
 Admiral Troubridge, the British head of the Danube 
 Commission, which exists for the purpose of facilitat- 
 ing and encouraging commerce on the Danube. 
 The Danube, by the terms of the Treaty, is an 
 international waterway, and all commerce in transit 
 may pass freely between the Black Forest and the 
 Black Sea without interference on the part of inter- 
 mediate states. It may, that is, if it is lucky. 
 Admiral Troubridge based his argument on the im- 
 provement that had taken place in Danube traffic 
 between November, 1919, and March, 1920. When 
 the Admiral made a trip of inspection up the Dan- 
 ube last November, practically everyone shot at 
 his steamer. Rumanian, Serb, Austrian, and Czech 
 soldiers, stationed along the banks of the river, 
 took pot shots at the steamer every little while, 
 apparently for the mere joy of shooting. He was 
 carrying a crate of geese for food, and one of the 
 geese was killed by a Czech bullet. 
 
 The Admiral stopped the steamer, went ashore, and 
 read the riot act to the shooters. Their only reason 
 for shooting seemed to be that they had guns and 
 should, therefore, use them on any moving object. 
 Every boat that moved on the river became a target 
 for uniformed marksmen. That was in November, 
 1919. In March, 1920, four months later, passenger 
 steamers were making frequent trips between Vienna 
 and Budapest without a shot being fired at them. 
 
 230
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 The opinion was hazarded that the soldiers had 
 found from long experience that they couldn't hit 
 the steamers, and that they were waiting for some- 
 thing bigger to come along. The Admiral didn't 
 think so. He thought that the nations were calm- 
 ing down. He thought that the disturbances of the 
 immediate present should be viewed with a tolerant 
 eye, and eventually — say, in fifty or sixty years — 
 the world will be rewarded by seeing all the nations 
 bordering on the Danube living together in complete 
 amity and accord. That was the most optimistic 
 view of the situation that I found — and fifty or sixty 
 years is a long time to wait. 
 
 The general opinion regarding Central Europe is 
 that it is merely an extension of the Balkan States, 
 carefully primed and pointed toward a long and 
 complicated series of wars and revolutions and 
 governmental crises. As a hotbed for riots, shooting 
 frays, and general cussedness, say diplomats, soldiers, 
 and travelers, Central America has at last been out- 
 done by Central Europe. Compared with the Cen- 
 tral Europe of to-day, Central America isn't in it. 
 
 All the Allied nations are playing politics and 
 favorites in the new Central Europe, and the wheels 
 are revolving with such vigor that anyone who tries 
 to interfere, or even attempts to examine the wheels 
 too closely, is more than likely to lose a couple of 
 fingers or to have his coat torn off. 
 
 Italy wishes to secure the friendship of both 
 Rumania and Hungary in order to have somebody 
 to hit Jugoslavia in the back if Jugoslavia tries to 
 start anything over Fiume. France is supporting 
 Czechoslovakia so that she may have help when 
 
 231
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Germany fights again with France. Consequently 
 she is opposed to taking anything from Czecho- 
 slovakia, no matter how strong Hungary's claims 
 may be. England is deeply interested in Hungary 
 because of her commercial possibilities, and also be- 
 cause it gives her a strong position from which to 
 take graceful dives into Central European politics. 
 Italy is opposed to Czechoslovakia because Czecho- 
 slovakia and Jugoslavia are close friends, and any- 
 thing which strengthens Jugoslavia is offensive to 
 Italy. That is the cloudiest beginning of that fright- 
 ful mess known as Central European politics. It has 
 more branches than a banyan tree or the Boston 
 and Maine Railroad. To go into it more deeply 
 at this juncture would only result in giving the 
 reader a headache. 
 
 Meanwhile the Magyars claim that Slovakia has 
 been stolen from them and that they intend to have 
 it back. If they wait long enough and with sufficient 
 patience, they claim, Slovakia will separate from the 
 Czechs and come back of its own accord. There are 
 700,000 Magyars in Slovakia who are forced to live 
 under Czech rule; the Czechs have stolen the Hun- 
 garian city of Presburg; they are oppressing the 
 Magyars. Will the Magyars endure it? 
 
 Nem! Nem! Soha! 
 
 Rusinia is also a part of Hungary, and it has been 
 taken into Czechoslovakia. By this Hungary has 
 been deprived of pine forests which are an economic 
 necessity to her. The Rusins are starving because 
 they can no longer come down on to the Hungarian 
 farms and earn their winter's provisions. Can the 
 Magyars supinely endure such a state of affairs ? 
 
 232
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 Nem! Nem! Soha! Not so that you could 
 notice it! 
 
 The Rumanians have come into Hungary and 
 stolen thousands of square miles of territory that 
 does not belong to them. They are forcing 3 ,000,000 
 Magyars to live under a government which is far less 
 advanced than the government under which they 
 were brought up. They have stolen provisions and 
 cattle and live stock of every description from the 
 Magyars, leaving thousands of them destitute and 
 helpless. Will the Magyars submit to this loss of 
 territory which is theirs, and to the oppression of 
 3,000,000 Magyars in the stolen districts? 
 
 Nem! Not by a jugful of Nems! 
 
 The Allies have given German West Hungary to the 
 Austrians. But that is Magyar territory, settled by 
 German immigrants. The Hungarian-Germans are 
 separated from Austria by mountains, and they can- 
 not cross the mountains or have economic inter- 
 course with Austria unless they use balloons. Their 
 economic future lies with Hungary, not with Austria. 
 The land belongs to Hungary, say the Magyars, 
 and the inhabitants wish to remain with Hun- 
 gary. Will Hungary suffer this land to be torn 
 from her? 
 
 Nem! Nem! A hundred times Nem! And a 
 thousand times Soha! 
 
 The banks of the Danube at Budapest are under- 
 laid with hot springs, sulphur springs, saline springs, 
 smelly springs, and very smelly springs. Huge and 
 sumptuous baths have been built over many of these 
 springs — not to hold in the smell, but so that the 
 people can. en joy the baths. Admiral Horthy had 
 
 233
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 taken over one of the largest of these buildings and 
 was doing his dictating from it. I went there and 
 found the building full of soldiers wearing the old 
 German tin hats emblazoned on the front with the 
 sacred crown of Saint Stephen; swashbuckling hus- 
 sars with little peanut jackets edged with black 
 Persian lamb round the collar and the cuffs and the 
 lower edges of the bobtailed coats ; officers fresh from 
 the field with the new and unmistakable insignia 
 of the Horthy army — a single large feather sticking 
 up pugnaciously from the fronts of their jaunty caps; 
 officers with hundreds of pounds of gold braid cun- 
 ningly attached to unexpected parts of their uniforms. 
 Aids and secretaries told me that Horthy worked from 
 eight o'clock in the morning until midnight. 
 
 I found him plowing through a mass of papers. 
 He was wearing a plain-blue uniform, like the British 
 naval uniform, and he looked and acted and talked 
 like a quiet, affable, and likable Englishman — though 
 his speech sounded a bit as if he were affecting a 
 slight Weber-Fieldsian dialect. 
 
 I asked him what, in his opinion, Hungary needed 
 the most in the way of help. He smiled somewhat 
 ruefully. "I will not say 'arms,' " said he, and then 
 he stopped. But he said it in such a way that it 
 was impossible not to gather that if Hungary could 
 have the arms that she needed she would be quite 
 competent to look out for her future without any 
 help from anyone. ' ' We have enemies on every side 
 of us," Horthy explained. "They have stolen 
 from us whatever they could, and they long to steal 
 more. The situation is an impossible one. I shall 
 never do anything which goes against the orders of 
 
 234
 
 FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS 
 
 the Allies, but we hope to be permitted to protect 
 ourselves against our enemies. Just at present we 
 have been stripped; we are a beggar nation; and 
 there is nothing more which our enemies can take. 
 But in the autumn, or next year, when we are pro- 
 ducing more food than they, the robber nations 
 will want to seize from us the food which they do 
 not possess. Unless we can protect ourselves they 
 will do so." 
 
 Horthy explained that the country still had hopes 
 of being able to feed itself next autumn. "When the 
 Rumanians robbed our farmers," said he, "the 
 farmers were able to conceal a great deal, and bury 
 much seed where the Rumanians were unable to 
 find it. This is now being brought to light, and 
 the patriotic farmers are sending it to us for dis- 
 tribution." 
 
 I spoke of the barbed-wire entanglements and 
 trenches which the Czechs had made on the border 
 between Slovakia and Hungary. "The Czechs 
 speak of the Hungarian spring offensive, and of the 
 inciting of Bolshevism in Slovakia by the Magyars 
 so that they may have an excuse for marching on 
 the country. How about it?" I asked. 
 
 Horthy smiled contemptuously. "That's only 
 their guilty consciences," said he. "They have 
 taken what doesn't belong to them, and they know 
 it. Czechoslovakia is on the verge of Bolshevism, 
 we believe, but if it should go Bolshevik we shall 
 only defend ourselves. I have asked Admiral 
 Troubridge to send a gunboat to Presburg to protect 
 the Magyars there against Bolshevik attacks. That 
 has been my only action." 
 16 2 3S
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 "And when the Magyars say, 'Nem! Nem! Soha!* 
 do they mean it?" I asked. 
 
 "The Magyars are fighters for what they believe 
 to be right," said Horthy. "America recognized 
 that years ago in the honor which she did to our 
 great patriot, Kossuth, and the addresses which 
 were made to him by the greatest men in America 
 when he went there over half a century ago. I feel 
 sure that if we wait long enough the lands which 
 have been unjustly taken from us will fall back 
 to us of their own accord. They are ours and they 
 have always been ours. But it is hard to wait when 
 Magyar people are being forced to live under 
 civilizations which are lower than their own. These 
 things are wrong, and the Magyars, as I have said, 
 are fighters for what they believe to be right. 
 
 "My greatest wish is that Americans might come 
 to Hungary in great numbers. We are deeply grate- 
 ful for all that America has done for Hungary in the 
 past, and we are confident that all Americans who 
 come to us will realize the wrong that has been done 
 to us and give us their sympathy and their un- 
 derstanding."
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 IN Italy there is a popular and fascinating game 
 known as "morra." The game is easily played, 
 for it requires no expensive tools and no outlay 
 for playing fields, special garments, or other hin- 
 drances. Its only requirements are two players, 
 each of whom must have a loud voice and one 
 hand with five fingers on it. Thus the game is 
 within the reach of practically everyone. 
 
 To play the game of morra, the two players face 
 each other. Each one raises his clenched hand 
 shoulder high and suddenly brings it down in front 
 of him with one or more fingers extended. At the 
 same time he bawls out a number. The number 
 which he bawls out is his guess as to the number of 
 fingers which have extended from his opponent's 
 hand plus the number which have been extended 
 from his own hand. Thus, he may stick out two 
 fingers, but shriek "Five!" in ear-splitting tones — 
 the idea being that he guesses that his opponent will 
 extend three fingers. Or he may thrust down his 
 hand with all the fingers extended and howl "Ten!" 
 which means that his opponent will also have to 
 extend his fingers with equal generosity if the guess 
 
 237,
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 is to be correct. That, in effect, is the game of 
 morra. It has few rules. One of the rules is that 
 when one of the players has ten correct guesses to 
 his credit, the other player shall buy him a drink. 
 Another of the rules is that when the players begin 
 to fight over the game, as they invariably do, the 
 onlookers shall make an attempt to separate them 
 before one of them draws a carving knife and dis- 
 sects the other in a crude but effective manner. 
 Still another rule is that nobody in Italy shall play 
 morra after ten o'clock at night. This rule is a 
 national law. The Italian lawgivers discovered 
 that so many Italians had settled down to steady 
 drinking by ten o'clock at night that morra fights 
 which started after that hour were not easily quelled 
 and consequently were very apt to end fatally. 
 
 That is the great trouble with morra as played in 
 Italy. In spite of its childish simplicity and its 
 lack of intricate and bewildering rules, the Italians 
 always fight over it. Whenever a person sees a 
 game of morra in progress and is suffering from bore- 
 dom, he needs only to hang around for a few min- 
 utes in order to witness an exciting and possibly 
 hair-raising fight. Morra causes more accidents 
 each year than do all the automobiles and railroad 
 trains in Italy. Usually the accidents are cutting 
 accidents, though occasionally they are indirectly 
 caused by chairs, table legs, boot heels, and other 
 blunt instruments. The Japanese play a game which 
 is almost exactly like morra, but the Japanese do not 
 fight over it. Similar games provide relaxation and 
 amusement without fighting in several other coun- 
 tries. It is only in Italy that the game breaks up 
 
 238
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 in violence which brings the police running madly 
 to the scene, and in raucous cuss words of such 
 ferocity that little children are constrained to seek 
 sanctuary in convenient drain pipes. 
 
 There is, however, a point which is frequently 
 overlooked in morra fights. After the contestants 
 have been separated and the table-leg splinters have 
 been removed or the cuts closed with neat button- 
 hole stitches, the two principals invariably kiss 
 fervently, according to the peculiar Italian custom, 
 and go home with their arms around each other's 
 necks. In Kentucky, I venture to say, a man who 
 had been struck viciously over the head with the 
 major portion of a Heppel white hatrack would brood 
 over his wrongs so persistently that the person who 
 had done the striking would soon require the un- 
 divided attention of a skilled mortuary expert. In 
 Albania, an intriguing country, a man who had been 
 smitten by any sort of instrument, blunt or other- 
 wise, would go ramping ferociously up and down and 
 around the mountains of Albania with a knife be- 
 tween his teeth and his finger trembling tremulously 
 on the trigger of his rifle until he had located the 
 smiter and perforated him from so many angles 
 that all of the four winds of heaven could blow 
 through him without hindrance, no matter how he 
 was left lying. Never would a Kentuckian or an 
 Albanian devote any of his precious moments to 
 kissing a person who had made a pass at him with 
 an angular table leg or sought to introduce a No. 5 
 carving knife between his waistline and his floating 
 ribs. He might so far cool off as to rest content 
 with kicking him, but never with kissing him! 
 
 239
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 But in Italy a grievance is soon forgiven and for- 
 gotten. Blows are quickly followed by embraces. 
 Two strong men who at one moment have been 
 attempting to cut each other to shreds will, five 
 minutes later, be raising blisters on each other's 
 cheeks by the violence of their kisses. This is known 
 as the Italian temperament, and the Italian tem- 
 perament is too often disregarded when the Italy 
 of to-day is under discussion. 
 
 In adjacent countries they are predicting terrible 
 things for Italy. The industrial north, say the wise- 
 acres, is on the verge of going Bolshevik and estab- 
 lishing a Soviet form of government. Sicily and the 
 southern provinces, they say, are on the verge of 
 separating from the mother country and setting up 
 a republic. The Communist leader in Vienna as- 
 sured me early in 1920 that he expected Italy to go 
 Bolshevik in the near future, and that when Italy 
 went Austria would also go. On the day before I 
 left Austria for Italy a keen observer of events in- 
 formed me in hushed tones and with ominous head- 
 shakes that things in Italy were very bad — very bad ! 
 Workingmen were taking over the factories ; the King 
 was to be fired by the Socialists; the great Italian 
 boot, hanging down into the Mediterranean, was 
 vibrating so violently with evil forces that it was 
 expected to kick itself into a complete wreck at 
 almost any moment. 
 
 I came over the mountains into Italy, expecting to 
 see a series of highly entertaining riots and trust- 
 fully believing that there would be lots of thrilling 
 things to write about. I came through Venice and 
 Bologna, where the sausage comes from, and Pistoja, 
 
 240
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 where pistols were invented, and down to Rome, 
 and the only thing that looked like a riot was a some- 
 what heated argument between two Venetian gondola 
 chauffeurs as to the hotel which would be most 
 pleasing to my captious American taste. One of 
 them insisted passionately that the Grand was the 
 best, and the other held out noisily for the Royal 
 Danielle, but after they had argued for five minutes 
 I went back to the train and departed, for the train 
 didn't stay long enough to permit me to go to any 
 hotel at all. 
 
 As for thrilling things to write about on that 
 trip down to Rome, there were no shooting frays or 
 machine-gun actions or anything of that sort, but 
 there were things which were equally thrilling to 
 people who had been making extended sojourns in 
 Central Europe. There was, for example, a rich 
 yellow Italian cheese on sale at all railway stations, 
 and genuine milk chocolate, and sausages heavily 
 larded with fat — delicacies which can only be prop- 
 erly appreciated by persons who have been eating 
 the fatless foods of Central Europe for a few weeks 
 or months. And the Italian trains, instead of being 
 three or eight or eighteen hours late, were actually 
 on time. The customs officials were polite. Every- 
 thing was strangely thrilling. Conditions in Italy 
 may be very bad — very bad! as the keen observers 
 in adjacent countries like to observe in such melan- 
 choly tones, but by comparison with conditions in 
 Central Europe, Italian conditions are little short of 
 heavenly. 
 
 That is to say, they are little short of heavenly 
 if one is lucky enough to dodge the strikes which 
 
 241
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 exist in such profusion in Italy at the present time. 
 In fact, the strike crop in Italy just now is surpassed 
 only by the grape crop, the onion crop, the flea crop, 
 and the Roman ruin crop. The Italian laborer is 
 just beginning to grasp the deep, soul-stirring joy 
 which lies in striking and making everyone, including 
 himself, excessively uncomfortable. It is the Italian 
 temperament asserting itself. The Italian tempera- 
 ment has always objected strongly to doing things 
 in the regular, legal, commonplace way. It is the 
 Italian nature to be against the government and 
 everything in power — possibly because so many 
 Italian governments in the past have been so very, 
 very bad, not to say rotten. This fact is recognized 
 by the Italians themselves as a national characteris- 
 tic, similar to the liking for blue golf pants on the 
 part of the Montenegrins and to the affinity between 
 Frenchmen and snails. 
 
 Rome once had a mayor named Nathan who con- 
 ceived the idea of putting iron baskets in the park, 
 surmounted by signs requesting the care-free Italian 
 populace to throw paper in the baskets instead of 
 on the grass. The baskets always went empty, how- 
 ever, for every Italian who read the signs promptly 
 threw all his papers everywhere but in the baskets. 
 
 With the advent of spring the Italian government 
 ordered that all clocks be set back an hour so that 
 the people might have the advantage of an extra 
 hour of daylight. The new time was always des- 
 ignated "the legal hour." In Italy, as in other 
 countries, a large number of boneheads didn't care 
 for the legal hour, so they made a frightful uproar 
 and organized strikes against it. The street-railway 
 
 242
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 employees, for example, were striking against the 
 legal hour. I asked one of them his reasons. "The 
 new hour," said he, "makes it necessary for us to 
 get up too early in the morning. Everything is 
 foggy and dark." I reminded him that the new 
 hour saved coal for the nation and gave him an 
 extra hour of daylight when his work was done. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "but it is too foggy and dark when 
 we get up." 
 
 "Our mistake," declared Premier Nitti, "was in 
 calling it 'the legal hour.' We should have known 
 that no true Italian would have endured it. We 
 should have called it 'the illegal hour.' Then every 
 Italian would have been unanimously in favor of it." 
 
 The Italian farmer has always blamed his rulers 
 for undesirable climatic conditions. " It is raining ! ' ' 
 he says. ' ' Thief of a government ! ' ' 
 
 In strikes the Italians have found a wonderful 
 medium through which to express their distaste for 
 law and order. Somebody is striking somewhere 
 at all hours of the day and night. The reasons for 
 the strikes are often shrouded in the darkest mys- 
 tery. Too frequently the strikers themselves haven't 
 the slightest idea why they are striking, yet they 
 strike with a cheerfulness and abandon that would 
 arouse a thrill of admiration in the breast of the most 
 mercenary walking delegate. 
 
 If one happens to run into a series of Italian strikes, 
 conditions do not impress one as being particularly 
 heavenly. One is impressed in quite the opposite 
 way, in fact. 
 
 I left Belgrade early in May on one of the few good 
 trains now existing on the continent of Europe — 
 
 243
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the Orient-Simplon Express. This train starts from 
 Bukharest in Rumania, runs across Jugoslavia and 
 Italy, through the Simplon tunnel into Switzerland, 
 and across France to Paris. It is made up of 
 sleeping cars, which are known as wagon-lits in 
 Europe, and a dining car. The train got safely 
 across Jugoslavia and rolled gently into the Italian 
 city of Trieste early in the morning, just as the 
 passengers were luxuriously thinking about getting 
 up slowly and comfortably. Their luxurious thoughts, 
 however, were rudely shattered by an unhealthy- 
 looking man in a railway official's uniform who 
 capered up and down the platform gleefully and 
 ordered all the passengers to descend. The train, 
 he declared with an offensive smirk, would go no 
 farther because the wagon-lit employees were strik- 
 ing. The passengers would kindly use expedition 
 in descending. 
 
 The passengers poured out like angry hornets, de- 
 manding frantically to be told what the wagon-lit 
 people were striking for. The official did not know. 
 Neither did the wagon-lit employees. Not knowing 
 what the strike was about, they were incapable of 
 forming a trustworthy opinion on when it would be 
 over. Most of the passengers, not expecting to get 
 off the train in Italy, had no Italian money with 
 which to buy food. Those who ventured into the 
 streets of Trieste discovered that all of the shops 
 were closed as tight as drums. They had been 
 closed for more than a week because the employees 
 were striking. They were striking for 70 per cent 
 of the net profits of the businesses, in addition to 
 their salaries. The shopkeeper was to have 30 
 
 244
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 per cent of what he made. The other 70 per cent 
 was to be divided among his employees. 
 
 The passengers from the Orient-Simplon Express 
 crowded into the first train going in the general di- 
 rection of Paris. Some of them squeezed into second- 
 class coaches, and a few into third-class coaches. 
 They were unanimous in saying that they would 
 endure anything to get out of Italy. The railway 
 officials assured them that it was a through train. 
 It would eventually get them to Paris, they were 
 told. They rode all day. Early in the evening the 
 train came to Milan. Here another railway official 
 walked up and down beside the train and informed 
 the passengers that the train would go no farther. 
 The striking wagon-lit employees had requested the 
 railway to stop the train, and the railway had 
 graciously consented. Everyone would therefore 
 kindly descend, using speed. 
 
 Everyone descended, using more profanity than 
 speed. The hotels of Milan were congested, so that 
 many of the passengers slept on the floor of the 
 station, which, like all Italian stations and every 
 other variety of Italian building, was heavily 
 populated by fleas. Those who went out to hunt 
 for food were met by the glad tidings that the 
 restaurant employees of Milan were striking. Why 
 were they striking? Well, they were striking be- 
 cause the restaurant proprietors were making all 
 the money. This was not fair. The employees 
 should receive 25 per cent of the net profits. A 
 little knot of restaurant employees told me all about 
 it. I asked them a question. Suppose the restau- 
 rant proprietor lost money. Were they willing to 
 
 245
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 pay 25 per cent of his losses? They regarded me 
 with contempt. A restaurant proprietor, they as- 
 sured me, did not lose money. But suppose he did, 
 I insisted. They talked very loudly and waved 
 their hands in my face after the Italian manner. 
 Here was something that I was to get firmly fixed 
 in my head. A restaurant proprietor did not lose 
 money. He made money. What was the use of 
 talking about a restaurant proprietor who lost 
 money? Certainly they wouldn't pay 25 per cent 
 of his losses, because there wouldn't be any losses. 
 Was I crazy, that I asked such a question, or what 
 was the matter with me? A gray-clad policeman 
 with a business-like revolver at his belt strolled care- 
 lessly in our direction at this moment. I therefore 
 strolled carelessly up an alley and went away; for 
 the Italian policeman has a habit of agitatedly get- 
 ting out his revolver and shooting it off in a loose 
 and uncontrolled manner when confronted by a 
 crowd or any gathering of people which looks like a 
 crowd or which can be stretched by a nimble imagi- 
 nation into a crowd. 
 
 There is one thing for which the Italians will 
 probably never have to strike. I refer to policemen. 
 Wherever one turns, especially in these days of 
 strikes, he finds a policeman looking at him in an 
 intent and embarrassing manner. These are a new 
 sort of police, all taken from the army and all carry- 
 ing a mean-looking revolver, ostentatiously dis- 
 played. Whenever a strike is on, they stroll around 
 in pairs in close proximity to everything and every- 
 body that has anything to do with the strike, and 
 whenever there is any untoward disturbance or 
 
 246
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 gathering they unlimber their revolvers and shoot 
 them wildly in all directions. If the gathering or 
 disturbance is not quieted by this demonstration, 
 they suddenly begin to shoot with less wildness but 
 more frequency. There are a great many strikes in 
 Italy, but because of the lavishness with which the 
 Italian police do their policing Italian strikes gener- 
 ally end as pure and unadulterated strikes, instead 
 of as battles royal, as they so frequently do in 
 America and other countries which are supposed to 
 be in far better condition than Italy. There are 
 thirty thousand Royal Guards, as the new police 
 are called, and it is expected that there will be 
 fifty thousand of them before long. With fifty 
 thousand of these heavily revolvered persons stroll- 
 ing observantly through the highways and byways 
 of Italy, it is expected that the keen delights of 
 striking will soon begin to pall on even the most 
 enthusiastic Italian strikers. 
 
 But as things stand to-day, an Italian must 
 strike in order to be in vogue. Striking is all the 
 rage in Italy, just as it is all the rage for Italian 
 tailors to construct a pair of trousers in such a man- 
 ner that the waistline is located close up under the 
 armpits, instead of down around the waist where 
 Nature, in her superior wisdom, planned it. Sep- 
 arate strikes have been negotiated by the street 
 sweepers, the railway employees, the post and 
 telegraph employees, the garbage collectors, the 
 cooks, the cab drivers, the hotel and restaurant 
 waiters, the street-railway employees, the excava- 
 tors of Roman ruins, the butchers, the confectioners, 
 the ironworkers, the barbers, the field workers, the 
 
 247
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 tailors' assistants, and various other classes of 
 toilers. There have also been a number of general 
 strikes in which everybody has quit work for vary- 
 ing lengths of time. General strikes are usually de- 
 clared in order to show sympathy for somebody — 
 not to get definite results. Having shown their 
 sympathy by a general strike, the strikers go back 
 to work, and the person or persons for whom they 
 have shown their sympathy get sympathy only — 
 and it is difficult nowadays to become excessively 
 obese on sympathy alone. 
 
 For example, late last March the workmen in a 
 big Naples factory sent a delegation to the manager 
 and demanded a wage increase of ioo per cent. 
 They also demanded an immediate reply. The 
 manager pointed out that he could not give an 
 immediate reply until he had consulted with the 
 owners. One of the workmen thereupon shot him. 
 Then the workmen took over the factory, locked up 
 the office employees, and announced that they were 
 going to run the factory themselves. This news was 
 conveyed to the police, who found themselves unable 
 to approve of the suddenness with which the work- 
 men had acted. They therefore came running down 
 to the factory with their revolvers held nervously 
 and loosely in their hands. The workmen gathered 
 on the factory roof and tossed a number of bricks 
 on the heads of the policemen, in addition to firing 
 at them freely with revolvers. The police gayly 
 returned the fire, and when the tumult and the 
 shooting died several of the strikers were also found 
 to have become thoroughly dead. The police then 
 broke into the factory, released the wounded man- 
 
 248
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 ager and the office employees, and arrested the lead- 
 ing strikers, who were prominent Socialists. On the 
 following day all Naples was tied up in a general 
 strike to show sympathy for the imprisoned Social- 
 ists. The general strike lasted for twenty -four hours. 
 At the end of that time everybody went back to 
 work. The imprisoned ones, however, remained in 
 prison — greatly heartened, no doubt, by the general 
 sympathy extended to them. 
 
 During the same month all the waiters in Naples 
 struck, their grievance being that the restaurants 
 added 10 per cent to the bills for service and then 
 failed to give the 10 per cent to the waiters who had 
 done the serving. The whole affair eventually came 
 down to just one restaurant proprietor who was pig- 
 headed and didn't want to give in. The striking 
 waiters were busily engaged one day in a demon- 
 stration against the pig-headed proprietor when a 
 detachment of Royal Guards encountered the crowd 
 and began to shoot off their revolvers according to 
 custom. Several people were wounded, and on the 
 next day there was a general strike as a protest 
 against everything. It lasted only a day, and it 
 accomplished nothing — except to give the strikers 
 a warm glow of pride over their sympathetic attitude. 
 
 Railway strikes are viewed with more whole- 
 hearted loathing by the Italian people and by 
 tourists than any other variety of strike. They 
 occur without warning, and a traveler who is un- 
 fortunate enough to be overtaken by one is more 
 than likely to find himself dumped down, bag and 
 baggage, in the middle of a lot of picturesque Italian 
 scenery, but from twenty to forty miles from a 
 
 249
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 hotel. Until the strike is over not a train runs. 
 When I crossed northern Italy in May the railroads 
 were just recovering from a strike which lasted eight 
 days, during which time not a wheel turned. 
 
 In the industrial centers of northern Italy — Turin, 
 Milan, and Genoa — strikes are more common than 
 in the south because of the large numbers of Com- 
 munists who infest these cities. Workingmen in 
 these centers are constantly on the verge of taking 
 over factories in order to run them for their own 
 benefit, and the government is constantly teetering 
 around nervously in an attempt to guess the exact 
 moment when it must take over the factories itself 
 in order to forestall the Communists. 
 
 Nor is the agricultural south without its troubles. 
 In the south the land is held in great part by large 
 landowners. The peasants, keenly desiring their 
 own land, have banded together and marched on the 
 large estates, dividing them into convenient plots 
 and starting to work the plots themselves. The 
 landowners register an ear-splitting howl of protest, 
 whereat the carabinieri, or rural police, march against 
 the excited peasants, kill a few of them, and eject 
 the remainder from their newly acquired fields. 
 There is guerrilla warfare for a few days ; all the land- 
 workers strike with great heartiness. Sympathy is 
 shown by a general strike. Matters calm down — 
 and then the whole thing starts over again when 
 another crowd of peasants get together and occupy 
 the estates of several large landowners. This 
 sort of activity provides the principal form of re- 
 laxation for the natives of the province of Lecce, 
 which takes in the heel of the Italian boot. 
 
 250
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 After noting a few samples of the labor difficulties 
 which obtain throughout Italy, the casual observer 
 is inclined to throw up his hands and urge that Italy 
 be separated from the rest of the world by a high 
 reinforced concrete fence so that its Bolshevistic 
 inhabitants cannot get out and contaminate anybody 
 else. They are not new symptoms for Italy, how- 
 ever. She has suffered from the same pernicious 
 sort of seven-year itch before, and has staggered 
 through with flying colors. For three years after the 
 end of the war between Austria and Italy in 1866 
 the laborers used to riot and wreck shops and ap- 
 propriate other people's goods to their own use. In 
 1898 there were bread riots in Italy which threw any 
 Italian riots of 1919-20 into the deep shade. At 
 various cities, and notably at Milan — always a hot- 
 bed of Socialism — the movement developed into a 
 regular revolution, with the Socialists aligned against 
 the government. The government was obliged to 
 proclaim a state of siege at Florence, Leghorn, 
 Naples, and Milan, and the mob at one time became 
 so ferocious that the commanding general opened on 
 it with his artillery, killing upward of ninety persons 
 and wounding several hundred. The leaders of the 
 Milan mob were convicted on so many counts that 
 each one of them was sentenced to several centuries 
 in jail, but it was the Italian temperament, and in 
 three years' time everyone was out of jail and 
 the erstwhile opponents were kissing one another 
 tenderly. 
 
 As far back as 1 900 the increase in the number of 
 strikes which were taking place in Italy caused a 
 large amount of unfavorable comment among people 
 17 251
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 who like to see workmen work regularly. "Since 
 1901," says one book of Italian statistics, " there have 
 been, more than once, general strikes at Milan and 
 elsewhere, and one in the autumn of 1905 caused 
 great inconvenience throughout the country and led 
 to no effective result." The conditions which exist 
 in Italy to-day are very similar to the conditions 
 which have existed there, off and on, for the past 
 few centuries. 
 
 As in many other parts of the world, unrest and 
 dissatisfaction are rampant in Italy. Down in 
 Sicily, last spring, the Sicilians showed their general 
 dissatisfaction by holding a demonstration against 
 the King and Queen of Italy. The King and 
 Queen of Italy are rulers whose democracy is about 
 100 per cent pure. They are as simple and as un- 
 affected people as one can find. The King has 
 turned his great estates over to the people; he has 
 given his palaces to be made over into homes for old 
 soldiers and hospitals and suchlike things. He 
 lived with the soldiers in the trenches during the 
 war. The Queen goes among the poor people and 
 mothers their babies and talks with them as any 
 next door neighbor would talk. They are the real 
 thing in democracy. So the Sicilians hold demon- 
 strations. Why? Because the King and Queen 
 are too democratic. Yes, unrest and dissatisfaction 
 are rampant in Italy. Never a day goes by without 
 some very pronounced ramping, and there is a 
 strong belief in many quarters that the all-European 
 ramping championship, so far as unrest and dissatis- 
 faction are concerned, should be awarded to the 
 Italian people. Rampant as these things are, how- 
 
 252
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 ever, the percentage of Italians which indulges in 
 them is not more than 10 or 15. The bulk of the 
 Italian people own little pieces of ground or little 
 shops. They have a little money in the bank, and 
 they are not rampers by nature. If unrest and dis- 
 satisfaction are rampant, the ramping must be 
 carried on without their assistance. They would 
 no more join in a revolutionary movement than they 
 would entertain the notion of jumping into the crater 
 of Mount Vesuvius in order to keep warm during the 
 heated term. They may be parties to the general 
 unrest and dissatisfaction, but they are deeply averse 
 to any change in the government. They are averse 
 to it because it is a matter of common knowledge 
 among Italian peasants that a change in government 
 means increased taxes, and they have about as much 
 desire for increased taxes as they have for a cholera 
 epidemic or for prohibition. The Italian peasant 
 and agriculturist, who makes up from 80 to 90 
 per cent of the population of Italy, has a deep and 
 sincere craving to be let alone. This craving amounts 
 almost to a passion. The famous Garibaldi, who 
 was a great hand to raise forces for the purpose of 
 freeing Italy, said that he never had any peasants 
 among his volunteers. They wanted no change in 
 government: it would bring them nothing but 
 increased taxes. So the revolutionary movement 
 which is pestering Italy just now will never be sup- 
 ported by a large percentage of the Italians. The 
 chief support comes from the loud-mouthed, easily 
 influenced, hard-boiled workmen in the industrial 
 centers — the people who haven't any stake in the 
 country — the men who didn't fight during the war, 
 
 253
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 but who stayed at home and received higher wages 
 than they had ever before dreamed of receiving in 
 their lives. These folk are particularly dissatisfied. 
 They don't want anybody to get more money than 
 they get. They want everything in sight and a 
 little more beside. By way of expressing their dis- 
 satisfaction they have voted the Socialist ticket with 
 great vigor and unanimity, though many of them 
 have not joined the Socialist party. In Italy there 
 are some 38,000,000 people. The Socialist party 
 only claims to have about 120,000 men regularly 
 inscribed on its membership rolls, but among the 
 120,000 it has a great number of paid agitators — 
 propagandist*, they are called — who are constantly 
 speaking at meetings, presiding over them, writing 
 newspaper articles, and distributing Socialistic doc- 
 trines among the dissatisfied workmen. 
 
 In spite, however, of having only 120,000 recog- 
 nized members, the Socialist party recently elected 
 156 Socialist Deputies to the Chamber of Deputies, 
 which has a total membership of 508. The highest 
 number of Deputies which the Socialists had elected 
 prior to the last election was 40. Relics of that last 
 election may be seen to-day on fences and on the 
 walls of buildings from the north of Italy down to 
 the south. "Vive Leninl" read signs which in- 
 dustrious Socialistic hands have applied: "Vote for 
 Lenin! Vote for the Socialist party! A vote for 
 the Socialist party is a vote for Lenin! Lenin, the 
 greatest man in the world ! Hurrah for the Soviets ! 
 Hurrah for Soviet Russia! Vote for Lenin and the 
 Soviets!" The Socialists in Italy and all over 
 Europe are working overtime to-day at the con- 
 
 254
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 genial task of press-agenting Lenin. They have now 
 reached a stage where Lenin is represented as a 
 combination of Napoleon, Saint Anthony, the Angel 
 Gabriel, George Washington, Augustus Caesar, and 
 the man who struck Billy Patterson. In fact, they 
 go even farther. Many of the Socialists declare 
 that Lenin is far more worthy of respect and adora- 
 tion than the Trinity. 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies in Rome, with its 156 
 Socialist members, is an interesting study for a person 
 who wants to see how Socialist representatives com- 
 port themselves when elevated to a position of 
 trust and responsibility. It is also an interesting 
 study for a person who likes excitement of a rather 
 coarse type and doesn't know where to go to see a 
 prize fight. I visited the Chamber on March 24, 
 1920. It was a dull day, as days go in the Chamber 
 of Deputies now that the Socialists have returned so 
 many members. There were only three fights, and 
 in none of them was there a knockout. The Italian 
 newspapers, on the following day, passed over the 
 proceedings with small headlines and scant remark. 
 I am forced to conclude that no session of the 
 Chamber of Deputies would be considered worthy 
 of particular notice by the Italian newspapers unless 
 a couple of Deputies tore each other to pieces with 
 their bare hands and unless at least nine others burst 
 blood vessels from screaming curses at one another, 
 so that the walls were messed up in a noteworthy 
 manner. 
 
 The building in which the Chamber of Deputies is 
 housed is guarded by a heavy cordon of military 
 police with loaded revolvers. At each doorway of 
 
 255
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the building are soldiers in steel trench helmets and 
 with bayonets fixed on their rifles. Soldiers sim- 
 ilarly armed are scattered all through the building. 
 The exact reason for the large number of soldiers 
 cannot be discovered. They are either there to 
 keep outsiders from getting in and hurting the 
 Deputies or to keep the Deputies from getting out 
 and hurting the populace or to keep the Deputies 
 from one another and wrecking the building. The 
 first theory is reasonable, for the Deputies make such 
 disgraceful exhibitions of themselves that the citi- 
 zens might be excused for wishing to exterminate 
 them. The second theory is equally tenable, for the 
 Deputies — especially the Socialist Deputies- — act 
 more like wild beasts than humans, and anybody 
 who watched them at work for a while would be 
 quite justified in climbing a tree whenever he saw 
 one of them approaching. The third theory is the 
 weakest, for the Deputies are constantly getting at 
 one another, and seem always to be on the verge 
 of tearing the building to pieces, yet the soldiers 
 make no move to restrain them. 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies resembled our own 
 House of Representatives. Orlando, the President 
 of the Chamber, sat at a high desk facing the semi- 
 circular tiers of benches. Beneath him were the 
 desks for the Cabinet Ministers, with Nitti, the 
 Prime Minister, in the center. Each of these princi- 
 pal desks was furnished lightly but attractively with 
 a bottle of claret, a bottle of water, a dish of sugar, 
 a goblet, and a spoon. The President's desk, in 
 addition, boasted a dinner bell. The President rang 
 the dinner bell between speeches and also when the 
 
 256
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 Socialists waxed too obstreperous, so that he spent 
 practically all his time ringing it. At every third 
 or fourth ring the Cabinet Ministers would pour slugs 
 of claret into their goblets, add a little sugar and 
 water, stir vigorously, and suck it up slowly amid 
 the hoarse, angry, and thirsty cries of Socialist 
 Deputies. The privilege of drinking sweetened 
 claret and water during sessions of the Chamber 
 seems to be one of the few benefits which accrue 
 to the position of Cabinet Minister in Italy. 
 
 All of the Socialist members of the Chamber oc- 
 cupied the benches at the extreme left of the semi- 
 circular tiers. This is the reason why Socialists are 
 known as the Left. There seems to be an opinion 
 in many circles that the Socialists are called the Left 
 because they will, to use a cant phrase, be left if 
 they insist on pursuing their present tactics — left 
 holding the sack, as it were. The same people 
 have an idea that the Communists and the Bolshe- 
 viks are known as the Extreme Left because they 
 will be left, in a manner of speaking, even more 
 extremely than the Socialists if they keep on at 
 their present gait. This idea is erroneous. In 
 Europe the Socialists always sit on the left-hand 
 side of the representative bodies, and the extreme 
 Socialists always sit on the extreme left. Hence, as 
 the coarser elements of the late American army were 
 wont to observe, the Pyramids of Egypt. 
 
 The left-hand section of the Chamber, then, was 
 filled. Every seat was taken by an ardent Socialist. 
 A great many of these Socialist Deputies, I feel 
 obliged to record, were about as hard-looking speci- 
 mens as one could encounter in the less aristocratic 
 
 257
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 American jails. Some were greatly in need of 
 shaves, and others seemed to be laboring under the 
 misapprehension that the laundry workers of the 
 nation had been striking for several months. It is 
 quite conceivable that a man may be utterly slack 
 in the matter of personal cleanliness and neatness, 
 and still be a person of great mental powers, but, 
 as a rule, the man whose thoughts are orderly and 
 clean finds it impossible to be anything but orderly 
 and clean in dress and person. To put it bluntly, 
 a large number of the Socialist Deputies appeared to 
 be extremely messy, both bodily and mentally. 
 
 The middle section of the Chamber, occupied by 
 members of the so-called Catholic party, was not 
 packed as solidly as the left, but it was very well 
 filled. The right-hand section, in which the con- 
 servative element was located, harbored a pitiful 
 handful of venerable gentlemen who seemed to be 
 busy at some such irrelevant tasks as posting their 
 diaries or writing letters to neglected relatives. 
 
 The desks of all the Deputies were barren of loose 
 articles. There were no unattached inkwells or 
 books or fittings of any sort. Everything was 
 screwed down tightly. The walls of the Chamber 
 are embellished with some very beautiful mural 
 decorations. The oaths and the blows which the 
 Deputies exchange with such fluency have no effect 
 on these paintings, but if 156 rabid Socialists 
 should start to throw inkwells wildly at their political 
 enemies — as they would do a hundred times a day 
 if there were any inkwells to throw — the mural deco- 
 rations would soon look as though a herd of mules 
 had been running up and down them. So the desks 
 
 258
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 of the Chamber were unencumbered by inkwells 
 or other throwable objects. 
 
 I have attended a number of prize rights where the 
 spectators became violently excited and displayed 
 their excitement by howls, yells, and interchanges 
 of blows, but never have I witnessed a prize fight 
 at which the spectators lost control of themselves 
 to the extent that the Socialists lost control of 
 themselves at this humdrum session of the Italian 
 Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 The first speaker of this particular session was 
 Modigliani, a Socialist leader. He was a fat man 
 with a tremendous black beard and spectacles which 
 made him look like a huge, overfed owl. His speech 
 was a demand that newspapers be forced to reveal 
 the sources from which they received their financial 
 support. His gestures were passionate in the ex- 
 treme and his words aroused his Socialist brethren 
 to a high pitch of enthusiasm. Repeatedly they 
 would burst into wild, ear-piercing shrieks of ap- 
 proval and into storms of applause. The center of 
 the Chamber, however, took no pleasure in his 
 address. They shouted at him angrily, and waves 
 of hisses interrupted him. A man in the center rose 
 to his feet and shrieked at him ferociously. Modig- 
 liani shrieked back. The Chamber was in an up- 
 roar, with every member shouting in concert. The 
 faint tinkle of the President's bell, as he jangled it 
 frantically for order, went unheeded. Modigliani, 
 frothing at the mouth with excitement, finished his 
 speech by pounding on his desk with both fists and 
 howling like a wild man. He fell into his seat with 
 every sign of physical exhaustion, while his friends 
 
 ?S9
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 rushed to him, patted his arms and back, and kissed 
 him affectionately. The sympathies of the gallery 
 were evenly divided, the hisses and the applause 
 being equally violent. 
 
 The second speaker was an inoffensive-looking 
 member of the Catholic party — a tall, droopy gray 
 man with a surprised-looking gray pompadour and 
 a long, droopy gray mustache. He got along fa- 
 mously — for a little under three minutes. Then he 
 said something that the Socialists didn't like, and 
 they started in on him. They jeered and wailed 
 mournfully. He made little futile flapping motions 
 with his hands and tried to go on. The jeers and 
 wails increased in volume. He tried to make him- 
 self heard above the din, whereat the Chamber be- 
 came a bedlam. He stood for over five minutes 
 trying to make himself heard, and during all that 
 time the Socialists kept up their deafening tumult. 
 Finally he sat down, and the Chamber gradually 
 became quiet again. 
 
 One of the Deputies addressed a question to Nitti, 
 the Prime Minister. Something about Nitti 's reply 
 incensed a Socialist, and he objected in strident tones. 
 Nitti attempted to proceed, but the Socialists bawled 
 and booed and shouted and hooted so that he was 
 forced to stop. 
 
 By this time Modigliani had recovered from the 
 exhaustion brought about by his first speech. Rising 
 to his feet with an impassioned gesture, he began to 
 speak again. His opening words offended a mall 
 in the center, who at once leaped up wildly and 
 called Modigliani a liar. One of Modigliani's friends, 
 maddened by this attack, rushed to Modigliani's side 
 
 260
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 and hurled bitter curses at the attacker. Every 
 Deputy leaped to his feet, roaring and bellowing. 
 Orlando, President of the Chamber, mixed in the 
 fracas and bitterly condemned the Catholic party 
 for causing the disturbance. The howl that went 
 up was as deep and deafening as that which rises 
 from a cheering section at a football game after a 
 successful play. The Socialists jeered at the Catho- 
 lics. They "yahed" them and "booed" them and 
 made offensive, suggestive noises indicative of their 
 contempt for them. They gave them the rude 
 Italian raspberry. The Catholics roared in anger, 
 vowing that Orlando never called the Socialists 
 to order, though they were the greatest offenders. 
 The air was full of hands. Everyone was gesturing 
 wildly. 
 
 A Catholic rose and began to answer Modigliani, 
 though Modigliani had not yet finished. The 
 Socialists hooted him from the moment he started, 
 directing all sorts of offensive noises and yells at 
 him. The noise was so loud and continuous that 
 people in the galleries who wished to speak to one 
 another had to shout at the top of their lungs. 
 One of the Socialists was particularly offensive in 
 his shouts and gestures. Several Catholics put 
 their heads together and shouted, "Oil! Oil!" at 
 him. The allusion was to the fact that this par- 
 ticular Socialist had been accused of profiteering in 
 oil during the war. Trembling and white with 
 rage, the Socialist rushed up the aisle and toward 
 the men who had shouted "Oil." He was caught 
 and held by other Socialists. Foaming at the 
 mouth, he screamed insults and epithets at the 
 
 261
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Catholics. When those who were holding him 
 loosed their holds, he leaped on the desks and 
 started jumping across them to get at his enemies. 
 He was caught and pulled down. A friend leaped 
 up and attempted to get across the desks and into 
 physical contact with those who had shouted 
 "Oil." He, too, had to be hauled down and re- 
 strained by force. During all this the Chamber was 
 in a tumult of howls and yells and hisses. Deputies 
 were shaking their fists at high heaven. Two or 
 three were weeping. A score seemed to be on the 
 verge of having epileptic fits. 
 
 At this point Orlando went into action. He 
 shrieked and yelled and banged on his desk with 
 his fist and almost crawled on top of his desk in his 
 rage. He beat his desk with his little dinner bell 
 and jumped up and down and tore at his hair. The 
 whole affair was disgraceful, he screamed. It was 
 impossible to proceed under existing conditions! 
 What was the use of a Chamber of Deputies that 
 devoted all its time to fighting instead of to depping ! 
 The Socialists were behaving in an intolerable 
 manner ! 
 
 Modigliani bitterly resented these words. He 
 burst into screams of anguish. Such was the 
 energy with which he spoke that his cheeks, his fists, 
 his beard, his arms, his legs, and his stomach were all 
 of a quiver. The Catholics received his words with a 
 tumult of howls. They groaned and hissed so that 
 the groans and hisses of the mob scene in "Julius 
 Caesar" would have sounded like the murmur of a 
 soft west wind among the willows by comparison. 
 They shook their clenched fists and clutched their 
 
 262
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 heads in anguish at the insolence of the Socialists. 
 A Socialist rose to his feet, howled his anger toward 
 the center, and then suddenly turned, raced up the 
 aisle at top speed, and tore across the passageway 
 behind the desks, with the evident intention of killing 
 as many Catholics as possible before being over- 
 powered. Deputies rushed back to intercept him. 
 The Ministers, the Deputies, and the gallery were on 
 their feet, screaming with excitement. The noise 
 was deafening. A bell rang. It was six o'clock — 
 time for an hour's intermission so that the Deputies 
 could go over to Aragno's and have a cup of choco- 
 late. The tumult ceased. The Deputies jostled 
 toward the exists in apparent amity. . . . Can you, 
 as the saying goes, beat it? 
 
 It is the Italian temperament at work. Let five 
 hundred Americans work themselves up to the same 
 pitch of antagonism and excitement that the five 
 hundred Italian Deputies had achieved, and a goodly 
 percentage of the Americans would have celebrated 
 the end of their perfect day in the hospital — and 
 they'd have gone in ambulances. But the Italians 
 went to Aragno's for chocolate, and they walked. 
 
 There has been a great deal of talk in Europe and 
 America concerning the hatred which the Italians 
 have for Americans, and also concerning the un- 
 pleasant experiences which American travelers in 
 Italy have suffered because of this hatred. Several 
 Americans in various parts of Italy took great pains 
 to acquaint me with the brutal treatment which 
 they had received from Italian customs inspectors, 
 passport officials, and railway employees because 
 they were "damned Americans." A prominent 
 
 263
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 American business man on his way from Vienna to 
 Constantinople with several secretaries and relatives, 
 told me that he had been grossly insulted by the 
 Italians when he crossed the frontier late in April: 
 he had been told, he said, that the Americans had 
 tried to run Italy long enough; the railway officials 
 refused to give him lights in his railway coach, say- 
 ing that the "damned Americans" could sit in the 
 dark; they had refused for a long time to accept 
 American money for railway tickets, but had 
 finally taken it at a rate of exchange which was 
 very unfavorable to the Americans. 
 
 This is doubtless all true, but since many Amer- 
 icans are contemplating a trip to Italy in the near 
 future, I feel impelled to offer my own experiences as 
 a balance to those who complain so loudly of their 
 treatment in Italy. I went through the Italian cus- 
 toms and passport officials in the north, traveled 
 down to Rome and Naples, making protracted stops 
 in both cities, and crossed the peninsula in the south 
 to Foggia and Bari on the Adriatic. I went through 
 the customs and passport officials again at Bari 
 when I left Italy to go into the Balkans. I re- 
 entered Italy again at Trieste, left it once more to 
 go into Jugoslavia, came back again from Jugo- 
 slavia, traveled across the north of Italy, and passed 
 the frontier into Switzerland. Every crossing of a 
 frontier meant still another bout with customs and 
 passport officials. Never did I encounter anything 
 except the utmost courtesy and consideration. No- 
 body insulted me; nobody made any disparaging 
 remarks about Americans; nobody pried into my 
 baggage ; nobody detained me ; nobody searched me 
 
 264
 
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 for concealed money, in spite of the constant as- 
 surances which I had received that such would be 
 the case. I was traveling as any American tourist 
 would travel, without special letters from any 
 Italian officials, without a uniform, and with a 
 regulation passport. My experience was not un- 
 usual; for I met many other Americans who had 
 invariably received the same uniformly courteous 
 treatment from Italians. I have sometimes, it is 
 true, been obliged to change money on trains and on 
 steamships, and in all cases I have been unmercifully 
 stung. The Italians have no monopoly on that 
 particular form of highway robbery; for the stinging 
 of travelers who are caught short on money is one 
 of the most popular indoor and outdoor sports in 
 Europe. If one needs to change American money 
 into English money on an ocean liner he will be given 
 about one third less than he would receive on shore. 
 But it will be his own fault; for he should have got 
 English money before getting on the boat. French 
 money is used on all the big continental expresses 
 which run out of Paris. If, on one of these trains, 
 one needs to change American into French money, 
 he will lose 30 per cent on the transaction. But it's 
 his own fault again ; for he should have come heeled 
 with French money. The American who com- 
 plained so bitterly about the sickening manner in 
 which he was forced to accept an unfavorable rate 
 of exchange for American dollars when coming from 
 Austria into Italy should have provided himself 
 with plenty of Italian money before he left Austria. 
 Not to do so was a guaranty that he would be sub- 
 jected to many inconveniences, delays, and annoy- 
 
 265
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 ances. Let us, for a moment, use our imaginations 
 and allow our minds to dwell on the plight in which 
 an Italian would find himself if he should rush up 
 to the ticket office in Niagara Falls, New York, and 
 demand tickets for four or five persons to Chicago 
 when he had nothing but Italian money on his per- 
 son and could speak no language but Italian. I 
 venture to affirm that he would find himself out of 
 luck. I will go even farther than that: it is my 
 belief that when the ticket agent had finished with 
 him and had summoned the police, the Italian would 
 be strongly of the opinion that all of the luck in the 
 world had been distributed long before he was born. 
 I am therefore forced to the following conclusions, 
 which will prove highly offensive to the Americans 
 who have been badly treated in Italy: the person 
 who retains his temper at all times, uses the brain 
 with which he was provided by an all-wise Provi- 
 dence, and permits an occasional smile to lighten his 
 features when conversing with railway, customs, and 
 passport officials will have few troubles in Italy. 
 An obtuse or grumpy official, when presented with 
 the Italian equivalent for a half dollar, will almost 
 break a leg in order to be helpful. An American 
 who can't understand Italian, and who becomes 
 peevish because Italians cannot understand him, 
 even when he shouts at them at the top of his 
 lungs, will probably have cause to complain of con- 
 temptuous treatment at the hands of the Italians. 
 You see, the Italians are pretty well satisfied that 
 they won the war. That being the case, they don't 
 feel that there is any crying need for them to take 
 backwater from Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Amer- 
 
 266
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 icans, either. I am willing, however, to bet several 
 hundred Austrian crowns, or even as much as three 
 dollars, that any American who keeps his temper 
 and refrains from looking as though he had recently 
 had word of the death of a bosom friend will meet 
 with nothing but courtesy in Italy. 
 
 The frequently mentioned hatred for Americans 
 which is supposed to exist in Italy may have existed 
 at one time, but it is nearly as nonexistent to-day 
 as are Eskimo plover, the last specimen of which was 
 found in 1898. It is an unfortunate fact that our 
 late allies do not have the same tender regard for us 
 which they had during the latter months of 191 7. 
 Italy isn't a bit more anti-American than is France 
 or England. In fact, one hears far more anti- 
 American remarks in England or in France than 
 he does in Italy. Where the American nation as a 
 whole seems to pain the British and the French, 
 it is Mr. Wilson who gives the Italians a series of 
 sharp, shooting twinges. They explain carefully to 
 Americans that it is Mr. Wilson who irks them. 
 They want it distinctly understood that with them 
 it is a case of Wilson — that's all. The more tactful 
 Italians shake their heads in a puzzled manner when 
 his name comes up. It is such a pity, they say, 
 that Mr. Wilson should have become so sick. The 
 less tactful ones are — well, less tactful. They cannot 
 for the life of them understand why Mr. Wilson so 
 persistently upholds the claims of the Slav nations, 
 and so persistently refuses to consider the Italian 
 claims. Mr. Wilson, they say, sees nothing wrong 
 in permitting the Czechoslovaks to include millions 
 of Germans within their boundaries, and hundreds of 
 is 267
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 thousands of Magyars. He considers it all right for 
 the Jugoslavs to do the same with Germans and 
 Magyars. Yet he protests violently against the 
 Italians taking a few thousand Jugoslavs in the same 
 way. This is all the more incomprehensible to the 
 Italians because the Croats and the Slovenes — 
 which are the peoples that the Italians refer to when 
 they speak of the Jugoslavs — fought bitterly against 
 the Italians on the side of Austria-Hungary until 
 the armistice. Why, they ask, should their allies 
 favor their enemies rather than their friends? This 
 is the Italian viewpoint. I do not uphold it; I 
 merely state it. Very few disinterested people up- 
 hold Italy's viewpoint as regards the cities and terri- 
 tory which she has grabbed along the Adriatic coast, 
 from Fiume down to southern Albania. 
 
 There is much more anti-French sentiment in 
 Italy than there is anti-American feeling. The 
 French, say the Italians, have not been good allies; 
 they have not stood by them. Now the Germans, 
 they say, have always been true to their allies: 
 the Germans can be depended on; Germany will 
 soon be a strong nation again. All through Italy 
 there is a very strong pro- German sentiment. 
 "Dear old Germany!" say the Italians . . . and, 
 "dear old Russia!" When one looks into this 
 matter he gets a strong whiff of that odorous mess 
 known as European politics. France, to protect 
 herself against a possible future attack on the part 
 of Germany, is coddling and pampering Czecho- 
 slovakia so that Czechoslovakia may be in a posi- 
 tion to give Germany a brisk kick in the rear if 
 the occasion should ever demand it. Jugoslavia and 
 
 268
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 Czechoslovakia are sister states, and between them 
 there are strong bonds of sympathy. But Italy and 
 Jugoslavia are at swords' points. They talk con- 
 stantly of fighting. France, being the protector of 
 Czechoslovakia, would also help Jugoslavia in case 
 she fought with Italy. Italy would need help against 
 Jugoslavia, and since she can't have it from France, 
 her thoughts are dwelling fondly on Germany, her 
 old love. The Italian temperament also enters into 
 the question. In past years the Italians have always 
 been against the nation which had the upper hand 
 in Europe, for they have always felt that Italy was 
 oppressed by the nation with the upper hand. 
 Either they considered themselves oppressed by the 
 French or by the Austrians. Just now France has 
 the upper hand. Therefore their temperament 
 obliges them to be anti-French. 
 
 From the standpoint of the tourist, Italy to-day 
 isn't much different from the Italy of before the 
 war. The food is good and there is plenty of it. 
 Because of the rate of exchange, the prices of many 
 things are even cheaper for Americans than they 
 used to be. Before the war an American dollar used 
 to be worth five lire, and one lira was equivalent — 
 as careful figuring will demonstrate — to twenty 
 cents. In the spring of 1920 the value of the lira 
 had declined to such an extent that an American 
 dollar could be exchanged for twenty-four of them, 
 so that the lira was worth approximately four cents. 
 The value of the lira moves around almost as 
 rapidly, however, as the tail of a hound dog on a 
 hot scent. An American in Rome cabled back to 
 America on April 6th for $1,000 to be sent to him in 
 
 269
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Naples. The American bank which cabled the 
 money, for reasons best known to itself, cabled the 
 equivalent of $1,000 in lire. On April 14th the 
 American was notified that the money was deposited 
 to his credit in a Naples bank. But instead of $ 1 ,000, 
 the American found that he had 20,000 lire, and 
 20,000 lire was worth only $849. The transaction, 
 which was conducted by two reputable banks, an- 
 noyed him to such an extent that he refused to 
 accept the money. Unfortunately, all people aren't 
 in a position to refuse to accept money which has 
 so dwindled in transit. A little matter of $250,000 
 is sent back to Italy every working day in the year 
 by Italian immigrants in the United States. This 
 always arrives in lire, not in dollars, and the 
 recipients never refuse to accept it, but it has lost 
 greatly in value in transit. Speculation, as I have 
 said before and as I take great pleasure in repeating, 
 is at the bottom of an enormous amount of the 
 European money troubles. The banks declare that 
 they are wholly at a loss for a remedy which will 
 stop this speculation. If that is the case, it is not 
 unreasonable to assume that the world's bankers 
 know as little about finance as does the Kamchatka 
 blubber eater who sells a dozen sea-otter skins for 
 two tin hunting knives and a gallon of Russian- 
 distilled prune juice. After one has seen the 
 troubled and innocent peoples of Europe going 
 through hell, starvation, and damnation because 
 the value of their money has fallen away to a point 
 where it will buy them no food and no clothing — 
 where it will keep no warmth in their bodies and no 
 decencies in their lives — one is inclined to cast large 
 
 270
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 quantities of slurs and aspersions on persons who 
 have devoted their lives to financial matters, but 
 who can offer no solution for a financial problem 
 which is enriching them but ruining millions. 
 
 Compared with the Central European nations, 
 Italy's finances are on a firm footing, but they 
 are in far worse shape than those of France or of 
 England, and neither France nor England can 
 afford to buy from America. Italy is doing most 
 of her buying at the present time in Germany and 
 Austria. The stores are full of German and 
 Austrian made goods, all of which cost from five 
 to fifteen times as much as they cost in Berlin or 
 Vienna. The Italians themselves are greatly de- 
 pressed by the increased cost of living; but the 
 increase has been little greater, in proportion, than 
 it has been in the United States. In this connection 
 I was asked by great numbers of Italian-Americans 
 who had returned to Italy from the United States 
 to send a message to all Italians in America who are 
 thinking of coming back to Italy. The message 
 was, "Don't come back!" The Italian-Americans 
 are waiting around in shoals and hoards for boats 
 to take them back to America. They are bitterly 
 cursing the day when they decided to return to 
 Italy, and I feel obliged to pass along the message of 
 warning in the hope that a few good Italian-Ameri- 
 cans may be saved from the heartburnings and the 
 financial losses that have beaded with clammy per- 
 spiration the brows of all Italians who have left 
 America for Italy since the end of the war. 
 
 American tourists, however, feel rather opulent 
 in Italy. At an excellent but quiet hotel in Rome, 
 
 271
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 for example — a hotel that has sufficient standing to 
 be cluttered up constantly with principessas and 
 contessas and marchesas and what not — one may 
 have a room looking out on the palms and bamboos 
 and wistaria and roses and towering cypresses of 
 the Pincian Gardens, and one may have a bathroom 
 and three excellent meals a day, all for a matter of 
 400 lire a week. Four hundred lire is — or was in 
 April — equivalent to about $20. One may tumble 
 into one of the open-faced Italian carriages with a 
 taximeter attachment, drive and drive and drive 
 for hours on end, hand the driver double the amount 
 registered on the meter as required by law, fight 
 passionately with him as to the size of the tip which 
 he is to receive as wine money, compromise with 
 him by giving him all that he demands, and still 
 only have to separate one's self from 60 cents. 
 That, I am willing to take oath, is considerably 
 better than being obliged to hand $10 to a 
 taxi thug for driving one from a Hoboken steamship 
 dock to the Pennsylvania Station, as I was forced 
 to do on May 23, 1920. Ten dollars is 240 lire; 
 it is 3,300 kronen; it is . . . well, it is certainly what 
 Artemus Ward would have catalogued as "2 mutch." 
 A suit of clothes, made by a first-class Roman or 
 Neapolitan tailor out of fine English cloth, can be 
 had for as little as 600 lire, or $30, or for as much as 
 800 lire, or $40. A suit made from the same sort 
 of cloth by an American tailor would cost from 
 $80 to $150. It makes one indulge in extensive 
 speculations as to how American tailors get that 
 way. 
 
 The Italians are afflicted with the fascinating be- 
 
 272
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 lief that all Americans have untold wealth. When 
 an American asks the price of an article in a shop 
 the salesman who tells him usually acts in an off- 
 hand way, "But that is practically nothing for you 
 Americans." It does no good to argue. One can 
 become hoarse assuring the salesman that one's 
 last penny will probably be wrung from one by a 
 heartless landlord within a week after one's return 
 to America, only to have the salesman smile pity- 
 ingly and skeptically. Their belief in the limitless 
 moneys that Americans possess is confirmed by the 
 manner in which they translate lire into dollars. 
 I accompanied an American on a suit-buying ex- 
 pedition. "How much would this be?" he asked, 
 fingering a piece of cloth. The tailor rolled his eyes 
 toward the ceiling and made a hasty computation. 
 "One hundred and sixty dollars," he finally replied. 
 "What!" shrieked the American in a shrill, hor- 
 rified voice. "Yes," said the tailor, firmly, "one 
 hundred and sixty dollars — eight hundred lire." 
 Before the war 800 lire was $160, but on that par- 
 ticular day it was $40. The Italian shopkeepers 
 who speak English always compute comparative 
 values for Americans in that way, and confidently 
 assume that an American, having untold millions, 
 stands ready to pay $160 for a suit of clothes, or to 
 disgorge $70 or $80 for an automobile for a day. 
 This gives rise to misunderstandings. I met a man 
 who was in a tantrum of rage because he claimed the 
 Italians had been trying to steal everything but his 
 shirt. He bought an enormous flask of red wine 
 for 7 lire, or 30 cents, and came and told me about it, 
 pausing occasionally to weep into the wine. These 
 
 273
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Italian robbers, he said, had tried to charge him 
 1,500 lire for a two-hundred-mile automobile trip. 
 I wept with him. "Gracious goodness!" I said, 
 ' ' that 's seventy dollars. " " Ye-ah ! " he said. ' ' That 
 was what they tried to nick me for." Questioning 
 revealed the fact that the automobile dealer had 
 given him the price in dollars instead of in lire, 
 and that the American had been so incensed that he 
 had rushed away immediately in a cloud of pro- 
 fanity. We went back to the dealer's and offered 
 him 325 lire, or $16, for the automobile trip which 
 the American claimed was to have cost 1,500 lire. 
 The dealer accepted with alacrity. The affair was 
 a somewhat complicated one to grasp. The dealer 
 had originally wished to charge the American 350 
 lire for the trip. That, on a pre-war basis, would 
 have been $70. So, in his naive Italian manner, he 
 told the American that the trip would cost $70. 
 The American, in telling me the story, had com- 
 puted the $70 into lire at the existing rate of ex- 
 change, and had got 1,500 lire — a sum which the 
 dealer would never have dared to ask, for to him 
 1,500 lire would have meant $300. 
 
 The tourist will find little or no change in Italy. 
 He will find the same old vineyards, with vines 
 trained to grow between low trees in the north 
 and high trees in the south, and he will find the 
 vineyards producing the same old red wine that 
 slides down the throat so easily and so harmlessly 
 until a certain point is reached, after which it 
 suddenly inflames the mind of the drinker to such 
 an extent that he is filled with a longing to use his 
 stiletto on somebody near or dear to him. He will 
 
 274
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 find the same old guides who whisper in the same old 
 thrilling tones that Mount Vesuvius is on the verge 
 of erupting again and blowing all of Italy into the 
 middle of Kingdom Come, or whose information 
 concerning the ancient Romans is of such nature 
 that any reputable historian who hears it would 
 burst into low moans of anguish. He will find the 
 same peanut-sized donkeys staggering around under 
 monumental loads and protesting against their lot 
 in life with all the noisy bitterness of a fire whistle. 
 He will find the same old dirt and the same old 
 fleas and the same old carriage drivers voicing the 
 same old anguish at whatever reward they may 
 receive for their labors. He will find the same old 
 expatriate Americans raising the same old plaints 
 against the drab and mercenary aspects of life in 
 America. He will find the same old genuine fifteenth- 
 century Italian antiques made, inclusive of worm- 
 holes, in Newark, New Jersey. He will find the 
 same old Camorra and the same old Mafia and the 
 same old Evil Eye doing business at the same old 
 stands at which they were doing business long 
 before Amerigo Vespucci went into the exploring 
 trade and decided to allow his name to be used as 
 an advertisement for the continent that Columbus 
 discovered. He will find the same gorgeous scenery 
 and the same history-soaked ruins and the same 
 whisky-soaked near counts and the same horrible 
 odors that have always been a part and parcel of 
 Italy's glory and that will always be a part of 
 Italy's glory until Vesuvius lives up to the gloomy 
 prophecies of the guides and erupts with enough 
 violence to spatter Italy all over the Milky Way, 
 
 . 2 75
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 There is one great difference, however, which will 
 impress the tourist deeply. I refer to the Italian 
 military officer. In the spring of 1920, what with 
 the constant talk of fights with the Jugoslavs and 
 one thing and another, there were more Italian 
 officers in the foreground of all Italian scenery than 
 there were Roman ruins. The Italian officer is a 
 romantic and affecting spectacle. He wears a long 
 blue cape about the color of a bluebird's wing. 
 It contains enough cloth to make pup tents for 
 a baseball team, and the Italian officer picks up 
 one end of it and throws it up over his shoulder 
 so that he is a big light-blue cocoon with his shiny 
 pomaded black head sticking out at the top and 
 his shiny bespurred black boots sticking out at the 
 bottom. Some of the younger officers have gone 
 back to school and college, but they still wear their 
 uniforms and their beautiful blue capes. Some have 
 gone back to business and some have gone back to 
 doing nothing, but all of them get out their uniforms 
 and their romantic blue capes and stride around in 
 them whenever there is the slightest excuse for so 
 doing, while the impressionable and excitable Italian 
 maidens press their hands to their hearts and gasp 
 in admiration. The cold and reserved tourist who 
 has spent his life in the restrained atmosphere of 
 Oriskany, New York, Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, 
 or Glen Ridge, New Jersey, is held spellbound when 
 he sees a pair of these wonderful blue-caped crea- 
 tures walking along the sidewalk holding hands, 
 or when he sees two of them meet on a crowded 
 street, throw their arms around each other, and kiss 
 ardently — having been separated, probably, for as 
 
 276
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 much as four hours. The Italian temperament is 
 responsible for these things, and the more stolid 
 American finds it difficult to grasp the Italian 
 temperament. That is why undemonstrative peo- 
 ple from northern countries must be heard with sus- 
 picion when they declare that all Italy is in such a 
 ferment that it is about to explode. 
 
 The Italian temperament manifests itself in many 
 odd and fascinating ways. Practically all Italians, 
 on entering into conversation, lose control of their 
 hands, which fly around in a loose and dangerous 
 manner. One who witnesses a discussion between 
 two Italians is in a constant state of nervousness lest 
 each of them stick several fingers into the other's 
 eyes and suddenly go blind. When one walks the 
 streets of any city of southern Italy one will re- 
 peatedly come across pairs of disputants facing each 
 other with inflamed and contorted faces, shrieking at 
 the top of their lungs and shaking their hands in 
 each other's faces with such violence and rapidity 
 that their heads seem to be surrounded by a heavy 
 mist. It is a terrifying spectacle. One feels sure 
 that it will be only a matter of seconds before both 
 of them draw murderous knives and hack each other 
 into a sort of Hungarian goulash. One imagines 
 that one is being accused of arson, forgery, and 
 petit larceny, and that the other is being charged 
 with mayhem, counterfeiting, and murder. One 
 contemplates running for the police in order to avert 
 a shocking double killing, when both of the dis- 
 putants suddenly fall silent and walk away. On 
 questioning bystanders, one learns that they were 
 merely discussing the possibility of getting a little 
 
 277
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 rain within the week or comparing notes on the price 
 of olive oil. In the north the hands are usually 
 kept below the level of the shoulders and the fingers 
 are used somewhat sparingly. A speaker starts to 
 emphasize his discourse with his clenched fist, and 
 every time he makes a point he frees one finger. 
 When all five fingers are spread out he clenches his 
 hand and starts over again. In the south the hands 
 seldom descend below the level of the shoulder 
 during a conversation. Everything is stretched out 
 to the limit. All the fingers are extended, as are 
 the arms, eyes, mouth, and voice. 
 
 Italian carriage drivers are greatly given to being 
 temperamental. It is traditional with Italian car- 
 riage drivers that they must never be satisfied with 
 the amount of money which is given them by 
 foreigners. Their fathers and their grandfathers 
 and their great-grandfathers were never satisfied 
 with the tips which they received from the foreigners, 
 so it is a matter of pride with them to be dissatisfied 
 also. It is always the same story. On descending 
 from the carriage the foreigner pays his fare plus a 
 tip. The carriage driver looks at the money with 
 loathing. He shrieks aloud, as though a rusty 
 poinard had been plunged into his vitals. He 
 clasps his brow with every sign of mortal anguish. 
 If an insufficient amount of attention is paid to him 
 he will in all probability descend from the carriage 
 and follow the guilty party into hotel, theater, or 
 restaurant, as the case may be, howling for his 
 rights at the top of his lungs and airing all grievances 
 suffered by him during the past ten years. Three 
 cents will calm him, but if he isn't calmed he will 
 
 278
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 refuse all fares for hours in order to brood over his 
 wrongs. 
 
 Italian shopkeepers make frequent use of their 
 temperament in order to shake a little extra money 
 out of the easily cowed foreigners. Greatly taken 
 by a magnificent pair of carved wooden cabinet 
 doors, genuine fifteenth-century, made on East 
 Twenty-first Street, New York, a foreigner drops into 
 an Italian antique shop and asks the price. The 
 dealer proudly replies that $200 takes them. The 
 foreigner says coldly that he only wanted two doors, 
 not two dozen. He thereupon offers $8 for the 
 doors. The dealer, stung by this insult, almost 
 breaks down and cries. That pair of doors would 
 bring $1,500 or $2,000 in New York! Why, he 
 himself is personally acquainted with the cousin of 
 the man who got them from the Palazza Lambusto. 
 Notice the carving! Notice the wormholes! The 
 worms that made those holes were the most highly 
 bred hole makers that the fifteenth century pro- 
 duced ! Notice the manner in which the doors were 
 worn by countless hands ! The foreigner replies that 
 he sees all these things, and understands perfectly 
 that the owners of the doors must have spent their 
 lives opening and shutting them in order to get 
 them so thoroughly worn. He then offers $20 for 
 them. Infuriated, the dealer calls on Heaven to 
 witness this awful wrong that is being done him. 
 He himself paid $135 for the doors. His children 
 are clothed in rags because of the terrible rate of 
 exchange. His little baby hasn't had a drink of 
 milk for three years, and his wife will be unable 
 to afford a new hat until 1950. Yet he cannot exist 
 
 279
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 without doing business, so, in hopes that the for- 
 eigner will bring him other customers, he will 
 sacrifice the doors for $120. It will be a loss for 
 him, it will almost ruin him, but he will do it. 
 Weakened by these words, the foreigner in a rash 
 moment says that he will pay $50 for the doors. 
 "Sold!" shouts the dealer, briskly, and he calls for 
 his assistant to come and wrap them up. . . . 
 
 No, the Italians haven't changed much. They 
 still retain all their bizarre superstitions, for example. 
 Whenever an Italian has a dream he gets out his 
 dream book and finds out what his dream means in 
 terms of figures, and then he scrapes up all the 
 money in the house and runs out and plays those 
 figures in the lottery. If he dreams that rare old 
 dream about wandering into a ballroom in his 
 pajamas he doesn't mention the dream to his 
 friends for the sake of making conversation. Not 
 he! He gets his dream book out from under his 
 pillow, finds that the abstruse calculations of the 
 dream experts have identified ballroom with the 
 number 28 and pajamas with the number 3. So he 
 plays number 28 and number 3 in the week's lottery; 
 and if he doesn't win he feels positive that somebody 
 with the evil eye looked at him and gummed up his 
 chances. Somehow or other these things don't 
 sound just right to us intellectual Americans who 
 prefer the more practical ouija board to such puerile 
 fancies as dream books. But you can't make an 
 Italian believe that there's anything wrong in his 
 system. It's all foolishness, of course, to think that 
 dream books and certain dates and people's ages and 
 suchlike truck can have any connection with lot- 
 
 280 '
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 tery . . . the Messina earthquake occurred on the 
 twenty -eighth day of the month; thousands of 
 Italians selected the number 28 on which to put 
 their money in that week's lottery. The number 28 
 turned up, and a stated amount had to be paid to 
 each one of the thousands that had chosen to bet 
 on 28. The government almost went broke. But 
 of course there's nothing in any of that stuff, as 
 ouija-board devotees can tell you. 
 
 The evil eye still goes big in all parts of Italy. 
 A man who has the evil eye, if recognized, can get 
 no service in restaurants, no rooms in hotels, no 
 carriage to drive in. Strong men drive hurriedly 
 up alleys to escape him. The mere mention of his 
 name is sufficient to make sensitive Italians leave the 
 room in an uncontrollable fit of shudders. This 
 makes it nice for Italians who have a grudge against 
 somebody. All they need to do is to spread the 
 report that the hated one has the evil eye. Italians 
 are rarely skeptical about such a statement. If they 
 are, however, and demand proof, it is only necessary 
 to connect the accused person with a minor disaster. 
 "How do I know?" whispers the accuser. "Don't 
 you remember the big banquet last March when the 
 glass chandelier fell on the banquet table and upset 
 all the wine? Well, he was present ... it was his 
 fault. . . . The eye, you know!" That's enough. 
 Nothing else is necessary. The fact that there were 
 ninety -nine other persons at the banquet doesn't 
 for a minute lead anyone to think that the dropping 
 of the chandelier was due to anything or anyone 
 except the man with the evil eye. 
 
 We in America can't understand all these things. 
 
 281
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 We can't understand why the Italian people, with 
 all their reputed love for the beautiful, should be so 
 contented amid such a tremendous amount of dirt. 
 Until the horticulturists become more active every 
 rose will continue to have its thorn. The chief 
 thorns in Italy's beauty are her filth and her evil 
 odors. Possibly these things, like the fleas, don't 
 bother the natives. But for foreigners they exist 
 in large, staggering quantities. I mention these 
 things, not in the spirit of carping criticism, but 
 merely in order to show that it's the same old Italy. 
 
 Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, 
 And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. 
 
 sang some well-known singer in the long ago. If his 
 statement is correct, the number of lesser Italian 
 fleas that bite the little Italian fleas that bite the 
 great Italian fleas must stagger the most vivid 
 imagination. Italy is a large country, and to go 
 from the bottom of it to the top takes a matter of 
 two days. Yet there is no hotel and no palace and 
 no restaurant and no train and no railway station 
 in all that large country that cannot and does not, 
 at a moment's notice, provide fleas for the foreigner 
 who may step into them in a flealess state. At a 
 formal dinner in Rome one evening I watched a flea 
 crawl out of the opening in the shirt bosom of the 
 host at a spot about opposite the lowest stud. Fol- 
 lowed by the fascinated stares of all the guests on 
 my side of the table, the flea marched sedately up 
 the glistening expanse of shirt bosom and disap- 
 peared from sight again beneath the host's immacur 
 
 282
 
 ALMOST SUNNY ITALY 
 
 late tie. I spoke with him at a more appropriate 
 moment on the subject of fleas. "You get accus- 
 tomed to them," he said. "I haven't felt a flea on 
 me for years." I asked him whether he hadn't felt 
 one that evening. He shook his head in a surprised 
 manner. "I haven't felt a trace of one," said he, 
 "and I'd feel them very quickly in this suit, because 
 it's tight." So the natives are probably correct 
 when they claim that the fleas don't bother them, 
 but for foreigners life in Italy is just one darned 
 itch after another. A medical friend of mine carried 
 a bottle of chloroform around with him. Whenever 
 he felt a flea at work he'd uncork the bottle and 
 pour a few drops on the spot where the flea was 
 lunching, whereupon the flea would pass out tem- 
 porarily and the sufferer could retrieve it and 
 destroy it at leisure. This system worked marvel- 
 ously until my friend visited the city of Bari over 
 on the Adriatic coast. Bari is a hot, dusty city, 
 and the dust is white and glaring and the fleas are 
 large and black and plentiful and very quick to 
 jump up out of the hot, white dust and onto the 
 cool bodies of the foreigners. When my friend 
 reached Bari he had to keep pouring and pouring 
 and pouring the chloroform into his clothes. In 
 order to keep pace with the fleas he poured on so 
 much that he chloroformed himself. The hotel 
 proprietor found him unconscious and called in five 
 doctors in the belief that he was dying. As a result 
 of the treatment he received my friend was sick 
 for a week and he had to pay the doctors $37. 
 Now he lets them bite. 
 
 A lot of people are waving their arms around 
 19 283
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 and saying despondently that it isn't the same old 
 Italy. But I can promise those who go there that 
 they will find the same old ruins, and the same old 
 moon shining down on the same old canals of 
 Venice, and the same old Italian temperament, and 
 the same old smells, and the same old fleas . . . and 
 what more does a tourist want for his money, 
 anyway?
 
 VI 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 WHEN authors and orators and other thought- 
 ful persons begin to probe round for the soul 
 of Paris, as they so frequently do, they are apt to 
 become a trifle maudlin. "Paris," they declare, 
 making a sweeping gesture with the right hand 
 and dashing a shining tear from the left eye — "Paris 
 smiles — and forgets!" That is one of the favorite 
 remarks about Paris. She smiles — and forgets. 
 
 I suppose the authors and orators know what it 
 is that she forgets, but I don't. It seems to me that 
 Paris remembers everything that she ever knew. 
 She smiles — ah out! as they say in Paris and its 
 environs. Ah oui! She smiles, and in spite of her 
 smiles she remembers all things. She remembers all 
 about the French Revolution, and the whiff of grape- 
 shot that left the scars on the front of the Church 
 of St. Roch, and the proper way to serve bceuj a la 
 mode, and the method of making the front of a dress 
 stay up when it has neither back nor shoulder straps 
 to support it. She remembers the Emperor Julian, 
 who was the first booster for Paris away back in 
 the year 350 or thereabout, and she recalls the only 
 true method of cooking the large and succulent snail 
 
 285
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 which fattens on the vine leaves of Burgundy. She 
 remembers, too, the Germans, and how they planned 
 to take Paris and make a large and unsightly 
 mess of it. Ah out! She remembers the Germans. 
 Paris smiles, pirouettes slightly, and exudes a whiff 
 of intriguing perfume, thus elevating the spirits of 
 the beholder, but anybody who thinks that the 
 airiness of her behavior means that she has forgotten 
 anything has several thinks coming to him. 
 
 That neat phrase anent Paris smiling was invented 
 by a Roman general about three weeks after the city 
 was named. Long years ago there was nothing to 
 Paris except an island in the Seine. The Parisii, 
 a temperamental but lovable tribe of people who 
 lived on the island, used to do practically nothing 
 in the winter except stand round the edges of the 
 island and watch the water rise, just as so many of 
 them have done every winter since then. In the 
 spring and summer and autumn they devoted them- 
 selves to fighting, occasionally varying the monotony 
 by selling bead bags to foreigners or by trying to 
 catch fish from the Seine, though there have been 
 no fish in the Seine since the post-Pliocene period. 
 That was long ago, but the activities of the early 
 Parisii will strike familiar chords in the breasts of 
 those who have encountered the more modern 
 Parisians. The Germans who have encountered 
 them will find something vaguely reminiscent in the 
 reference to their fighting. Julius Caesar con- 
 quered the early residents of Paris, but that was 
 probably because they only fought in the spring, 
 summer, and autumn. In later days they have 
 also taken to fighting in the winter when the occa- 
 
 286
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 sion demands it, and this fact has been particularly- 
 impressed on the Germans at one time and another 
 during recent years. In the early days of the Roman 
 occupation of the island they called the island Lute- 
 tia. They built palaces on it, and their friends used 
 to come up from Rome to visit them and buy bead 
 bags and laugh at the idea of the natives trying to 
 catch fish in the Seine. Later the Romans changed 
 the name of the island to Parisea Civitas, and almost 
 immediately abbreviated the name to Paris. 
 
 About three weeks after this change occurred, as 
 I started to say at the beginning of the last para- 
 graph, a Roman general came back to Paris from 
 London, where he had been living for weeks on 
 boiled meat and boiled potatoes and boiled carrots 
 and boiled fish and suet pudding. The time was 
 winter, and he had had no heat in his London lodg- 
 ings. The weather, moreover, had been cold and 
 rainy and foggy, and whenever he went outdoors he 
 got his feet wet. It had been a most depressing 
 sojourn. The crossing, moreover, had been ex- 
 tremely rough, and most of the waves in the Channel 
 had attempted to climb into his lap, so that his armor 
 had rusted badly. He came rolling into Paris at 
 night, as everyone does, and as he wandered grouch- 
 ily up the Boulevard St. Michel toward the Roman 
 baths the people in the restaurants gave him the 
 Chautauqua salute and shouted to him to come in 
 and have an aperitif. Several chic young women 
 hailed him gaily and wanted to know whether he 
 wasn't anxious to buy just one leetle drink. The 
 moon shone down through a hole in the clouds, and 
 a cab driver passed him, cracking his whip and sing- 
 
 287
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 ing a gay melody in a wheezy voice. The streets 
 were crowded and care-free midinettes were exclaim- 
 ing ecstatically over the bead bags in the windows. 
 The general decided to buy a "leetle drink." It was 
 then that the remark about the smiling of Paris 
 sprang into being. 
 
 "Paris," said the general as he removed his hel- 
 met and banged it on the marble table top in order 
 to attract the attention of a waiter who was com- 
 pletely absorbed in a domino tournament in which 
 two of the guests had been engaged since early in the 
 afternoon — "Paris smiles — and forgets." 
 
 He meant that the general atmosphere, after the 
 gloom of London, was highly exhilarating, but that 
 he was slightly disappointed because nobody showed 
 any signs of wishing to hear about his hard trip, 
 and burst into tears over it. Whenever Paris has 
 her troubles she always manages to conceal them. 
 She sings and she smiles, but she refuses to sob 
 bitterly over the woes of others. If others wish to 
 join in her songs and her smiles, very good, not to 
 say tris-bon. But if they do not wish, they may 
 make of themselves an absence. Ah oui! But the 
 general, being tired and cross, sprang the remark 
 about smiling — and forgetting. And that canard 
 has been going ever since, like the bit of fiction to 
 the effect that home-made rum is good to drink. 
 
 One has evidence that Paris does not forget as 
 soon as he sets foot in it late at night. One always 
 arrives in Paris at night, anyway, and one always 
 arrives late, because no French trains ever get any- 
 where on time these days. This is known as the crise 
 du transportation — the transportation crisis. Life in 
 
 288
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 France is just one darned crise after another. No 
 day goes by without its crise, and every morning and 
 every afternoon the eighty or ninety or one hundred 
 Parisian papers announce in glaring headlines that 
 another crise has struck town. Sometimes two or 
 three new crises start crising on the same day, and 
 the Parisians work themselves into a severe lather 
 over the situation. Everyone in all the restaurants 
 shrugs his shoulders so violently that the floors 
 shake and the windows rattle. But before there 
 can be a crise d 'emotion the disturbing crise passes, 
 and on the following day there is a new crise to dis- 
 tract the mind and excite the fancy. 
 
 We were speaking, however, of arriving in Paris 
 late at night. One usually arrives from two to six 
 hours late, but always late. One is fresh from the 
 hard-boiled foods and the clammy fogs of London, 
 and the very atmosphere of Paris is elevating and 
 stimulating. One sees strong men kissing each 
 other on the station platform. One catches the 
 odor of intoxicating perfumes. 
 
 "Aha!" says one, "this is indeed the life, then!" 
 And one goes out to get a taxicab. One immedi- 
 ately is confronted by a crise — the taxicab crise. 
 It is not an extremely serious crise, but whenever one 
 is particularly anxious to get into a Parisian taxicab 
 and is just about to do so, somebody usually comes 
 up behind him and hauls him off by the coat tails 
 and gets into the taxicab himself and goes away. 
 However, by screaming at the top of one's lungs 
 and shaking one's fists violently at the persons who 
 are also desirous of obtaining the taxicab, one can 
 usually obtain it for himself. And when he has done 
 
 289
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 so and is riding away in it he remembers one of the 
 things that Paris won't forget — to wit, the fact 
 that the battle of the Marne was won by taxicabs. 
 
 When the German hordes were sweeping into the 
 heart of France in 1914, General Gallieni mobilized 
 the taxicabs of Paris, loaded them with poilus, and 
 rushed them out against the Germans. By so doing 
 he delivered a violent and unexpected blow, and the 
 Germans were defeated. But the taxicabs are still 
 doing business. Some of them, it is true, are doing 
 it on only one cylinder, and that one cylinder is 
 frequently afflicted with serious pulmonary troubles. 
 Somehow or other, though, they manage to stagger 
 along. And everybody who rides in them remembers 
 the battle of the Marne. He feels quite sure that his 
 particular taxicab was one of the staunch band that 
 rushed the poilus to the front in 19 14. It has a 
 sunken look round the middle that convinces him 
 that it has probably carried enormous loads of 
 poilus across vast stretches of shell holes and 
 trenches. If he tries to persuade the chauffeur to 
 take him up a hill he is frequently refused. If one 
 wishes to go up to Montmartre, which is a long, 
 hard pull, one usually has to tackle three or four 
 taxi drivers before meeting with any success. 
 
 "What!" exclaims the bearded driver, cocking 
 an ear at the distressed coughs of his engine, "mount 
 that great ascent there with this poor little one? 
 Sacred name of a small dog, but no!" 
 
 And his machine goes lurching off in search of 
 some one who will be content to stay on level 
 ground. 
 
 They don't steer as well as they might, these 
 
 290
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 veterans of the Great War. They collide with one 
 another frequently, and it then devolves upon every- 
 one connected with the collision to make as pas- 
 sionate an outcry as possible in order to establish 
 his innocence. This is a rule which no Parisian 
 ever forgets, any more than he forgets the excellent 
 rule which provides that any person who is so 
 careless as to allow himself to be hit by an auto- 
 mobile shall at once be taken into custody and im- 
 mured in the nearest jail unless he is in such shape 
 as to require the attentions of a surgeon or an 
 undertaker. 
 
 Because of this law Paris is unfamiliar with the 
 type of person who walks slowly across the road in 
 front of an approaching automobile, glaring at it 
 contemptuously in order to show that he is not only 
 as good as the automobilist, but several times better. 
 In the event of a collision, however, everybody is 
 guilty until he can prove his innocence, and the 
 only way to prove one's innocence in Paris is to 
 make a noise about it. As soon as a collision occurs, 
 a large jury of onlookers, with several gendarmes 
 as judges, assemble round the wreckage. The suf- 
 ferers emerge from the heap and at once begin to 
 shriek and howl and swear. The judges and the 
 jury listen carefully. When the shrieks and howls 
 and curses of one party become weaker than those 
 of the other, the weaker side is marched off to the 
 police station. The reasoning of the onlookers is 
 simplicity itself. If a man makes a lot of noise he 
 does so because he believes that his cause is just. 
 If his cause is unjust he will be unable to speak about 
 it as fluently as he might otherwise speak. So when 
 
 201
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 an argument rises the loudest talker commands the 
 most respect. 
 
 The crise of transportation is the first crise which 
 one encounters when entering Paris, but before one 
 goes away one hears of as many crises as there are 
 patriots in Poland — almost. There is the crise of 
 money, the crise of coal, the crise of food, the crise 
 of lodging, the crise of clothing, the crise of building 
 material, the crise of sugar, the crise of inundation, 
 the crise of taxes, the crise of passports, and countless 
 other minor crises. We have the same thing at 
 home, but we are not as attentive to details as are 
 the Parisians. When strictly fresh eggs are brought 
 from their year's sojourn in the Hoboken cold- 
 storage plants and put on sale at $1.20 a dozen we 
 in America emit a few wild shrieks of agony in the 
 privacy of our homes, after which we calm down and 
 talk about the servant problem or presidential can- 
 didates. In Paris, however, when eggs work up to 
 8 francs a dozen there is a crise des ceufs. The news- 
 papers put it on the front page and great numbers of 
 women have hysterics. Men walk round clutching 
 their heads with their hands and ejaculating that 
 frightful French oath, ' ' Name of a man of a name of a 
 name" in hoarse gutturals. The crise passes, as all 
 crises do, until eggs hit 8 francs and 10 centimes a 
 dozen. Then the crise des osujs takes place all 
 over again. 
 
 Early in 1920 the French ceuf for eating purposes 
 stood at 9 francs 60 centimes a dozen. There had 
 been a crise with every 10-centime advance. Con- 
 sidering the enormous number of things which are 
 capable of having a crise, one would expect the 
 
 292
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 Parisians to be exhausted from the violence of their 
 emotions. But they are a tireless people — simple 
 and tireless — and they bear up under the strain 
 remarkably well. 
 
 The crise of money is probably the crise which 
 causes the most excitement in Paris, though each 
 and every crise as it appears seems to give rise to the 
 absolute apex of excitement. The crise of money 
 strikes at the very vitals of the nation, and every 
 Parisian wants every American to know all about 
 it so that he will go home and use his influence with 
 the Treasury Department to have credits extended 
 to France in order that French money may soon 
 be as good as it ever was, and so that when the 
 one and a half million Americans arrive on the Con- 
 tinent in the spring and summer, as rumor says that 
 they will, they will have to pay a dollar for five 
 francs' worth of French goods instead of fifty cents, 
 as they sometimes do to-day. 
 
 There are some sections of Paris where an Amer- 
 ican won't be able to get anything at half price 
 unless the shopkeepers are both deaf and blind, 
 and I have noted no overwhelming number of blind 
 Parisian shopkeepers, or of deaf ones, either. Many 
 of those who sell luxuries — and luxuries are the 
 things which a large part of the visiting Americans 
 will buy — can raise prices on an American in about 
 nothing and two fifths seconds. But such things 
 as food and clothing look cheap to an American, 
 though at the same time they appear so high to a 
 Parisian that he gets dizzy looking up at them. 
 
 One gets an idea of Paris prices from listening to 
 the conversation of one of the many American 
 
 293
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 expatriates who live in Paris. These people, most 
 of whom have small incomes, moved to France be- 
 cause they could live there very cheaply. They 
 could have a commodious furnished apartment for 
 $15 a month, procure a marvelous cook for $6 or 
 $8 a month and live most comfortably on $1,000 
 a year. These people are suffering keenly under 
 present conditions and are actually thinking of 
 going back to the United States. At least they 
 are talking about it. Probably they will never go 
 so far as to take the actual step, but they have 
 contracted the habit of saying that with French 
 prices where they are they might as well live in the 
 United States. They are very bitter over it and 
 act as though the United States were wholly to 
 blame for daring to allow high prices to exist. It 
 is evident that they expect a great deal of pity, 
 these expatriated Americans, but as to whether they 
 deserve it or not I shall not attempt to say. 
 
 When I arrived in Paris early in the winter 10 
 francs could be purchased with one American dollar, 
 whereas in pre-war days a dollar was equivalent to 
 only 5 francs. A few days later a dollar would 
 purchase almost n>£ francs. Still a few days later 
 the rate was again 10 francs for a dollar. 
 
 I take this opportunity of repeating that large 
 financial affairs are as much of an enigma to me as 
 the internal mechanism of a reciprocating en- 
 gine would be to an unclothed black man from the 
 shores of Lake Albert Nyanza, yet I have a persistent 
 feeling that when a commodity, whether it be money 
 or garbage pails or hair nets or hop poles, sells for 
 $5 on one day and $7 on the second day and $4.50 
 
 294
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 on the third day there is something about the pro- 
 ceeding that gives rise to a strong odor of fish — and 
 no mean fish, either. It also seems to me that 
 there is no particular reason why on a given day in 
 the city of Paris reputable banking institutions should 
 differ so widely in the rates at which they exchange 
 American money into French francs. As things 
 stand, Americans must shop from place to place 
 with their American dollars, hunting for a bank 
 which will give the best rate. 
 
 The low value of the franc is having an unfortunate 
 effect on American business. American business 
 men can buy whatever they want in Paris, and they 
 are buying in large quantities. But for a French 
 business man to buy in America, when he has to pay 
 10 francs for an American dollar with which to do 
 his buying, is almost as agonizing as it would be to 
 jab a knife into him and twist it round a couple of 
 times. So he isn't doing it. The result, argue the 
 French, is inevitable. French business men will 
 buy from America only those things which they 
 absolutely must have. Other things they will buy 
 from Germany and Czechoslovakia and Poland and 
 Austria, where the currency is even more depreciated 
 than the French currency. Eventually, America 
 will wake up to find herself, as bankers say, holding 
 the sack, and in the sack there will be no foreign 
 trade or anything else. 
 
 The argument is thoroughly sound, and the only 
 answer to it is for American financiers and business 
 men to see that France gets enough credits so that 
 she can supply herself with sufficient raw materials 
 to produce a maximum of goods for export. As soon 
 
 295
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 as she is exporting to America as much as she is 
 importing, that mysterious thing known as the 
 balance of trade will be stabilized, as the business 
 men like to remark in their piquant jargon — or do 
 they say that it is equalized? Maybe they say that 
 the balance of trade will be balanced — or adjusted. 
 At any rate, there will be as much going out as there 
 is coming in, and consequently the demand for 
 French money and for American money with which 
 to pay for the goods will be equal, and therefore 
 neither one will be worth more than the other. 
 The French franc will be as valuable as it was in the 
 glad free days before the war, and trade relations 
 between France and America will be all that could 
 be desired. 
 
 As in most of the civilized countries of the world, 
 the laboring classes in France are about as well 
 off as anybody. Parisian laborers are making very 
 large sums of money in many cases. It is not 
 unusual for a taxicab driver to make from ioo to 
 1 20 francs a day. Knife grinders, who are or- 
 ganized in a syndicate, or superunion, and who have 
 certain streets allotted to them, drag down from 
 60 to 80 francs a day. The average laborer is paid 
 from 150 to 200 francs a week. 
 
 The more refined clerk and white-collar man, 
 however, are not so fortunate. A salesman in a 
 department store will only get 50 francs a week, 
 plus 1 per cent on his sales; and salesgirls receive 
 37 francs 50 centimes a week, plus 1 per cent on 
 their sales. A stenographer earns 75 francs a week, 
 and if she knows one foreign language she will be 
 paid 125 francs a week. Bookkeepers average 120 
 
 296
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 francs a week and cashiers average 150 francs a week. 
 Generally speaking, the earnings of the middle class 
 have a little more than doubled, while the laborers' 
 wages have tripled, quadrupled, and quintupled. 
 
 Prices in many cases have outstripped the leaps 
 which laborers' wages have taken. Back in 19 14 a 
 dozen eggs could be bought for a little more than 
 1 franc. Last winter they were nearly 10. Butter 
 in 1914 stood at i}4 francs a pound, and last winter 
 it went to 8 francs. A liter of wine used to cost 
 yi franc; last winter it cost 2. Beer used to cost 
 30 centimes a liter; last year it cost a franc a liter. 
 A chicken cost 5 francs before the war and is now 
 flapping along at 25 francs. Men's clothes have 
 tripled in price, as have women's garments. 
 
 The standard of living has risen, however, and 
 France's reputation for thrift is being severely 
 jolted by her workmen. As a matter of fact, the 
 French laborer has usually been about as thrifty 
 as a Russian sailor who has just had seven drinks of 
 Japanese-Scotch whisky in the American bar on the 
 Nagasaki water front. That is what the economists 
 would call the negation of thrift. 
 
 The two curses of the French workman have 
 always been alcohol and improvidence. He is not 
 a habitual souse, but he takes a small snifter every 
 hour or so, and sometimes there comes a day when 
 he beats his wife fiercely, attacks the furniture with 
 an ax, and has to be led away to a psychopathic 
 ward. As for his thriftlessness, that is usually in- 
 grained in him from the generations of workmen from 
 whom he is descended. He has the idea that since 
 he was born a workman he must remain one; that 
 
 297
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 it is as useless for him to save as it would be for 
 him to try to play a piano. Frequently the laborer 
 has been a peasant who broke away from his village 
 because he wanted to get to the intoxicating whirl 
 of city life; so when he gets within speaking dis- 
 tance of the intoxicating whirl he jumps in with 
 both feet and participates in the whirling with great 
 vigor and Han. 
 
 A young Frenchman of my acquaintance asked 
 me if I wanted to see something rather snappy in the 
 line of amusements. I said that if it was really 
 there with the old punch and would give me a thrill 
 he could lead on. He replied that the Parisian work- 
 men were crazy about it and that it was packed 
 to the doors every night. It sounded all right, so 
 we started off for an evening of riotous enjoyment. 
 He led me up to Montmartre, and, after casting round 
 for about ten minutes, he located this place that the 
 Parisian workmen were crazy about. It had a soiled 
 and stodgy entrance with a couple of ghostly green 
 lights burning outside, and there were large numbers 
 of workmen gladly parting with 5 francs apiece in 
 order to enter. We joined them. 
 
 The interior of the amusement palace was walled 
 with canvas painted to represent the inside of a 
 burial vault. Coffins were ranged up and down the 
 room, and on each side of each coffin was a wooden 
 bench. When the benches were filled with a gay 
 throng of some two hundred amusement seekers, 
 two men dressed as undertakers' assistants came 
 round and stuck lighted wax tapers into holes in the 
 coffins. Another undertaker's assistant pointed out 
 various objets d'art on the walls — objects such as 
 
 298
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 imitation skulls and shin bones — and assured every- 
 body in a sepulchral voice that it was an awful place. 
 Still another undertaker came round with thimble- 
 sized glasses of beer and demanded a franc in pay- 
 ment for each one, while a head undertaker de- 
 livered a lecture stating that everyone who drank 
 the beer would die instantly. It was terribly thrilling 
 and exciting. 
 
 After remaining in this tomb for ten minutes the 
 occupants were requested to pass, without crowding, 
 into a second tomb, where a lady would be kind 
 enough to die for them. So we rose and passed 
 blithely into the second tomb. Here a woman was 
 placed in a coffin and by an artful arrangement of 
 mirrors was made to look as though she changed 
 into a skeleton. She was then changed back again. 
 After that the audience was passed out into the open 
 air, greatly edified by the twenty minutes of breezy 
 entertainment. The main entrance was thronged 
 with more workmen, each one panting to separate 
 himself from 5 francs in order to be spiritually 
 elevated by this absorbing spectacle. 
 
 A former captain in the French army, who is to- 
 day occupying a well-paid professional position, was 
 making moan about comparative salaries. 
 
 "Last Sunday evening," said he, "I went to the 
 theater. The play was a good one and I was dressed 
 in le smoking. In the seats in front of me was a 
 workman with his wife. His hands were black and 
 his hair was dirty, but he had paid forty francs for 
 his two seats. Before the war such a sight would 
 never have been seen. To-day it is common. The 
 workingmen are earning as much as, if not more 
 20 2 99
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 than, the well-paid professional man. And they 
 are spending it as fast as they make it." 
 
 The standard of living has risen enormously for the 
 Parisian workers during the past two or three years. 
 Before the war department-store girls usually wore 
 the cheapest of footgear — cotton stockings, felt 
 shoes, frequently wooden sabots. To-day the bulk 
 of them wear silk stockings which cost 25 francs a 
 pair at the minimum. In the public markets one 
 can see workmen's wives, hatless but wearing silk 
 stockings, buying chickens at 25 and 30 francs apiece 
 without a thought of bargaining. Alongside them 
 will be the wives of middle-class workers wearing 
 hats and cotton stockings and carrying that eloquent 
 badge of respectability, a net bag. They will bar- 
 gain and barter for chickens, and will usually turn 
 to something else, because they are unable to pay 
 the price. 
 
 The thrifty people of France have been the 
 middle-class folk, and to-day their luck has deserted 
 them. They are forced to clutch each franc so 
 tightly that the figure of Liberty groans aloud. In 
 the old days the middle-class folk usually shot for a 
 mark of 50,000 francs. This they invested in real 
 estate and bonds so that they would have an income 
 of 2,500 francs a year; and on the 2,500 francs they 
 lived comfortably. To-day the 2,500 francs doesn't 
 get them very far. And incomes that used to be 
 2,500 francs dwindled pitifully during the years of 
 the war, for there was a moratorium, and the thrifty 
 middle-class folk who had sunk their hard-earned 
 francs in real estate received no rents at all until the 
 end of last October. 
 
 300
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 The thrifty French people who are trying to exist 
 on the interest which their once-sufficient capital is 
 bringing in are perilously close to starving. 
 
 I referred a short way back to the Frenchman who 
 went to the theater garbed in le smoking. Le smok- 
 ing is the Parisian way of saying smoking jacket, or 
 dinner coat. One of the things that Paris can't 
 forget is its habit of taking an English noun, attaching 
 an "ing " to the end of it, and thinking that the result 
 is eminently correct. When a Parisian wishes to 
 refer in a distinctly American manner to a long walk, 
 he calls it "a footing." A place where a dance is held 
 is known as "un dancing." A brisk ten-round bout 
 is graced with the title of "le boxing." When he sets 
 out for a bit of ground-and-lofty tumbling on roller 
 skates he leaves word that he is off for "le skating." 
 "Le skating'' is where he goes, and "le skating" is 
 also what he indulges in, just as he goes to "un 
 dancing" to have "le dancing." 
 
 This method of expression seems to have become a 
 mania with the Parisians. Unless they are restrained 
 by some strong hand they will soon begin to speak 
 of a kitchen as "le cooking," of a bath as "le wash- 
 ing," of a suit of pajamas as "le sleeping," of a chair 
 as "un sitting," and so on. The ultimate result 
 might be an effective pidgin French in which a 
 Frenchman and an Englishman, with the assistance 
 of a number of Delsartean gestures, might be able 
 to carry on a conversation without any real knowl- 
 edge of one another's language, but when foreigners 
 attempted to master the hybrid expressions it would 
 probably necessitate frequent enlargements of lead- 
 ing madhouses. 
 
 3°i
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 The Parisians have become passionate devotees of 
 "le boxing." Every time "un boxing" is staged in 
 Paris a large and enthusiastic crowd turns out. 
 There is a belief in certain circles that the Parisian 
 has an odd habit of fighting with his feet and of 
 biting in clinches. After viewing a few examples of 
 "le boxing" in Paris, however, I am in a position to 
 state that the average French boxer is more generous 
 in the use of his fists than the average American 
 boxer, and that his sole aim in life, while indulging 
 in "le boxing," is to hit his opponent as frequently 
 as possible in a given period of time. And French 
 fighters, I don't mind saying, are pretty good sports. 
 Not infrequently a couple of boxers who have been 
 mauling each other's features for a matter of ten 
 rounds will, when the gong rings, embrace affec- 
 tionately and exchange kisses. Of course this is not 
 the conventional manner of finishing a fight from an 
 American standpoint. It is even possible that if 
 somebody had raised Mr. Willard from the floor 
 at the close of his recent set-to with Mr. Dempsey 
 and had held him up while Mr. Dempsey kissed him, 
 there might have been boorish persons in the vicinity 
 who would have jeered at the proceeding and even 
 given vent to catcalls and other low sounds. But 
 in Paris such an ending to a fight is regarded as 
 nothing out of the ordinary, and anyone who ven- 
 tured to make sport of it would be viciously hissed. 
 
 Among the things which Paris hasn't forgotten is 
 the knack of making feminine garb in such manner 
 that every male eye which encounters it is arrested, 
 not to say put out. Some of the feminine apparel 
 which was produced in Paris last winter was the most 
 
 302
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 arresting thing that I had ever happened to witness. 
 Paris, I know, is not New York, nor does anybody- 
 want it to be, and comparisons are odious and all that 
 sort of thing. Yet I cannot refrain from remarking 
 that some of the Parisian gowns which I saw in 
 leading dressmaking establishments were so arrest- 
 ing in their nature that if they had appeared on any 
 stage in New York the whole show would have been 
 pinched at once. And I have never heard the New 
 York stage accused of being either prudish or 
 puritanical. 
 
 I was led to several of these establishments by 
 an accommodating young woman who was known 
 to all of them and who assured the respective crea- 
 tion creators that I was there in the interests of 
 science and not for the purpose of stealing their 
 styles. Otherwise I would have been made to 
 feel like a soiled and insignificant member of 
 Coal Passers' Local No. 17 who had by mistake 
 stumbled into the Union League Club and called 
 hoarsely for an onion sandwich. The Paris dress- 
 makers are greatly troubled by the fiends in human 
 shape who enter their establishments, gaze for a 
 moment at a 2,000-franc creation, and then go back 
 to little shops on side streets and reproduce the same 
 creation for a matter of 500 francs. They are also 
 somewhat irked by the persons who come there and 
 hang round for the sole purpose of seeing a good 
 show for nothing. Consequently every strange face 
 is viewed with suspicion and alarm. 
 
 Having been vouched for, I was allowed to sit 
 magnificently at one end of a large, opulent room 
 walled with mirrors and permeated with such a 
 
 3°3
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 strong odor of perfumery that a hatful of air from 
 it would have entirely changed the odor of the 
 average small-town movie theater. As is well 
 known, drastic measures are needed to change the 
 atmosphere of such a place, but a little of the air 
 from that dressmaking establishment would have 
 done it. 
 
 One by one the manikins pranced out, stepping 
 high and holding the hands just the way the fashion 
 artists draw them. I couldn't get over the feeling 
 that instead of flexing the wrists gracefully and 
 allowing their fingers to trail loosely in the air the 
 manikins should have held their dresses on with both 
 hands. In many cases the dresses had no backs 
 and were cut down below the waistline. 
 
 Though this matter is a rather delicate one, I feel 
 called on, in the interests of truth, to point out that 
 when a dress has no back and also has a deep in- 
 cision cut down from the waistline there can be no 
 garments of any sort worn beneath the dress without 
 being exposed to the naked eye, due to the fact — 
 so far as my imperfect technical knowledge permits 
 me to speak — that undergarments must be fastened 
 round the waist in order to remain in the position 
 in which they were designed to remain. I mention 
 this because last winter was a cold winter in Paris 
 and coal was scarce. The fact that frail and 
 beautiful women traveled round with nothing under 
 their dresses, and with scarcely any dresses to boot, 
 is a comprehensive commentary on the amount of 
 punishment that a woman will endure in order to be 
 in style. I would greatly admire to see a man's 
 tailor attempt to introduce some sort of style in dress 
 
 304
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 suits that would make it necessary for the men who 
 use them to throw away their coats, waistcoats, 
 shirts, and undergarments and roam round wearing 
 nothing else but what that left them. That tailor's 
 chances of preserving his soundness of body would, 
 I believe, be slim. 
 
 In one of the best-known dressmaking establish- 
 ments in Paris — which is to say one of the best known 
 in the world — a manikin was brought out in a dress 
 which had nothing above the waist, front or back, 
 but eight strands of rhinestones. The rhinestones — 
 four strands on each side — ran from the waist in 
 back over each shoulder and down to the waist in 
 front. They were slender strands — and that's all 
 there was above the waist. I told several friends 
 about it. 
 
 "Of course," they all said, "there was a little 
 chiffon or something in addition." 
 
 But there wasn't. There was nothing but those 
 strings of rhinestones. And the dress ended about 
 two inches below the knee. The thing was both 
 ludicrous and disgusting. It reminded one of that 
 old, old story which is ascribed to Sam Jones, the 
 revivalist. He came home from a dinner party 
 one night. His wife, who was ill, hadn't accom- 
 panied him. "Well," said she, prepared to get an 
 entertaining earful, "what did the women wear?" 
 
 Jones gazed contemplatively at the ceiling and 
 scratched his chin. 
 
 "My dear," said he, "I don't know. I didn't 
 look under the table." 
 
 The chief salesladies in these establishments were 
 pressed to give an honest opinion concerning the 
 
 305
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 beauty of such garments. All of them at first insisted 
 vehemently that they were trds-chic — oh, tris, trds- 
 chic! Close questioning, however, forced them to 
 admit that no lady would wear many of them as 
 they were exhibited. In all their unconcealed chic- 
 ness they were sometimes worn by persons whose 
 judgment was somewhat impaired by their desire 
 to create a sensation, or by individuals who felt that 
 an unrestricted exposure of their charms was a dis- 
 tinct business asset. But the true lady felt obliged 
 to fill in a few of the widest expanses of nothingness 
 with several yards of chiffon and even to let down 
 the skirts a few feet. 
 
 For the benefit of womenfolk in America who 
 follow the rise and fall in the heights of dress backs 
 with the same keen interest with which menfolk 
 follow the rise and fall of United States Steel, I 
 may say that the Parisian dress weevils predict a 
 marked decrease in the amount of flesh that will be 
 exposed in the future. Not many weeks ago, as I 
 understand it, a dress that had anything above the 
 waist in back was considered a bit dowdy, though 
 some of the leaders in dress creation permitted a 
 small butterfly or bluebird or Parmachene Belle fly 
 to be painted on the flesh just under the left shoulder 
 or on the right of a dimple in the small of the back. 
 
 To-day, however, a wisp of tulle or an unobtrusive 
 string of beads may be passed over the shoulder 
 without rousing adverse comment, and it is believed 
 on the Rue de la Paix that this wisp or string may 
 in time grow greatly in size, until evening gowns 
 have again developed a near or rudimentary back. 
 This change will be due in part to the loud and ear- 
 
 306
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 splitting protests which are voiced by the men who 
 attend "le dancing" with young women who wear 
 the gowns which have nothing above the waist but 
 powder. After dancing with them the young men 
 find that their smokings look very much as though 
 they have been left overnight in a flour barrel, and 
 after every dance they are forced to retire to the coat 
 room and be brushed off by several attendants. 
 It will also be due to the fact that, tough and hardy 
 as the feminine constitution is known to be, it is not 
 sufficiently tough and hardy to endure sitting through 
 a long dinner in a draughty room if the upper part of 
 the body is entirely exposed, without developing 
 severe and unlovely cases of goose flesh. 
 
 The million and a half Americans who are ex- 
 pected in Paris during the summer months will find 
 that Paris hasn't forgotten her entrancing and 
 unique methods of doing business. They will, I 
 predict, be ravished by the methods which obtain 
 in the perfumery stores. The amount of the old 
 jazz which a Parisian uses in selling one small bottle 
 of perfumery is sufficient to sell an entire perfumery 
 factory to an unwilling Vermonter. Some of them 
 adopt the hushed or adoring method of selling, 
 while others prefer the blatant or squirt-gun method, 
 in which the prospective purchaser receives a charge 
 of perfumery in the face as soon as he steps over the 
 threshold. 
 
 When one enters an establishment which uses the 
 first method he finds himself in a chastely simple 
 room with nothing in it to distract the eye. Two 
 severely plain chairs flank a rich but unobtrusive 
 table, while the carpet and the hangings melt into 
 
 307
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 the soft coloring of the woodwork. All is harmony 
 and restfulness. One enters and sits. There is 
 nothing, as one might say, stirring. There is no 
 perfumery in sight. One becomes wrapped in pro- 
 found contemplation. He forgets all about per- 
 fumes and has hot flushes over the thought that he 
 may have made a mistake in exchanging his dollars 
 at the rate of 10 francs 20 centimes for each dollar. 
 Possibly if he had hunted farther he might have got 
 10 francs 40, or even 10 francs 60. Ye gods! 
 Would it be better to exchange all his dollars to- 
 morrow or to wait a week ? Or would it be better — 
 Suddenly the hangings are pushed aside. A mysteri- 
 ous personage with a magnificent black beard reminis- 
 cent of a luxuriant juniper bush enters the room 
 dramatically. Ha! Monsieur! Would monsieur 
 perhaps then care to examine a perfume? 
 
 Monsieur is tempted to reply that he is there for 
 the purpose of buying a load of top dressing for his 
 Maine hop garden, but he refrains. Yes, he would 
 care to examine a perfume* Bring it on then, but 
 yes. 
 
 The mysterious personage withdraws. In a mo- 
 ment he returns with a small box. He holds it in 
 the air and gazes at it as though it held the ashes 
 of a lost love. He opens it tenderly and extracts 
 a small bottle. The small bottle he places in the 
 exact center of the large table. Then he backs off 
 a few steps and gazes proudly at monsieur — as 
 proudly as though he had done something wonderful. 
 One expected him to crow, as though he had laid it. 
 One is impressed. The bottle must be worth at 
 least a million dollars. What is it, then? 
 
 308
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 Ah ! It is the latest novelty — it is the most recent 
 creation! Marvelous! Exquisite! And the name! 
 Ah oui! The name! "Let Him Not Forget This 
 Moment." This is its name — "Let Him Not Forget 
 This Moment." The personage kisses his hand at 
 the bottle. He rolls up his eyes. He is choked with 
 emotion. Ah oui! Well, what does this "Let 
 Him Not Forget This Moment" smell like, then? 
 Crack it open or something. Give us a smell of the 
 stuff, no? 
 
 The personage bows his head, elevating his 
 shoulders and hands in token of surrender. He 
 pushes back a panel in the wall and extracts a small 
 pad of suede leather. Standing before monsieur, he 
 flaps it back and forth so that it misses monsieur's 
 nose by an inch at each flap. The air is permeated 
 with sweetness. The personage's eyes roll up again. 
 He flaps with one hand, and with the other hand he 
 throws a kiss at the ceiling. Ah ! Delicious ! Rav- 
 ishing! A perfume of all perfumes most rare, most 
 entrancing, most unequaled, most — 
 
 Yes, yes, yes, yes, then! But let's have a look 
 at some others! Is that the only perfume there is 
 on the premises ? And how much is it ? How much, 
 yes? 
 
 Ah yes! Eh, well, it is four dollars and eighty 
 cents. 
 
 Four dollars and eighty cents! From the arduous 
 toil which the personage has put into his selling talk 
 it seemed impossible that he could afford to let it 
 go for a cent under three hundred. Four dollars 
 and eighty cents! Eh, bien! Well, bring on some 
 others. 
 
 309
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 So the personage brings them out one by one. He 
 works himself into a frenzy over each bottle. His 
 beard trembles and his eyes roll up and he kisses 
 his hand constantly. One gets a whiff of "The 
 Love of a Thousand Years" and of "Give Me Your 
 Lips" and of "You Must Come Back to Me," as 
 well as of several others. And after the personage 
 has worn himself to a frazzle one buys one bottle of 
 "Let Him Not Forget This Moment" at four dollars 
 and eighty cents and is ushered out with much 
 ceremony. 
 
 The other variety of perfumery shop is not so 
 ceremonious and there is more action. One smells 
 them for yards when approaching. Beautiful sales- 
 ladies are observed flitting about among glittering 
 bottles of pleasing shape. One enters, murmuring 
 disjointedly of perfumes. One of the beautiful 
 salesladies rushes up, bearing a quart bottle with an 
 atomizer attachment. She shoots from the hip, 
 catching the prospective purchaser full in the chest. 
 As he backs away she seizes another bottle from a 
 table and lets him have another charge in the face. 
 As he mops it from his eyes she picks up another 
 bottle and sprays him all over. Unless forcibly 
 restrained, she keeps on with this program in- 
 definitely. 
 
 I entered one of these shops after a long study of 
 the bottles in the window. Evidently I had been 
 spotted as a good prospect before I entered, for 
 when I opened the door a saleslady was awaiting 
 me with an atomizer loaded with "Kisses From the 
 Heart." As she shot I ducked my head and the 
 load hit the top of my hat. 
 
 310
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 I have dragged that hat into Germany, and down 
 the Rhine, and through Berlin, and across the 
 Polish frontier. It has rolled round in freight cars 
 and second-class coaches loaded with odorous Poles. 
 German and Polish and Austrian hat boys have 
 dropped it on the floor. It has passed through 
 Czechoslovakia customs officials and weathered 
 several snowstorms and rainstorms; and it still 
 retains a seductive scent which is sometimes embar- 
 rassing. From this it may be seen that if one per- 
 mits the salesladies of the squirt-gun school of per- 
 fumery shops to follow their natural bent and bring 
 all their atomizers into action, one will be months 
 in getting over it. Skilled Parisian statisticians have 
 figured that for every five- dollar sale the squirt- 
 gun school of shops squirt away enough perfumery 
 to scent three regiments of infantry and a machine- 
 gun company. 
 
 The department stores of Paris, too, have customs 
 which catch the fancy. One enters a department 
 store, for example, to purchase six inches of ribbon. 
 Others, too, are at the ribbon counter, all determined 
 to buy. There is a great deal of pushing and an 
 occasional scream as the emotions of a purchaser 
 become too much for her. The ribbon salesman, too, 
 is suffering. His counter is open on all sides, so 
 that the purchasers must assemble round it. Every 
 person who passes the ribbon counter steps on a 
 purchaser and bumps into the ribbon clerk, who 
 races tirelessly round and round his small domain. 
 At intervals he spies some one who has decided on a 
 purchase. Pouncing on her, he leads her away and 
 stands her up against a wall with instructions to 
 
 3"
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 1 
 
 remain until he returns. Soon he returns with 
 another purchaser and stands her against the wall 
 beside the first one. A third is added to the line, 
 and a fourth, and sometimes even a fifth. Then 
 he takes from each one the bit of ribbon that she 
 has purchased and leads the line to the cash window. 
 
 Paris cash windows are usually located on the 
 most populous aisles in the stores. All purchasers 
 must go to them in order to pay their money, so 
 that as they stand waiting and waiting and waiting 
 — and waiting — to finish their business they are 
 bumped and pushed and shoved and stepped on 
 with the utmost freedom. Hundreds of people 
 attempt to walk up their backs. It is nerve-racking 
 to a degree. Nay, it is nerve-wrecking to several 
 degrees. In the scale of nerve rack I should say 
 that paying a Parisian department-store cashier was 
 about the tenth degree. Trying to see an important 
 business man or government official is in the neigh- 
 borhood of the twentieth degree, while calling some- 
 body on a Parisian telephone is about the thirty- 
 second degree. The thirty -third, or master's degree, 
 should, I believe, be unqualifiedly bestowed on the 
 task of procuring from the police of Paris a police 
 permit to leave France. This last proceeding can be 
 depended on to rack every nerve to the limit, with 
 enough rack left over to keep the nerves on edge 
 for the next few days. These matters, however, I 
 will touch on at greater length in another place. 
 
 After a Parisian department-store salesman has 
 kept his little flock standing in front of the cashier's 
 desk until almost everyone in the store has had a 
 chance to kick them or push them, he gets back the 
 
 312
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 packages which he had handed over to the cashier 
 to be wrapped up. Though the contents of the 
 packages are naturally concealed by the wrappings, 
 some peculiar gift of second sight, which has evi- 
 dently been abnormally developed by years of prac- 
 tice, enables the salesman to give each purchaser 
 the proper package. This, to me, is one of the 
 darkest mysteries of the French nation. I am 
 thoroughly familiar with that edifying book by the 
 late Eugene Sue entitled The Mysteries of Paris, 
 but I am free to state that Mr. Sue overlooked a 
 highly baffling mystery when he failed to touch on 
 the wonderful success of the French salesman at 
 projecting his mental vision through three thick- 
 nesses of wrapping paper. 
 
 Another thing that the Parisian cannot forget is 
 his aversion to the checking system. He regards a 
 check on the greatest banks in the world with as 
 much loathing and horror as he would display if he 
 were confronted by the deadly cobra. If he has 
 known a man for years and known that he has 
 enough money to buy the Eiffel Tower and a private 
 Alp, he might consent with great reluctance to accept 
 a check, provided it were for less than twenty-seven 
 dollars. But even then he will rush it to the bank 
 and get the money with all possible speed. He 
 cannot regard a check as money. 
 
 An American friend of mine had been trading 
 with a Parisian tailor for years. One morning last 
 winter he dropped into the tailoring establishment 
 to pay his bill. In his pocket he had insufficient 
 funds, so he wrote out a check on a large Paris bank. 
 The head of the firm picked it up gingerly and 
 
 313
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 viewed it with deep disapprobation. Heaven then, 
 what is it that it is, that there? The American was 
 disgusted. 
 
 "Look here, George," said he, "you've been get- 
 ting my money for years. You know that I've got 
 enough to buy your whole shop a dozen times over. 
 You know that I shall be here for months. You 
 know this check is on a good bank. What's wrong 
 with you, anyhow? That's money I've given you. 
 It isn't just a piece of paper — it's money. Can't 
 you get that into the old bean?" 
 
 The head of the firm elevated his eyebrows de- 
 spairingly, shrugged his shoulders, and thanked his 
 American customer, who stalked off down the street 
 in a somewhat fretful state. He walked straight 
 from the tailor's to his bank, stopping only to look 
 in one shop window. He went to the paying teller's 
 window to draw some money. In the line ahead 
 of him was a small boy with a check. The American 
 got a look at it over the boy's shoulder. It was his 
 own check which he had just given to the tailor. 
 The tailor had been filled with so much distrust of it 
 that he couldn't wait a minute before getting his 
 money on it. And though he had an account at a 
 near-by bank, the thought of depositing the check 
 to his own account never occurred to him. The 
 American went right back and read the tailor the 
 riot act, but it's certain that the tailor distrusts a 
 check as much to-day as he ever did. 
 
 There is another unfathomable matter that Mr. 
 Sue failed to include in his Mysteries of Paris, and 
 that is the reason for the manner in which Parisian 
 theaters sell their theater tickets. One doesn't buy 
 
 3H
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 a ticket and walk in. Heaven, but no! In my 
 crude American way I rushed into a theater late 
 one night, slapped down sixteen francs and received 
 a pink slip of tissue paper entitling me to a seat in 
 next to the last row. Holding it prominently in 
 my left hand, I made for the door leading to the 
 orchestra. 
 
 Sacred! Sacred name of a name, in fact! What 
 is it that I go to do, truly! A strong doorkeeper 
 leaped at me with cries and pushed me away. 
 Attendants within cried out in alarm and sprang to 
 face me. There were distant shouts, and one at- 
 tendant ran down from the balcony. The entire 
 lobby was in a turmoil. At length, seeing that I 
 meant no harm, the doorkeeper relaxed and took me 
 by the arm and led me where I should have gone. 
 
 In the center of the lobby was a high, desklike 
 arrangement very similar to a judge's bench. Be- 
 hind the desk sat three grave men in uniform. I 
 stood before the tribunal and was regarded severely. 
 I handed my pink slip to the judge in the center. 
 He scrutinized it closely and went into a private 
 conference over it with the judge at his right. 
 Then the judge at his left was called into the con- 
 ference. They took notes in ledgers and conferred 
 again. There seemed to be some doubts in their 
 minds as to whether I should be acquitted or sen- 
 tenced to thirty days in jail. At length I was 
 acquitted, whereat I presented the pink slip to the 
 doorkeeper and was allowed to enter the theater. 
 
 I sought the reason for this formality. Why did 
 the three judges sit on all tickets? What did they 
 do to them? Nobody knew. The consensus of 
 
 21 315
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 opinion was that they merely looked at the tickets. 
 But why was it necessary? Why employ three 
 judges; why not allow the ticket seller and the door- 
 keeper to do the looking? Why use five men when 
 two would answer the purpose? The answer was 
 not forthcoming. It is one of the mysteries of Paris. 
 
 There are minor mysteries. Why, for example, 
 does the water never boil in Parisian restaurants 
 before half past four in the afternoon? And why 
 does every Parisian always assure you that any part 
 of Paris to which you may wish to go is a ten- 
 minute walk? And what leads so many venerable 
 Parisians to think that they can catch fish from 
 the banks of the Seine? You can, as the saying 
 goes, search me. I have tried in many a Parisian 
 restaurant to get a bit of tea at four or at a quarter 
 of four or at twenty minutes after four. My efforts 
 have been fruitless. One is assured that the water 
 boils at half past four and at no time prior to that. 
 Call the head waiter, call the manager, call the 
 proprietor. They know the habits of that water, 
 and far be it from them to make any alterations in 
 a fixed habit. It boils at half past four. Then one 
 can have tea, but not before then. 
 
 Why should this be? Ask the water. It does no 
 good to ask anyone else. Nor is it of any use to 
 try to discover why all distances in Paris are ten- 
 minute walks in Parisian minds. It is my belief 
 that if one were to stop a Parisian on the street and 
 ask him how long it would take to walk to London 
 he would automatically reply, "Ten minutes." In 
 order to cover in ten minutes most of the footings 
 which Parisians say can be footed in ten minutes 
 
 316
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 one would need legs at least twenty feet long and 
 would have to run more than three quarters of the 
 way. 
 
 Those drab and morose figures that fish eternally 
 up and down the banks of the Seine are the leading 
 exemplars of the facts that hope springs eternal 
 within the human breast and that Paris may smile 
 but that she doesn't forget. Probably all of these 
 fishermen have heard a report that somebody once 
 caught a fish in the Seine. In fact, I myself know a 
 newspaper man who knows a newspaper man who 
 is said to have seen a fisherman walking proudly 
 home along the quays of Paris with a fish seven 
 inches long which he had taken from the Seine after 
 years of patient endeavor. He was followed by a 
 cheering crowd, and ever and anon a brother fisher- 
 man came up from the river bank to kiss the success- 
 ful hero and to fondle his prize. According to the 
 rumor, all the fins and most of the tail of the fish 
 were worn off by the repeated handling. This may 
 or may not be true. The fisherman may have bought 
 the fish, or he may have stolen somebody's pet gold- 
 fish in order to create a sensation. I have watched 
 hundreds of these Seine fishermen and questioned 
 many of them, but I never ran across one who had a 
 fish on his person. 
 
 There is little doubt that one of the reasons why 
 the Emperor Julian was so riotously enthusiastic 
 about Paris back in the fourth century was the tasty 
 manner in which his Parisian cook served up the 
 meals. If Julian should come back to earth to-day 
 I rather fancy he would hunt up the nearest police- 
 man and ask him whether that little restaurant that 
 
 3i7
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 specialized in fillets of sole Marguery was still doing 
 business. And the policeman would curl his mus- 
 tache and flirt his little white baton in the air and 
 reply that it was a ten-minute walk by way of the 
 Pont Neuf. Then Julian, I like to think, would 
 ask about the place that used to specialize in snails 
 with chopped onions; and the one that invented 
 baeuf a la mode; and the one that made the chiffonade 
 dressing that would put your eye out ; and the little 
 place that made pressed duck famous; and the hole 
 in the wall where they used to build a Mocha cake 
 with a frosting two inches thick. When he paused 
 to swallow hard, because of the moisture with which 
 the mere mention of these delicacies filled his mouth, 
 the policeman would also swallow hard and point 
 north, south, east, and west with his little white 
 baton and assure Julian that every one of them was 
 still doing business and that it was only a ten- 
 minute walk to whichever one he cared to visit. 
 
 Whether her cooks try with horse meat, frogs' 
 legs, snails, or the more conventional foods, such 
 as ceujs and bifteck, they perform great feats with the 
 aid of sauces. The cooks of Merrie England are 
 masters of the art of making anything taste like 
 nothing, but the cooks of that dear Paris are adepts 
 at making nothing taste like something. Given a 
 piece of ancient carpet or the remnants of a McClel- 
 lan saddle, they can lard it with fat and soak it in 
 oil and season it and garnish it and explode its 
 tissues and rub it with garlic and cook it with 
 several mysterious matters for hours and then serve 
 it with a dark-brown sauce that makes one burst 
 into low but ecstatic moans, and one will be as 
 
 318
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 contented with it as though he were eating the 
 choicest products of a game preserve. 
 
 And the snails! Ah out! The snails! The Pa- 
 risians have been known to consume as many as 
 seventy tons of snails in one day. There must be 
 at least thirty snails to a pound, and it is a generally 
 accepted fact that there are two thousand pounds 
 to a ton. Yet the simple and tireless Parisians do 
 away with seventy of those tons in one day. My 
 faith! Not to say Mon Dieu! 
 
 I asked French friends about the snail. What 
 does it taste like, then? And is it not a repellent 
 viand — yes, no? Exasperated cries rent the air at 
 these questions. Sacred and a couple of sacred 
 blues! Had I never tasted the snail? Zut, then! 
 It would be necessary that I partake immediately. 
 So we went forth upon the boulevards and strolled 
 past the bead-bag shops, and the near-jewelry shops 
 with the rhinestone buckles, and the almost-tortoise- 
 shell in the windows, and the lingerie shops, and the 
 shops that sell suggestive books. We worked over 
 into the better districts, where the perfumery palaces 
 exude odors which make those of Araby the Blest 
 smell like a bunch of dried grass, and where the 
 jewelry shops blaze with diamonds large enough to 
 place beneath hens for the purpose of stimulating 
 them to produce something similar in size, and 
 where the dressmaking establishments bear names as 
 familiar as those of any of humanity's benefactors, 
 not excluding Madame Curie, John Stuart Mill, or 
 Phillips Brooks. Such, as the more profound 
 thinkers are wont to remark, is life. 
 
 And at length we came to our restaurant, fronting 
 
 319
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 on the stream of traffic which threatened momen- 
 tarily to inundate the careless gendarme with his 
 little imperial who stood waving his little white 
 baton at the retrousse hoods of the Marne taxicabs. 
 Outside the restaurant all Paris was laughing, but 
 inside everyone was giving his undivided attention 
 to the highly important question of ordering his 
 meal and eating it. 
 
 This is a very serious matter with the Parisian. 
 He thinks nothing of devoting half an hour to the 
 mere consideration of what to eat. He goes into 
 repeated conferences with the waiter, and frequently 
 the head waiter and manager are summoned in 
 order to pass on some delicate point, such as whether 
 an omelet with Perigord truffles should be prepared 
 in olive oil, according to the Provence school of 
 cooking, or in goose fat, according to the Bordeaux 
 school. This, it may well be believed, is a situation 
 which calls for the most profound thought and the 
 rarest judgment. Ah out! For if anything happens 
 so that the omelet goes wrong, everyone's entire 
 day will be ruined. 
 
 If a Frenchman is giving a lunch and one of the 
 dishes isn't good the host's first thought is of suicide. 
 Life is no longer worth living. You think I jest? 
 Look you: There was a person named Vatel, who 
 was steward to the Prince of Conde. The king was 
 coming to dinner with the prince and Vatel had 
 ordered the food. Everything came except the 
 fish. Dinner time drew on and still the fish came 
 not. The king arrived. No fish! Mon Dieu! 
 Sacre nam (Tun chien! Name of a name of a name 
 of a name of a name! The dinner started. There 
 
 320
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 was no fish. Vatel, responsible for this awful thing, 
 went out in the garden and fell on his sword. Death 
 before dishonor! Ah oui! 
 
 My French friends had a perfectly terrible time 
 over the wine. The waiter was warned not to bring 
 it too cold. He was told explicitly and about eight 
 different times that it must not be too cold. When 
 it came on, resting on its side in its little basket, 
 my host seized it and felt it all over, Ciel! Name 
 of a name! How about that temperature, Jean? 
 Cold, what? Has that imbecile, that descendant of 
 a race of imbeciles, brought it too cold? But yes! 
 Oh, Dieu! Clouds gathered over the party. The 
 waiter was summoned. The storm burst. What 
 had he done, then? Why must he ruin the lives of 
 persons who had not harmed him ? That wine there ! 
 Oh, oh, oh, oh! Sacred name of a green pig! What 
 horror! Away with it, creature! Repair the dam- 
 age if it is possible! 
 
 Yes, if anything goes wrong at a French repast 
 there's liable to be a scene. 
 
 When the snails were brought on my every move 
 was watched with intense eagerness. If I had 
 found the snails not good, all would have been lost. 
 One of my hosts would have beaten the proprietor to 
 death and set fire to the restaurant, while the other 
 would have gone out and insulted the chef most 
 foully and set him to stew in one of his own stew- 
 pans. But I found them good and all was well. 
 
 The French snail is a trifle larger than an English 
 walnut. There are farms for them in France. About 
 half a million first-quality snails are raised on an 
 acre. They are fed once a day on cabbages and on 
 
 321
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 bran soaked in wine. They are cooked in various 
 ways, but the school which advocates filling the 
 shell with a sauce made of chopped onions, pepper, 
 a very mild vinegar, and olive oil is probably in the 
 lead. One clutches each shell with a pair of small 
 tongs, plunges a long two-tined fork into it, and 
 hauls the snail gently from his lodging. It's a good 
 dish — somewhat leathery, but good. Those who 
 shudder at eating snails, but who devour such foods 
 as raw oysters and ripe Roquefort cheese without a 
 quiver, are beyond the comprehension of the Parisian. 
 
 The restaurants of Paris seem very inexpensive to 
 Americans just now. At Duval's — the cheap chain 
 restaurants — one can have an excellent lunch of, say, 
 a soup, an omelet, two vegetables, bread and butter, 
 a bottle of white wine, a salad, a pat of delicious 
 cream cheese, a large saucer of jam, and coffee for 
 8 or 9 francs, which is between 75 and 90 cents. 
 Or one can roll over to one of the more expensive 
 restaurants and have a dinner for two people with 
 a bottle of fine wine for $5. 
 
 It is an affecting spectacle to see an American 
 fresh from America receive his first bottle of wine 
 in a Parisian cafe. He does everything but kiss the 
 bottle. And by the time he has finished with it he is 
 usually shedding bitter tears over the piteous con- 
 dition of the people in America, where prohibition 
 is in force, so that everyone has to drink very bad 
 liquor, which is more than apt to poison him severely 
 or drive him to some insane excess. These things 
 seem cheap to Americans, I repeat, but they don't 
 seem so cheap to the French, for the 9 francs which 
 look like 90 cents to an American look like $1.80 to 
 
 3 2 ?
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 a Frenchman, for he figures a franc still to be worth 
 20 cents. It is an odd situation. 
 
 Since the Frenchman figures the value of the franc 
 at 20 cents instead of at 10 cents or less, some very 
 choice parcels of real estate may be picked up at 
 half price — from our standpoint. I mention this 
 fact because our Embassy and our Consulate in 
 Paris bear about the same relation to the Embassies 
 and Consulates of other nations that a dog house 
 bears to the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts. 
 That simile may be a trifle stretched, but not much. 
 The United States to-day has the respect and the 
 sometimes unwilling admiration of every nation in 
 the world. It is the world's greatest financial power. 
 Yet our diplomats and our consular agents are 
 wretchedly underpaid and our Embassies and our 
 Consulates are located in rented buildings on frowzy 
 and undesirable streets. We financed the Allies in 
 the war, but our legislators for some dark and ab- 
 struse reason refuse to finance our own representa- 
 tives in the proper manner. 
 
 Paris has never been able to forget her telephone 
 system. I am very fond of Paris and I like the 
 Parisians. I would not for the world hurt their 
 feelings. I hope that they will realize that I am 
 casting no aspersions on the French nation or the 
 French people when I say that the French telephone 
 is a very awful thing. One shouts "alio" into 
 it by the hour without getting any results at all. 
 All Americans in Paris assured me that every for- 
 eigner used the same methods when he was par- 
 ticularly anxious to speak with a man. He first 
 spent half an hour trying to telephone, working him- 
 
 323
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 self into a terrible rage which threw his digestive 
 apparatus into disorder and probably deducted a 
 few years from his life. Then he put on his hat and 
 coat, flung himself downstairs, hunted up a taxicab, 
 went to see the man in person, and found that he had 
 gone out. Some people are urging a law which will 
 make it compulsory to do away with all telephones 
 and rely entirely on messengers and telegrams. As 
 I have remarked elsewhere, however, the French are 
 a simple and a tireless people, and I am sure that 
 they will demonstrate their tirelessness by con- 
 tinuing to telephone. 
 
 The Parisians have one jest, or wheeze, round 
 which all their comic papers, their farces, and their 
 musical comedies live and move and have their 
 being. They never forget it for a moment and 
 they are tireless in their use of it. I don't know 
 whether there were any comic papers in Paris when 
 the Emperor Julian was in control, but if there were 
 they were founded solely on this one jest. Every 
 time it appears in a French farce the audience 
 shrieks with laughter. Men, women, and children 
 of the tenderest years all find it deliciously amusing. 
 Eliminate that one jape and an enormous number of 
 French plays and magazines would be forced out of 
 business. 
 
 And beards ! The Parisians have never forgotten 
 their penchant for raising magnificent beards. 
 Though the Russians have built up a great reputa- 
 tion for beard production, they are the veriest tyros 
 beside the Parisians. The Parisian beard is not 
 just something which is permitted to grow on the 
 chin. It is a work of art; a carefully cultivated, 
 
 324
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 nobly planned, artistically developed, richly nourished 
 thicket. It is pruned, of course, in various shapes, 
 but the favorite shape is the chatelaine-bag, or hay- 
 stack, variety. It spreads out in a gorgeous black 
 mass, concealing the collar, the cravat, and the open- 
 ing at the top of the vest. In many ways it is 
 reminiscent of the Imperial Valley of California, 
 where the farmers are reputed to raise nine crops a 
 year. The amount of care expended on these beards 
 daily is enormous, and as a rule no Parisian permits 
 himself to have one unless he is in a position to 
 spend at least an hour every morning currycombing 
 it, trimming the edges with a pair of pruning shears, 
 and going over and over it with an oily rag to make 
 it shine. 
 
 Readers of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson 
 will recall that in certain of the South Sea Islands 
 one of the most valuable forms of currency was old 
 men's beards. If a few glossy-black Parisian beards 
 could have been exported to the South Seas the bot- 
 tom would have fallen out of the South Sea rate of 
 exchange with a deafening crash, and an old man's 
 beard which would once have purchased an entire 
 farm would have been insufficient to buy a pack of 
 carrots. The Parisian beard makes every other 
 beard look like thirty hellers in Austrian money, 
 which is about the low- water mark of worthlessness, 
 unless one wishes to quibble, in which case it could 
 be said that twenty-five hellers in Austrian money is 
 even lower. 
 
 Paris has always had a reputation for nocturnal 
 gayety. Supposedly she has always been the wildest 
 of the European cities. As a matter of fact, I 
 
 32S
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 think there is scarcely a European city which isn't 
 wilder. This is particularly so at present, for Paris 
 is observing the regulations and closing up like a 
 clam at half past eleven. Berlin, on the contrary, 
 pretends to live up to the regulations which the coal 
 shortage requires, but doesn't do it. Paris behaves 
 herself and Berlin runs wild. 
 
 It is a pleasant thing for the world at large that 
 Paris isn't forgetful. The things which she remem- 
 bers are usually pleasant when the memory lingers 
 on them, but there is one notable exception. If she 
 could forget her system — or at least nine tenths of 
 her system — of making every visitor in Paris appear 
 at the Prefecture of Police in order to get a police 
 permit to leave the country she would make the 
 world a less profane place in which to live. As things 
 were arranged last winter, a person could get a card 
 of identity and a passport vis6 entitling him to leave 
 the country by spending an entire day at the 
 Prefecture of Police in person. One had to have an 
 identity card in order to stay in Paris. And one 
 had to have a vis6 to get out. A brilliant idea oc- 
 curred to me. I would refuse to take out an iden- 
 tity card, and when I was ready to leave the country 
 I would hunt up a policeman and tell him that my 
 identity card was not. Then they would eject me 
 from the country. Fortunately I learned just in 
 time that my failure to have a card would have 
 cost me a little matter of four or five hundred francs 
 and that I would then have to stay in France until 
 I got one. 
 
 The Prefecture of Police is a ten-minute walk, of 
 course. Most of the places in it, moreover, are ten- 
 
 326
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PAIttS 
 
 minute walks from one another. The chief desire 
 of the officials in the Prefecture of Police when issuing 
 a card of identity seems to be to discover where 
 the suspected foreigner was born. They lay great 
 stress on it. The spade-bearded person who cross- 
 examined me was greatly intrigued by learning that 
 I was born in Kennebunk, Maine. He wrote it 
 down Kehnebonque, Mainz. I assume that this in- 
 formation in this particular form will be of extreme 
 value to the French authorities. He put it all down 
 in a large ledger, and he seemed so eager for all 
 possible information that I persuaded him to write 
 down also that I was born in a house whose barn has 
 an elm tree growing out of it. He had to get an 
 interpreter in order to get it all straight and we all 
 got very excited trying to catch one another's drift. 
 I think that the vital information about the tree 
 now appears correctly on the French records. 
 
 The real tribulations, however, arrive when one 
 sets out to get a vis6. Visitors to this particular 
 part of the Prefecture of Police are received from 
 nine until twelve o'clock and from fourteen to six- 
 teen o'clock. If one gets caught in a jam between 
 nine and twelve he has to stick right there until 
 the employees come back at fourteen, or even until 
 quarter past fourteen, unless he wants the job to 
 spoil two days instead of one. All of the passport 
 officials are excitable. One goes to Staircase D, 
 where three underlings smell of one's passport and 
 look at it upside down, and then with wild shouts 
 and hand wavings instruct one to proceed to another 
 underling at the end of the corridor. 
 
 After waiting one hour for this underling one finds 
 
 3?7
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 that his only job is to clutch his head with his hand 
 despairingly and tell one to go over to Porte B. 
 At Porte B one waits patiently and finally gets the 
 ear of an official. Ah out! Le passeport! Well, it 
 is not exactly his job. Rest ici, then, and soon some 
 one will appear. 
 
 So one waits, and at the end of another hour some 
 one with a spreading black beard indeed appears. 
 He enters notes on Kehnebonque, Mainz, in various 
 ledgers, shouting excited orders to a corps of as- 
 sistants while doing so. Then after mislaying a 
 couple of priceless documents and almost going mad 
 with perturbation, he gets out a battery of rubber 
 stamps and begins firing at will, in addition to 
 starting an intelligence section hunting through the 
 files in order to find out whether a person living in a 
 house whose barn has a tree growing out of it is of 
 any immediate menace to the French Republic. 
 And at about five minutes before sixteen, when one 
 is on the verge of assaulting some one with extreme 
 ferocity and violence, one gets his vis$. 
 
 The Parisians moan with horror over the vis6 
 situation. They claim that the recent decrease in 
 the death rate is due entirely to the difficulties of 
 getting passports to the Great Beyond. 
 
 At the Prefecture of Police one encounters all the 
 emigrants from Poland and other Central European 
 countries who are heading for America. Poland is 
 furnishing the bulk of those who pass through Paris, 
 and more than 90 per cent of them are Hebrews. 
 All of them have suffered incredible hardships in 
 coming as far as Paris, due to the frightful travel 
 conditions in Central Europe. I talked with a 
 
 328
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS 
 
 number of them and, though they showed no in- 
 clination to turn back themselves, they were strongly 
 of the opinion that anyone who tried to travel any- 
 where at the present time was in for the most harrow- 
 ing experience of his life. Their appearance tended 
 to bear out their statements, for their clothes were 
 in such shape as to be of slight economic interest 
 except to a rag collector, while the odor which clung 
 to them was of the sort which is usually described as 
 strong enough to knock you over. It really wasn't 
 strong enough to do that, but it was sufficiently 
 powerful to make almost anyone a bit ill. 
 
 The French themselves are not emigrating to 
 America this year, or next year, or in any of the 
 next few years, so far as it is possible to learn. 
 There is plenty of work for them to do in France, 
 and they seem to want to stay there and do it. In 
 every other country in the world, apparently, the 
 rank and file of the people have but one all-powerful 
 desire. They want to emigrate. They want to 
 emigrate to America if they can, but almost any 
 place will do. France is the single exception. 
 People in Paris who have studied the matter deeply 
 declare that if all war-time restrictions were removed 
 to-morrow so that emigrants could enter the United 
 States as freely as in 1 914, France would send us not 
 more than half the small number which she sent us 
 yearly before the war. 
 
 Paris smiles, as I have remarked before, but she 
 doesn't forget. Just at present she seems to be 
 doing her best to forget that she ever loved the 
 American army, but she won't forget it, any more 
 than she has forgotten all the other things. And she 
 
 329
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 won't forget that Germany wanted to take her in a 
 Prussian grip and squeeze her to the point of death, 
 and was on the verge of doing it. She will also bear 
 in mind that Germany will try it again in only a few 
 years, as years go. If she seems a trifle hard on some 
 of her neighbors at this writing it's because she 
 remembers what her neighbors planned to do — and 
 what they will once more attempt to do when the 
 time is ripe. 
 
 Heigh-ho! Those snub-nosed taxicabs, and the 
 Eiffel Tower rising out of the gray mists of early 
 morning! Those bead bags and that glittering imi- 
 tation jewelry! Those boulevards, golden in the 
 afternoon sunlight ! Those exciting odors of strange 
 and wonderful perfumes! Those neat and Gallic 
 maidens with the snapping black eyes which roam 
 and roam! Those beards! Those cooking! Those 
 wine! That dear Paris! Ah out/
 
 VII 
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 THE tall, fair-haired Englishman, who was 
 always the hero of the paper-backed novels 
 which existed in such profusion during the hair- 
 cloth-furniture era, had certain unmistakable sym- 
 bols which stamped him as a representative English- 
 man. Just as Mercury can always be identified by 
 his winged derby and his snake-twined shillalah, 
 and just as the combination of a portly man, side 
 whiskers, a silk hat, a white vest, gray spats, and a 
 cane, represents a banker to people who should 
 know better, even so could the hero of the old novel 
 be unerringly spotted by a half-witted infant because 
 of certain things. Firstly, he was fair-haired, as I 
 remember it, and his hair had an inclination to be 
 curly. When the author of the book wanted to be 
 excessively licentious and daring a passage would be 
 introduced in which the heroine longed to stroke the 
 hero's curly head and even run her fingers through 
 his hair. At one time that was thought to be 
 about as raw as a row of asterisks subsequently 
 came to be considered. Secondly, in addition to 
 being fair-haired he waltzed divinely. I am un- 
 familiar with the sort of dancing which obtains in 
 22 331
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 divine circles, but I have always taken it for granted 
 that when the authors of the paper-backed novels 
 referred to divine waltzing they had private in- 
 formation which made it possible for them to speak 
 with authority as to what did and did not constitute 
 divineness. Thirdly, his name was Charles. Not 
 always, but usually. And fourthly, he took a cold 
 tub in the morning. The last never failed. He 
 may have been named Edward and had fair hair 
 and waltzed divinely ; but he took a cold bath in the 
 morning. His hair may have been dark as a raven's 
 wing, and his name may have been Charles, and his 
 waltzing may have been divine, but he never dodged 
 his cold tub. The author always came up to scratch 
 on that point. As soon as you ran across a man 
 who admitted having taken a cold tub in one of 
 those paper-backed novels you could be sure that 
 he was the hero and an Englishman, and that he 
 would propose to the girl while waltzing divinely to 
 the strains of "The Beautiful Blue Danube." 
 
 No mention was ever made in those books of an 
 Englishman who took a hot tub. That wasn't done. 
 Evidently the taking of a hot tub was such a dis- 
 graceful affair that it couldn't be mentioned in any 
 decent book. No matter how low and vile the vil- 
 lain may have been, he was never accused of taking 
 a hot tub. Nothing whatever was said about the 
 villain's baths, so that the readers were at liberty 
 to think that he didn't wash at all. Evidently no 
 bath was thought to be better than a hot one. 
 
 At any rate, the impression which these books con- 
 veyed concerning desirable Englishmen was that 
 they took cold baths every morning. The books 
 
 332
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 never went into details as to why desirable English- 
 men took cold baths. This, it would seem, was a 
 great mistake if the books really aimed at giving 
 their readers an insight into the English people. A 
 moment's thought will prove to anyone that this is 
 so. One's inclination may be to deny it hotly. 
 One may declare that the people who take cold 
 baths every morning are a tough, hardy race, capable 
 of enduring great punishment without weakening, 
 that this characterizes the English people com- 
 pletely, and that we need not go more deeply into 
 the subject. The matter, however, is more profound 
 than this. 
 
 For example, not all Englishmen ^ake cold baths, 
 any more than all Englishmen wear monocles and 
 spats, and ejaculate, "Haw! Haw!" every three 
 minutes with unfailing regularity. Yet behind all 
 Englishmen there is some force which impels them 
 to take cold baths in the morning. It is not the cold 
 bath which makes the Englishman tough and hardy, 
 but the impelling force which he does not always 
 obey. 
 
 The Englishman, I am sure, will attempt to say 
 me nay in this. He will attempt to pass it off with 
 a light laugh and an embarrassed shrug. He will 
 doubtless declare that I am spoofing. All his nays 
 and all his light laughs, none the less, cannot change 
 me. I am not a spoof er by nature or by adoption. 
 I would not recognize a spoof if it came up to me 
 on the street and looked deep into my eyes. No, 
 I am not spoofing. I have spent many long hours 
 in England, and I have thought over the matter 
 seriously, and I have found out what it is that impels 
 
 333
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER' 
 
 Englishmen to take cold baths, and why it is that 
 they are tough and hardy. It is something that 
 was never mentioned in the old paper-backed novels 
 that spoke so lightly of the fair-haired hero Charles 
 who waltzed so divinely to the strains of "The 
 Beautiful Blue Danube." 
 
 To get down to facts, it was the cold. It was the 
 cold, I repeat, and it is the cold. I have sat and 
 thought about this thing in many a hotel room in 
 Merrie England during the winter season, wearing 
 a thick overcoat and heavy woolen gloves and a 
 hat with flaps that came down over my ears. 
 Thoughts have always flitted rapidly through my 
 head at such times, probably due to the fact that no 
 thought was willing to stay in such a chilly place 
 for any length of time. Chief among them was the 
 thought that one could be far more comfortable in 
 Siberia in the winter than in England. Then there 
 was the thought about where that Merrie-England 
 stuff came from. It certainly never came from 
 anyone who had to spend more than a couple of 
 hours in an English hotel in the winter; for it's 
 about as merry as the average storage warehouse. 
 Pursuing this thought closely was the thought about 
 cold baths. Water can never fall below a certain 
 temperature without freezing; whereas nothing will 
 happen to the air in a room, even though its tem- 
 perature falls too low for words. Too low for 
 words is a description of the air in an English room 
 during the winter months, and especially the months 
 of last winter. Even the coldest water was warmer 
 than a moderately chilly English room. A cold bath 
 felt deliciously warm to an Englishman who had 
 
 334
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 just emerged from his bed into the numbing air of 
 his chamber. There, I think, is the secret of the 
 Englishman's cold tub. He takes it to get warm. It 
 is not the cold tub which makes him tough and 
 hardy and a glutton for endurance, but the bitter, 
 intense cold which surrounds him during the winter. 
 Thousands and thousands of Englishmen have come 
 home from the war with their strength quite sapped 
 by the warm, comfortable life which they led in the 
 cozy dugouts and funk holes of the front-line 
 trenches. In all their lives they had never been so 
 comfortable. They cannot accustom themselves 
 to the rigors of an English winter, and they con- 
 stantly write letters to the newspapers about it. 
 
 English homes and hotels are not built for warmth 
 even under the best winter conditions. A large 
 regal chamber containing vast quantities of marble- 
 topped tables and morose-looking black-walnut 
 furniture will boast a fireplace fourteen inches 
 wide and eighteen inches high. Sometimes coal is 
 burned, and sometimes wood. When coal is used a 
 matter of four pieces are brought out tenderly and 
 regretfully and laid with gentle hands upon the 
 shivering flames. From the manner in which a 
 piece of coal is sacrificed on an English fire an 
 onlooker has the uncomfortable feeling that the 
 person who put it on is going to burst into tears 
 because it is burning. He seems to regard each 
 piece of coal as a near, dear, and innocent friend who 
 is being burned at the stake, though guiltless of all 
 wrongdoing. So, at least, it has always appeared 
 to me. And the same thing applies to firewood. An 
 Englishman has always seemed to me to be as gen- 
 
 335
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 erous with his firewood as though each stick were a 
 valuable heirloom, and as though he had promised 
 his dying father not to part with it unless driven to 
 it by necessity's spur. As a result of all this the 
 average English fire has about the same heating 
 effect on a large room as the luminous dial of a wrist 
 watch would have. 
 
 In several parts of London the streets were being 
 repaired and the old wooden paving blocks were 
 being replaced with new ones. The old blocks were 
 piled up along the curb, and every night during the 
 still small hours shadowy and furtive figures would 
 sneak up to the block piles and gather up a load. I 
 found one American who had sent out his office boy 
 at midnight every night for a couple of weeks to 
 gather up paving blocks. He had venerable paving 
 blocks under his bed, in his bureau drawers, and in 
 his closets. There were also a few in his trunks. 
 He was managing to keep fairly warm. 
 
 The naturally chilly situation was rendered even 
 more acute, and the conventional cheer and merriness 
 of an English winter were greatly enhanced by the 
 coal shortage, which caused only one lump of coal to 
 linger where two might formerly have been observed. 
 When an English fire is cut down by one half it 
 becomes an uproarious burlesque on the accepted 
 idea of a fire. In many cases, however, the English 
 have not been content with cutting their fires in 
 half. They have gone so far as to eliminate them 
 entirely. 
 
 The hotels in order to save coal refused to permit 
 fires or electric heaters in any room unless the guest 
 could produce a doctor's certificate stating that he 
 
 336
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 was ill and must have a fire. The hotel doctors plied 
 a thriving trade in certificates of illness. The price 
 of being ill enough to have a fire was standard at 
 one pound, though a number of overanxious physi- 
 cians cut the price to fifteen shillings, and even to 
 ten shillings. This was not considered just the 
 thing to do in medical circles, however, and the most 
 reliable physicians refused to find traces of illness for 
 less than one pound. In one of the London hotels 
 was a rather venerable American woman with a 
 much younger companion nurse. When the order 
 against having fires in rooms went into effect she 
 summoned the doctor immediately and demanded 
 a certificate of illness in a querulous and indignant 
 voice. The doctor obediently started in on the 
 certificate, but when he came to naming the illness 
 which made a fire necessary he hesitated. 
 
 "What," he asked, "shall I give as your par- 
 ticular form of ill health?" 
 
 The old lady didn't care. 
 
 "Write down anything you want to," she said. 
 "I want that fire and I don't care how I get it. I'm 
 cold, I tell you!" 
 
 So the doctor wrote down old age as the reason. 
 When the old lady saw it she was highly incensed. 
 
 "Old age!" she screamed. "Old age! What's 
 that got to do with it?" She pointed her lean and 
 quivering forefinger at her youthful companion. 
 "Do you see her?" she asked. The doctor ad- 
 mitted that he did. "Well," said the old lady, "she 
 isn't a third as old as I am. She isn't suffering from 
 old age, and she's cold, too. You can put that down 
 on your old prescription!" 
 
 337
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 As a result of the constant chill which permeated 
 every building, life for 90 per cent of the English 
 during the past winter consisted of just one cold 
 after another. One's first impression on entering 
 any public place was a constant fusillade of sneezes, 
 wheezes, and coughs which at times attained the 
 proportion of drum fire. 
 
 There was only one topic of conversation which 
 could compete with the incessant talk about chilli- 
 ness, and that was the subject of housing. England 
 is as full of people as a parlor Bolshevist is full of half- 
 baked theories. She is shy of apartments, hotels, 
 and houses, and this is true of every part of Great 
 Britain, and Ireland as well. A rumor in southern 
 England to the effect that a Red Cross hut was to be 
 sold by the Americans brought half a dozen women 
 pedaling over muddy roads on bicycles on the chance 
 of getting a place to live. There have been no 
 repairs during the years of the war, and no building 
 to speak of. England lacks 500,000 houses, which is 
 a fine, commodious number of houses to lack in these 
 piping times of overwhelming building costs. Dur- 
 ing the next four years she will have to build 154,000 
 houses every year in order to make up the shortage 
 and take care of all the people who need homes. 
 
 The arduous and nerve-racking labor which one 
 must endure in order to get a temporary or a per- 
 manent habitation in England at the present day is 
 worthy to rank with any of the labors of the late 
 John D. Hercules, the original solver of labor 
 troubles. 
 
 I would greatly admire to see Mr. Hercules going 
 from one London hotel to another attempting to 
 
 338
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 find a place to rest his weary head without resorting 
 to the obvious expedient of clubbing some one to 
 death and seizing his room before somebody else had 
 a chance to get it. I rather think that Mr. Hercules 
 would wind up by sleeping on a billiard table or on 
 the floor of a smoking room, as so many others have 
 done. 
 
 Every time a boat train comes up to London a little 
 group of earnest American business men get together 
 and exchange the agonizing tales of their adventures 
 in locating a place to sleep. Not long ago a boat 
 train disgorged its travelers in Euston Station, 
 London, and an optimistic crowd of Americans 
 scattered in every direction in search of rooms, after 
 checking their heavy luggage at a hotel near the 
 station. Later on that night one of them wandered 
 wearily back to the hotel where he had left his lug- 
 gage, told the porter a harrowing story of going into 
 thirty-two hotels and being refused accommodations 
 in each one, and slipped him a one-pound note for 
 a bed on the billiard table. He retired to his couch 
 and was just composing himself for slumber when the 
 billiard-room door opened and the porter ushered 
 in another of the Americans who had started to 
 hunt for rooms at the same time. The two were 
 discussing the situation in venomous tones when the 
 door opened again and a third visiting American was 
 admitted. Before midnight eleven Americans who 
 had failed to obtain accommodations were sitting in 
 the billiard room. The entire night was spent in 
 conversation on English hotels and kindred gloomy 
 subjects. 
 
 The average English hotel room was probably 
 
 339
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 designed primarily as a place in which one or more 
 persons could sleep; but a casual observation might 
 easily lead a person to believe that the hotel archi- 
 tects had been working in collusion with the Busi- 
 ness Men's Association, and that the rooms had con- 
 sequently been designed to be as uncomfortable as 
 possible, so that the occupants would keep out of 
 them and, consequently, spend money. English 
 hotel architects seem to have a positive genius for 
 avoiding things that might tend to make hotel 
 guests comfortable. The electric light, for example, 
 is usually as far as possible from the bed. Conse- 
 quently, one cannot read in bed; and when one has 
 snapped off the light in the evening one has a long 
 walk past the washstand, which is usually made of 
 black walnut and placed in such a position that 
 anybody walking from the electric-light switch to 
 the bed must run foul of one of its corners. Occa- 
 sionally one finds a hotel which boasts of two lights — 
 one over the bed and one over the bureau. In such 
 cases there is usually a masterful and cunning ar- 
 rangement of switches which prevents the one over 
 the bed being lighted unless the one over the bureau 
 is not lighted, and vice versa. None the less, the 
 poorest hotel room looks like the royal suite to a man 
 who has spent the night in an attempt to locate the 
 soft spots in a billiard-table top with an angular and 
 protuberant hip bone. 
 
 So crowded are the London hotels that newly ar- 
 rived foreigners, after completely exhausting them- 
 selves by dashing from hostelry to hostelry, only to 
 be informed superciliously at each caravansary that 
 there will be no vacancies for three months, fre- 
 
 34o
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 quently pile their luggage into a train and go off to 
 some place like Brighton, where there are a number 
 of large summer hotels. There they remain, taking 
 two hours to go up to London each morning and 
 two hours to go back at night, until somebody who 
 knows somebod}^ who has a friend that is vacating a 
 hotel room whispers a hint in their ears and gives 
 them a chance to move up to the big city. 
 
 The reason for all the crowding of hotels and the 
 shortage in houses is due, of course, to the cessation 
 of normal building during the war, to the taking 
 over of many of the largest hotels by various de- 
 partments of the government for war activities, to 
 the large number of people who came into the cities 
 to do war work, to the young people who have 
 grown up and wish to start housekeeping for them- 
 selves, and to the elevated standard of living which 
 has come about in many countries because of the 
 war, and which, among other things, makes people 
 loath to crowd themselves into as small a space as 
 formerly answered their purposes. Many young 
 people, lacking houses, have started their married 
 lives in hotels. Enormous numbers, moreover, 
 seem to be traveling. Late in November every 
 berth on trains running to the winter resorts of 
 southern France was booked through March. As 
 one English business man remarked, "The world's 
 left home." 
 
 At this point I wish to rise for the purpose of 
 remarking in strident tones that the person who 
 leaves home for the purpose of traveling in Europe 
 at this particular period of the world's development 
 or underdevelopment when he doesn't have to is 
 
 34i
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 upward of fifty-seven different varieties of idiot. 
 At a later period I propose to go into this matter at 
 greater length, but I feel that I must mention the 
 horrors of foreign travel in passing, even though I 
 cannot at the moment do more than refer to them 
 in the sketchiest manner. I know that nobody will 
 heed my words, but I have the satisfaction of knowing 
 that in the not distant future there will be many a 
 person who, when sitting up all night in a European 
 train with eight or ten strangers standing heavily 
 on his feet and four or five others waiting for him 
 to go to sleep so that they can steal his baggage, 
 will hark back to these words of mine and realize 
 with a dull throb of despair that the words were 
 sincere and conservative. 
 
 If the hotel situation in England is bad now, what 
 will it be when the gay and care-free American 
 tourists begin to pour in in ever-increasing numbers ? 
 I could tell you what it will be if I wanted to, but I 
 do not care to be accused of contaminating the minds 
 of the younger generation with low language. 
 
 England is making a valiant effort to solve the 
 housing problem. The Ministry of Health has a 
 well-organized Housing Department which is dig- 
 ging into the subject as busily as it can, while the 
 British public stands on the side lines and curses 
 the Housing Department as ferociously as possible. 
 Some of the cursers shriek and tear their hair because 
 they claim that the Housing Department intends 
 to let the newly built houses at less than their so- 
 called economic rent, and that the taxpayer will thus 
 be robbed. Other cursers gnash their teeth because 
 they hold that the Housing Department intends to 
 
 342
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 let the houses at their economic rent, and that by 
 so doing the poor, who cannot afford to pay, will 
 be robbed. Again some howl and roar because they 
 claim that the Housing Department is doing nothing 
 to get bricks and building material; others wail and 
 bellow because they claim that the Housing Depart- 
 ment has cornered bricks and building material 
 and thus sent prices soaring. That is one very sure 
 sign that the English people are not consumed by 
 the post-war lethargy that has laid some nations by 
 the heels. The English people are always kicking. 
 They always have something to beat their breasts 
 about. Nobody can ever put much of anything 
 over on the English people, for, no matter what it is, 
 at least half of the people will be against it on general 
 principles, and they will rave so frantically against 
 it that the rest of the country will take a good look 
 at it to see what it's all about. 
 
 None the less, the Housing Department of the 
 Ministry of Health has worked out some good 
 schemes to protect the people in the house shortage. 
 It has selected sites for the needed half million 
 houses ; it has put a ban on the building of structures 
 that are not essential for the housing needs of the 
 people; it has granted a certain amount of money to 
 each individual who will build a house; it has 
 succeeded in having plans for 6o,ooo houses sub- 
 mitted, and the plans have been approved ; it has 
 all the bricks, slates, drain pipes, doors, windows, 
 sinks, and baths for them. Contractors have made 
 bids on the houses, which range from tiny cottages 
 with a living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom, to 
 comparatively imposing mansions of a parlor, a 
 
 343
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 living room, a kitchen, and four bedrooms, and, 
 though bids have not been made on all of them, the 
 average cost of those on which bids were made was 
 approximately £700, or the equivalent — to an 
 American — of $2,800. 
 
 The question of what a pound is worth in dollars 
 is a rather difficult matter to deal with because of the 
 constant fluctuation in the rate of exchange, and 
 also because it is unfair to translate it into dollars 
 when applying it to transactions made between 
 Englishmen. A pound is always worth a pound to 
 an Englishman. He is paid in pounds, and their 
 value is always the same to him except when he is 
 buying something from an American, in which case 
 they aren't worth so much, or when he is buying 
 something from Germany or France, in which case 
 they are worth more than they ever were. 
 
 When I was in England the pound was worth a 
 trifle under four dollars to an American, instead of 
 being worth almost five dollars as in the old days. 
 To say that the English were fretful over this state 
 of affairs is to be ultraconservative. It would be 
 more accurate to say that the clatter which resulted 
 from their gnashing of teeth could be heard for 
 miles. The subject of exchange is dragged into 
 every conversation and bandied about by all the 
 most energetic bandiers in the vicinity; in fact, I 
 should go so far as to say that, for every cent which 
 each English pound has depreciated in value, there 
 has been at least two and a quarter hours of bandying 
 by the English people. 
 
 I assume that the reasons for the depreciation in 
 the currency of foreign nations is as clear as the 
 
 344
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 finest and most expensive crystal to the average 
 person. Noted financiers have explained it to me 
 in nicely chosen and well-modulated language, and 
 I have written down their remarks in my note- 
 book with considerable enthusiasm, but after I have 
 retired to the privacy of my chamber and studied 
 my notes the explanations seem about as clear as 
 a chocolate-souffle pudding. That is to say, the 
 language in which the explanations are phrased is 
 sufficiently clear, but they do not explain to my 
 travel-muddled brain why the English pound should 
 one day be worth $4.16 and the next day $3.92 and 
 the next day $4.12. 
 
 The Morgan interests and the large banking 
 houses of the world have nothing to fear from me as 
 a financier. I have no intention of competing with 
 them, and I am not trying to make anybody think 
 that I know anything about finance. None the less, 
 after I study the explanations of prominent bankers 
 as to why the rate of exchange is lurching hither 
 and yon like a Swampscott dory in a Pacific typhoon, 
 I have a vague feeling that when the financiers ex- 
 plain they forget to include one of the important 
 reasons for the peculiarly drunken movements of 
 foreign money. I think that they forget to say 
 that the important financial interests in every coun- 
 try in the world are speculating merrily in foreign 
 money, buying it when it's low and selling it to their 
 own people when it's high. I am probably wrong, 
 because when I spoke about the matter to several 
 bankers they merely regarded me pityingly and gave 
 me another ultralucid explanation which explained 
 nothing at all. 
 
 345
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Americans who intend to go abroad should make 
 up their minds, before starting, to watch the rate 
 of exchange with extreme care and to be careful 
 where they have their money changed. There 
 is one tourist agency — not an American agency, 
 I am glad to say — which helps itself to several 
 cents out of every American dollar which it 
 changes. When banks and American agencies are 
 selling an English pound for four dollars flat, for 
 example, this particular agency will frequently 
 charge from twelve to twenty-five cents more 
 for it. 
 
 Every American business man in England had 
 practically the same viewpoint on the depreciation 
 of the English pound, and this is about the way he 
 looked at it: 
 
 America is selling more goods to England than 
 England is selling to America. In one month re- 
 cently the amount of goods which America sold to 
 England was valued at £66,000,000 more than the 
 goods which England sold to us. Therefore England 
 needs to purchase a great deal of American money 
 with which to pay for American goods; whereas 
 America doesn't need to purchase nearly so much 
 English money to pay for the English goods. If 
 America and England both needed an equal amount 
 of each other's money the value of both moneys 
 would be normal. But since there is more demand 
 for one than for the other, the one for which there is 
 more demand immediately goes up in price. It is 
 our venerable friend, the law of supply and demand. 
 If there is a great demand for china pug dogs and 
 there are only seven of them in the world, they are 
 
 346
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 going to be worth about a million dollars apiece. 
 Really, it's too simple! 
 
 Very well, then; as English pounds slide down in 
 value the Englishman has to hand out more and 
 more of them to buy American dollars with which to 
 buy American goods. This gives the Englishman a 
 slow shooting pain; for, like the rest of us, he hates 
 to pay out more than he used to have to pay out 
 in the old days. Eventually he will balk and will 
 emphatically refuse to buy from America anything 
 that he doesn't absolutely have to buy there. 
 Whenever possible he will buy from other countries 
 where the English pound has greater purchasing 
 power, and one can scarcely take him to task for so 
 doing. 
 
 This applies to other countries as well. All of 
 them are sending less goods to us than we are sending 
 to them. Consequently they need American money 
 more than we need their money, and the old reliable 
 law of supply and demand causes the value of their 
 money to remain low. They, too, are refusing to 
 buy more from America than they absolutely need. 
 In time England and the other countries will be 
 dealing with us so little that our business men will 
 have no more European trade to speak of, and no 
 European markets for their goods. 
 
 The answer to all this is for American business 
 men to buy all sorts of foreign goods. Yet when I 
 was in London Americans couldn't buy much of 
 anything from the English, in spite of the extreme 
 cheapness of everything from an American view- 
 point, because English factories weren't turning out 
 so much material as they ought, due to a coal short- 
 
 23 347
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 age, and the output of the factories was bought up 
 for months ahead. 
 
 The general manager of a London firm which 
 employs twenty-one thousand persons spent the 
 better part of an hour emitting heartrending moans 
 to me because of the underproduction of English 
 factories. Skilled labor, he declared, was far lazier 
 than it used to be in the old days. The workers, 
 according to him, were working 30 per cent less hours 
 and producing 20 per cent less goods than in pre- 
 war days. He laid part of the trouble to the coal 
 shortage and the lack of raw material; but he also 
 laid the chief blame with a vicious thump at the door 
 of general restlessness and unwillingness to settle 
 down. 
 
 "Our firm finds it almost impossible," he said, 
 "to get glass, china, furniture, and carpets. We 
 need large quantities of these things; but they 
 can't be had in the needed amounts at any price. 
 When we want china from the people that made our 
 china before the war, we don't dare to tell them the 
 total amount that we need, for they would be 
 frightened off and wouldn't touch any of our order. 
 We disclose only about a quarter of our actual needs ; 
 and we feel highly elated if they consent to supply 
 us with any amount at any price." 
 
 All Americans in England agree that there is only 
 one thing that will bring the value of foreign money 
 back where it belongs and keep it there, and that is 
 a large production of goods in foreign countries, and 
 the purchase of them by America until the values 
 of imports and exports are equal again. The 
 granting of credits is necessary, so that the war- 
 
 348
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 crippled industries of different countries can get 
 back to a normal production; but until the trade 
 balance between countries is restored there can be 
 no permanent relief from the present messiness of 
 the rates of exchange. Everything comes down to 
 the question of production. Unless the manufac- 
 turers and workmen of the different countries produce 
 at top speed, and keep on producing, the world will 
 continue to throw the same fit that it has been 
 throwing for so many months. 
 
 When an American strikes England he is greatly 
 intrigued by the relatively low rates which obtain. 
 The best tailors in the most expensive sections of 
 London are charging £12 for a suit of clothes; and 
 £12 means $48 to an American. The same cloth 
 made into a suit by a good American tailor would 
 have cost $110 to $150. Good suits of excellent 
 materials can be had from less fashionable tailors 
 at £8 and £9. All things are correspondingly low 
 from an American viewpoint. From the English 
 viewpoint, however, most things are as high as 
 things in America seem to Americans, and the same 
 ferocious howls of protest are heard in England that 
 are heard in America. 
 
 Generally speaking, the great mass of people in 
 England are spending their money more freely than 
 the people in America are spending, though there are 
 many Englishmen who deny this indignantly. I 
 went to a number of large employers of labor, and 
 for each one who said that the people were not 
 kicking their money away there were three who 
 said that they were. The poor man to-day is 
 paying for his food and clothes what the wealthy 
 
 349
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 man used to pay before the war. The prices of the 
 things which he buys are double and frequently 
 treble what he used to pay. The prices of the 
 things which the rich man needs, on the other hand, 
 have risen about 80 per cent. Before the war the 
 poor man paid £3 for a suit; now he pays £8. The 
 rich man used to pay £8, and now pays £12. Cheap 
 articles are the ones that have gone up the most 
 in England. Expensive fish, like turbot and salmon, 
 have not quite doubled in price. But cheap fish, 
 like cod, plaice, eels, and whiting, have soared. 
 Plaice used to be 4 shillings for 14 pounds. Last 
 winter it was 14 shillings for 14 pounds. 
 
 The rich are spending money heavily because if 
 they didn't spend it they would have to pay out 
 half of it in excess-orofits taxes, and because they 
 fear a tax on capital. The manager of a feverishly 
 fashionable jewelry establishment on Bond Street 
 told me that the month of November, 1919, was the 
 biggest month for sales that his firm had ever had 
 in its history. The wealthy English people were 
 coming to him and investing their money in diamonds 
 because they figured that their value increased at 
 least 6 per cent a year, and because if the government 
 should happen to attach a large melancholy tax on 
 capital their diamonds would be free of the foul 
 proceeding. 
 
 The people in moderate circumstances are spend- 
 ing their money freely because they have received 
 high wages and saved money during the war, because 
 the war has left them in a state of restlessness and 
 excitement, and because they have become accus- 
 tomed to a better standard of living than they knew 
 
 3So
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 during pre-war days. The mass of people are living 
 in less crowded quarters, eating better food and 
 wearing better clothes than ever before. Since 
 people wisely insist on maintaining a high standard 
 of living, once they have attained it the English 
 people will probably continue to spend more freely 
 than they ever did before. Working girls who never 
 dreamed of wearing anything but cotton stockings 
 in the old days are now wearing silk. The head of 
 a business which employs a large number of living- 
 in people — people who are provided with their food 
 and sleeping quarters — casually mentioned a girl 
 employee who received £3 a week wages in addition 
 to her food and lodging, and who had reported to 
 him the loss of a coat which cost £9. 
 
 The average city wage of a workman is about £5 a 
 week, but in some sections of England the earnings 
 are much larger. In the Welsh coal mines, for exam- 
 ple, there are men who can earn from £1 ,000 to £1 ,200 
 a year if they wish to hustle — which they don't often 
 care to do nowadays. At that rate the miners would 
 earn more money than the officials and managers. 
 The average earnings at one Welsh colliery at a 
 place with a peculiarly Welsh combination of letters 
 in its name — Ebbw Vale — amounts to £800 a year; 
 and £800 a year means nearly $4,000 a year to an 
 Englishman. Singularly enough, that particular 
 colliery turns out the cheapest coal in the district, 
 in spite of the high wages which it pays. 
 
 The reports of large earnings come from all parts 
 of England. One small town in Wales boasts of 
 fifteen millionaires. The city of Northampton puts 
 in a modest scream to the effect that it is the boot 
 
 3Si
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 capital of the world and that its boot manufacturers 
 have rolled up fortunes overnight; in fact, some of 
 them seem to have devoted only a part of the night 
 to rolling up their fortunes. The rest of the night 
 has been devoted to blowing in the roll. The city of 
 Norwich also makes boots, but it hasn't made quite 
 so many as Northampton, so that its manufacturers 
 aren't quite so rich. Therefore they are jealous; 
 and in Norwich they sneer cruelly and remark 
 venomously, "Touch a Northamptonshire boot 
 manufacturer and he will jingle because he has so 
 much money." In Northampton they declare that 
 two thirds of the Allied armies marched in North- 
 amptonshire boots. Without their boots, they say, 
 "America could not have won the war." And with 
 that remark they burst into howls of merriment, 
 significant of their opinion of the amount that 
 America had to do with winning the war. 
 
 Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands — all indus- 
 trial Britain is overlaid with money. Fine cigars 
 and expensive champagnes are being sold with 
 tremendous fluency in those regions. All over 
 England people are playing the stock market to an 
 extent never before known. They aren't investing; 
 they're gambling. Some wealthy manufacturers 
 were telling me about oil stocks which they con- 
 sidered good. I asked them what they were cap- 
 italized at, what their earnings were, how much they 
 yielded on their purchase price. Not one of them 
 knew or cared. They were merely gambling in them. 
 
 No matter how prosperous an English business 
 man may be„ however, he is always able to obtain 
 great mental relief and relaxation from engaging an 
 
 352
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 American in conversation and telling him what he 
 conceives to be a few plain facts. I may say that 
 the most popular indoor sport in England during the 
 winter months is baiting an American. Government 
 officials don't do it, of course, or people of tact. 
 But the average Englishman that an American meets 
 can't be happy until he rids himself of several re- 
 marks about America and Americans, delivered hot 
 off the waffle iron, so to speak. Every American in 
 England gets the same sort of talk wherever he turns. 
 In England they are still dwelling on the fact that 
 America entered the war about two years too late. 
 They love to harp on that. I have a persistent 
 feeling that years and years from now, when the 
 members of that large body which gets under the 
 wire in the so-called younger-generation class goes 
 doddering over to England with long, silky, white 
 beards waving gently in the breeze, the English 
 will still be referring caustically to our slowness in 
 entering the war. 
 
 The English are great people with whom to for- 
 gather. They speak our language and they fight 
 well and cleanly. They are wonderful people to do 
 business with, because their word is as good as their 
 bond and they are steadfast in their associations. 
 But they are given to overmuch harping, I think. 
 They are the world's greatest harpers. It is my 
 belief that if an Englishman and a representative 
 from any other nation entered a harping contest the 
 Englishman would finish at least nine and a half 
 harps ahead of his opponent. In addition to harp- 
 ing on our dilatory entry into the recent conflict, 
 they are greatly given to harping on the large 
 
 353
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 amount of money which America made during the 
 war. The common expression of opinion from an 
 Englishman to an American is that America during 
 the war made all the money in the world. To hear 
 an Englishman talk you might imagine that greedy 
 America had left about eleven cents to be divided 
 among the nations of the world, and that she had 
 appropriated everything else for herself. This mat- 
 ter is never allowed to rest. I would even go so 
 far as to say that it is never allowed to sit down. 
 It has been sentenced to hard labor for life by the 
 English, and whenever an American goes to England 
 it is brought out and made to perform all sorts of 
 arduous stunts. 
 
 Even the people from the Belfast linen factories 
 and the Northamptonshire boot factories and the 
 industrial Midlands, who have emerged from the 
 war with their wallets bursting at every seam — even 
 they contribute to the harpers' chorus. I have seen 
 them stop right in the middle of an abstruse argu- 
 ment with a waiter regarding the respective merits 
 of 1894 and 1907 champagne and plunge headlong 
 into a full-toned harp relative to America's cornering 
 of the world's money. There is nothing violent 
 about their harping, but it is clearly intended to 
 be a rebuke and a marked evidence of disapproval. 
 They seem to regard every American as being per- 
 sonally responsible for these two serious defects in 
 conduct. 
 
 They also appear to labor under the impression 
 that every American wool buyer, newspaper man, 
 machinery salesman, shoe manufacturer, and banker 
 who comes to England was one of President Wilson's 
 
 354
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 personal advisers during the ante-bellum, the bellum, 
 and the post-bellum days. During the past year 
 they have acquired the piquant and novel idea that 
 President Wilson alone was responsible for the 
 cessation of hostilities before the Germans were 
 really whipped, and that if it hadn't been for Presi- 
 dent Wilson the fighting would have continued for 
 some weeks, when the Germans would have been 
 beaten to a light, creamy froth. They are trying 
 this on their harpers, and it seems to sound pretty 
 well to them. They are passing it on to the Ameri- 
 cans with great frequency, and the earnestness with 
 which they advance it implies clearly that every 
 American ought to feel abashed for having advised 
 President Wilson to do such a thing, and that he 
 ought to go right back to America and do something 
 about it. 
 
 And then they harp on the America-won-the-war 
 stuff. They haul it into the conversation and slam 
 it up against the wall and mop up the floor with it. 
 I cannot help thinking that if I lived to be 190 
 years old and went over to England and dropped 
 into a restaurant for a dash of soft fodder for my 
 ancient gums, the man beside me would say some- 
 thing derogatory about the weather and then leer 
 at me and make a sly remark about America winning 
 the war. He would get that off about the time I 
 was struggling with my suet pudding, and by the 
 time I had finished he would have harped on all 
 the other subjects to which I have referred above, 
 and I would be weeping senilely into my dish of 
 Cheddar cheese. Americans usually don't mind 
 such remarks when they are made only eight or ten 
 
 355
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 times, but when they are made with unfailing 
 regularity by every chance acquaintance they begin 
 to affect the nervous system in a most pronounced 
 manner. 
 
 Much of this probably is due to the Englishman's 
 passion for doing things in the ordinary way. Any- 
 thing which isn't done in the ordinary way is no 
 end loathsome to an Englishman, as one might say. 
 For example, the Englishman is greatly given to 
 saying that something is extraordinary when it isn't 
 at all extraordinary. But to say, ' ' Extraordinary ! ' ' 
 as a sign of some surprise is the ordinary way, so the 
 Englishman does it. An American friend of mine 
 in England was addicted to the habit of wearing a 
 collar whose size was the same as the size of his 
 shirt. He had some shirts made by an English 
 shirtmaker, and then tried to persuade him to make 
 some collars whose size would be the same as the 
 size of the shirts' neckbands. But the shirtmaker 
 wouldn't. Collars were always made larger than 
 the shirt. It wasn't the ordinary way to make them 
 both the same size. If made that way the collar 
 would be too tight. Extrawdnry! He'd never 
 heard of such a thing! It simply wasn't done! It 
 wasn't the ordinary way! The American couldn't 
 carry his point. He had to give it up. To speak 
 slightingly to Americans about making all the 
 money in the world and winning the war and such 
 things has come to be the ordinary way to talk to 
 Americans. That, I believe, is the reason for a lot of 
 it. Another reason is the natural annoyance which 
 a staid conservative feels when he looks at a very 
 young, very lusty, very successful young person, 
 
 356
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 These things mean nothing, however. The Eng- 
 lishman is one of the best sportsmen in the world, 
 and he is playing the trying reconstruction game for 
 all he's worth. Some countries are cheating and 
 dodging and lying and evading at every point of 
 the game, but England isn't. When there's a coal 
 shortage everybody in England shivers and cuts 
 down on his lights; when there's a food shortage 
 everybody cuts down on his food; when a man 
 profiteers he is fined with celerity, enthusiasm, and 
 vigor. 
 
 A profiteer doesn't have to be a very extensive 
 profiteer to get it in the neck. At Dudley, in 
 Worcestershire, a liquor dealer overcharged one 
 penny on a glass of rum. The judge promptly 
 soaked him £5. At Willesden a milkman was 
 found watering his milk. It cost him £5 also. 
 A Willesden provision dealer overcharged a customer 
 sixpence for a rabbit, and his adventure in profiteer- 
 ing depleted his savings by the little matter of 
 £10 and costs. One of the large London department 
 stores sold a hook and chain for fastening a fur 
 collar for one shilling elevenpence ha'penny. The 
 customer, on thinking it over, decided that she had 
 been stung, so she went before the Westminster 
 Profiteering Tribunal and made a loud, penetrating 
 roar, declaring that she could have got said hook 
 and chain for one shilling and three quarters of a 
 penny if she had hunted a bit farther. The learned 
 tribunal heard evidence as to the cost of the metals 
 and various other matters, and after due deliberation 
 decided that it sounded suspiciously like a case of 
 profiteering. A prosecution was therefore directed, 
 
 357
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 and the department store appeared to be out of 
 luck. 
 
 Food in England is plentiful and reasonable in 
 price, even for the English, in spite of rumors to the 
 contrary. I was told before arriving in England 
 that I would be unable to get meat without a meat 
 card, but I found as few evidences of meat cards 
 as I did of great auks, which have been extinct for 
 a number of years. Sugar and butter were not to 
 be had except in small, sickly portions, and I doubt 
 whether Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could have 
 located any cream. It all goes for the making of 
 butter. There was milk in limited amounts, but 
 all that I encountered tasted suspiciously as though 
 it had been cleverly manufactured from portions 
 of the Dover chalk cliffs and large quantities of 
 water. 
 
 The butter looked like butter and tasted like but- 
 ter, but usually wasn't butter at all. It was mar- 
 garine. Even margarine was not overplentiful. 
 The English have become skilled in the difficult 
 art of disguising a very small piece of margarine as a 
 fairly large piece of butter. Sometimes they bring 
 it on in a round pat which curves up fatly in the 
 middle. When pressed, however, it collapses and 
 becomes a disk about as thick as a poker chip. If 
 one of these butter pats could be petrified and 
 silvered it would pass almost anywhere as a half 
 dollar. At other times they shave off a piece and 
 curl it up so that it looks like a diminutive yellow 
 football. This also collapses when touched, and 
 makes a poor showing when applied to a slice of 
 bread. I demanded butter in a London restaurant 
 
 358
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 one noon, and was informed by the waitress that 
 there wasn't any, but that the manager sometimes 
 hid away a bit of butter in a drawer for the steady 
 customers. She went away to see whether she 
 could persuade the manager to part with a piece. 
 When she returned she claimed that he had neglected 
 to hide away any on that particular day. The 
 financial director of the American Red Cross in 
 London was trying to show me how to make a small 
 piece of margarine stretch over an entire roll one 
 evening when a head waiter approached and regaled 
 us with a long and thrilling tale of how a friend of his 
 in another hotel had helped a man from Devonshire 
 to get a room in a hotel, and of how grateful the 
 man had been, and of how he had shown his gratitude 
 by going back to Devonshire and sending his bene- 
 factor a whole pound of real butter. Real butter, 
 mind you! And a whole pound of it! Butter, like 
 most things in England, is controlled by the gov- 
 ernment and distributed over the country, so that 
 one rarely gets a good look at a whole pound all 
 together. 
 
 I asked the head waiter how long it had been 
 since he had seen any cream. He hadn't seen any 
 for seven months. Sugar is also scarce. When it 
 appears on the table at all it appears in small, 
 mangy-looking lumps with worn-off corners. The 
 average lump of English sugar presents the appear- 
 ance of having been carried loose in a haversack 
 during the four years of the war. The conventional 
 English porridge, better known to Americans as 
 oatmeal, is no longer sweetened with sugar in 
 England, but with honey. This seems to have no 
 
 359
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 effect on the consumption of this dish, and each 
 Englishman continues to eat his weight in porridge 
 every seventeen days. 
 
 But outside of sugar, butter, and cream there is 
 plenty to eat in England; and if one cares to go 
 over to Ireland, where England doesn't enforce food 
 restrictions, he will find great bowls of sugar and 
 golden slabs of butter on the tables. One of the 
 largest and newest hotels in London serves an 
 excellent dinner for less than a dollar. Little 
 things like eggs and bacon aren't quite up to stand- 
 ard. The English eggs are strangely debilitated and 
 can be cooked for long periods of time without be- 
 ing greatly affected. Some of those English eggs 
 should be tremendously popular in China, where 
 venerable eggs are highly esteemed. Yet there have 
 been times when I suspected strongly that some of 
 the eggs which I got in England had been ejected 
 from China by the Chinese authorities. The bacon 
 also had a singularly tired taste, as if it had struggled 
 for years against its fate and had finally given up 
 the fight and died and been embalmed by a careless 
 embalmer who used bad chemicals. It occurs to me 
 in passing that most of the eggs to be found in 
 England fall under the head of political eggs, or 
 eggs which should be used only for throwing pur- 
 poses. In London they tell a tale of a woman who 
 had purchased a dozen eggs and didn't care much 
 about them when she looked into them in the se- 
 clusion of her home. She picked up one of the most 
 evil specimens, marched back to the shop where 
 she had purchased it, and placed it on the counter 
 with many signs of repugnance. " 'Ave a whiff of 
 
 360
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 'er!" she commanded. "It's a thing as I wouldn't 
 presume to throw at Lloyd George's 'ead!" 
 
 According to prominent English business men, 
 anybody who really wants a job in England can get 
 it. One of them fairly tore his hair out over his 
 inability to get workmen at any price. He said 
 that he found it almost impossible, for example, to 
 get carpenters, electricians, and painters and that 
 when he did succeed in getting them they were so 
 independent that they charged threepence an hour 
 over and above the trades-union rates. 
 
 Most of the large employers of labor with whom 
 I talked agreed that the unrest was subsiding. 
 Employees, they said, were becoming far more 
 amenable to discipline than they were during and 
 immediately after the war. Where it was formerly 
 impossible to rebuke an employee without having 
 him walk off in high dudgeon, employers are now 
 able to protest against errors and slackness without 
 being left flat on their backs by the insulted workers. 
 
 "For the most part," said the head of a large 
 London firm, "employers realize that they must do 
 more for their employees than they have done in 
 the past. That realization is helping the situation 
 immensely. We have got it firmly into our heads 
 at last that we must look after our staffs if we want 
 to avoid trouble and general chaos." 
 
 When the government last winter stopped giving 
 the so-called dole, which was the sum of money 
 granted weekly to all ex-war workers who were out 
 of work, there was an agonized wail from all labor 
 organizations, and the number of people out of work 
 was represented as being very high. The figures, 
 
 361
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 however, tended to show that there was no more 
 unemployment than existed during pre-war days. 
 Many British laborers had an interesting habit of 
 refusing to work while they could collect an out-of- 
 work dole. 
 
 England's fighting men were well looked after. 
 In November, 1919, more than 3,750,000 men had 
 been demobilized, and 90 per cent of that number 
 had been absorbed into industry. 
 
 Many ex-officers had hard times getting positions. 
 There were 12,000 of them without work in London 
 at the beginning of last winter. For the most part 
 they had gone into the army while they were very 
 young and before they had learned anything about 
 business, and had frequently risen to high positions. 
 When they left the army they found it difficult to 
 get anything but clerkships, which paid very small 
 wages. Many Englishmen claimed that the ex- 
 officers couldn't get positions because they were too 
 proud to take anything but the best. But the 
 ex-officers said they couldn't get anything at all. 
 One former lieutenant-colonel started a livery stable 
 and frequently took his seat on the box. Daily a 
 crop of them set forth their pitiable condition through 
 that well-known British institution, the Agony 
 Column of the Times. Do you know the Agony 
 Column? This is how it runs: 
 
 C E is anxiously waiting to hear from you. Broken-hearted. 
 
 — Nick Y. "Pudding." 
 DISCHARGED OFFICER, 22, no money, no prospects. Do 
 
 anything for a living wage. — Box V 65, The Times. 
 RHODA. — Only for you, dear love, do I suffer this ignominy. 
 
 I know you will be true and trust me to the end. — Hal. 
 
 362
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 IN DESPERATION I APPEAL by this advertisement to 
 anyone for a JOB at a living wage; age 35; single; enlisted 
 August, 1914 (Kitchener's First 100,000); commission, 1915; 
 demobilized April, 1919; over four years' active foreign 
 service; speak French, have good commercial knowledge and 
 am very adaptable. Will do anything or go anywhere — 
 in fact the farther away the better from this heartbreaking 
 country. Agencies need not reply, but] I sha'n't be able 
 tp say "Yes" quick enough to the first genuine offer. — S. 0. S., 
 Box V 35, The Times. 
 
 There is a highly efficient and capable American 
 Chamber of Commerce in London which maintains 
 large offices near the heart of the city and is always 
 able to steer an American toward the person who can 
 give him the most help. American business men 
 who had come over to London to buy goods and had 
 been unable to locate any because of the reduced 
 production coupled with the large amount of orders 
 on hand, and who were consequently standing round 
 cold hotel lobbies and making themselves general 
 nuisances by sobbing out their woes to anyone who 
 would drink a whisky-and-soda with them — these 
 depressed individuals, after a single trip to the 
 American Chamber of Commerce, would be in a con- 
 stant state of elation because of being put in touch 
 with some one who could sell them leather egg cups 
 or knitted nose warmers or buffed mouse skins or 
 whatever it was that they wanted to buy. That's 
 the specialty of the American Chamber of Com- 
 merce in London — putting people in touch with 
 somebody. They hold the running-high and the 
 standing-broad putting-in-touch record. They can 
 at a moment's notice write a letter which puts 
 an American in touch with H. G. Wells 01^ the 
 24 363
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 manager of the Ross-on-Wye whiffletree factory or 
 the auctioneer who has charge of the sale of two 
 folding tricycles, fifty spittoons, and ninety-eight 
 Windsor chairs at the Airship Station, Mullion, 
 Cary Cross Lanes, Cornwall. It's a great institu- 
 tion and I'm glad to say a good word for it. 
 
 Among other things they put me in touch with 
 the Ministry of Munitions, which seems to have 
 more things to sell than anyone else in England; 
 in fact, I didn't know that England contained as 
 many things to buy as the Ministry of Munitions 
 has to sell. Some of their parcels are fairly sizable, 
 such as a floating dock which will receive vessels 
 U P to 35° f eet i n length, a cluster of obsolete war- 
 ships, and a neat bunch of steam trawlers, but 
 there are other handier lots, such as half a dozen 
 huckaback towels, 60 hair mattresses, 1,530 coat 
 hangers, a portable section grain-handling plant, 
 2,000 drinking mugs, an 80-ton road bridge, 2 small 
 kitchen tables, and as many other articles as there 
 are marks in Germany's war debt. I think there is 
 nothing in the world that the Ministry of Munitions 
 hasn't for sale. I haven't had the opportunity to 
 read the extremely absorbing book of 176 pages 
 which the Ministry issues every little while. It 
 gives a rather hazy and incomplete idea of what 
 one can purchase from the government. I have 
 peeped into its pages, and it has intrigued me 
 greatly, especially the part which has reference to 
 ammunition boxes. These can be bought very 
 cheaply, and the book tells exactly how to make tool 
 sheds, summerhouses, allotment shelters — though it 
 neglects to state what an allotment shelter is — 
 
 364
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 meat safes, feeding troughs, cycle stands, coops, 
 garden seats, and fencing out of them. As I say, I 
 haven't read the book, but I feel sure that if I wanted 
 to buy enough clothes for an army or a million hop 
 poles or a gross of fountain-pen fillers or a cocktail 
 mixer or a couple of elephants, I could find an address 
 in the book which would tell me just where to get 
 them. 
 
 The Ministry of Munitions reminded me how 
 American business men were frequently going home 
 empty-handed when they had come to England 
 with the intention of buying. The stock of goods 
 which they have for sale, they think, will, if offered 
 to American buyers, help to re-establish the trade 
 balance between the two countries, and will also 
 give American buyers goods on which they can 
 obtain immediate delivery. If I were an American 
 buyer in London I think that I'd make a bee line 
 for the Disposal Board of the Ministry of Munitions 
 at the Hotel Metropole before I went anywhere else. 
 
 Production may have slowed up in England so 
 far as a great many things are concerned, but I 
 can state authoritatively that there is at least one 
 thing which is produced with as much generosity 
 as in the palmiest days. That is suet pudding. 
 Those who have never been in England are probably 
 unfamiliar with suet pudding. It is a dessert, or 
 at least that is what it is called in England. It is 
 gray and soggy and it would take only a very few 
 portions to make a ton. One portion tossed lightly 
 against a wall would stick tenaciously to it, but 
 several portions tossed against the wall would make 
 the wall fall over. The production of suet pudding 
 
 365
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 has not fallen off at all. It is very difficult to get any 
 other sort of dessert in England. Somebody ad- 
 vanced the theory that a great number of munition 
 workers have gone into the manufacture of suet 
 pudding, and that that was the reason why there is 
 so much of it and why it keeps up its high standard 
 of deadliness. The theory seems reasonable. 
 
 The English have always been a very frank 
 people, but four years of war seems to have made 
 them franker than ever. This post-war frankness 
 has cropped out particularly in the divorce cases 
 which are keeping the English courts working over- 
 time. People shake their heads sadly when they 
 think of the enormous amount of work that the 
 stenographers and clerks and judges and bailiffs 
 and lawyers are obliged to perform from the be- 
 ginning to the end of the divorce season. The 
 situation is somewhat similar to a long series of 
 million-share days on the New York Stock Exchange. 
 It's just a case of work, work, work for everyone 
 connected with it. 
 
 The frankness of these divorce cases is astounding. 
 In the old days a lawyer usually had to drag un- 
 pleasant facts out of the principals by main force. 
 Nowadays everybody jumps blithely to the witness 
 stand and takes his inmost soul out of hiding and 
 puts it through its paces for the admiring throng. 
 Nothing is held back. Usually, too, in the old days 
 the principals waited for their sins to find them out. 
 Now they appear to take the greatest delight in 
 frankly confessing their sins in long letters to one 
 another. These letters are produced in court and 
 read loudly to the world. On the following day all 
 
 366
 
 MERRIE ENGLAND 
 
 the newspapers carry long, unexpurgated accounts 
 of the proceedings. The English newspapers have 
 always made a point of objecting to the yellowness 
 of American newspapers, but there are very few 
 American newspapers, I think, which would print 
 such unpleasant divorce cases with the complete 
 attention to detail that the English papers display. 
 England may be spending money, but she is doing 
 it in a very decorous way. The theaters are jammed 
 every night, but the people aren't tossing their 
 money to speculators in order to get the seats. 
 Long lines of people form outside the theaters every 
 night. Sometimes for an eight-o'clock performance 
 the line starts to form as early as half past five 
 o'clock in the afternoon. The restaurants are 
 crowded to the doors every night; but for every 
 person who drinks champagne there are a great 
 many who don't. There is a great deal of en- 
 thusiasm in England over the one-step and the 
 fox-trot, which the American army popularized, 
 and American capital has started several dancing 
 places in London in the past two years. All of them 
 have coined money. The largest of them all was 
 opened during the past few months, and the middle- 
 class English flock to it in droves. But no alcoholic 
 drinks are served in it, and the dancing is the most 
 austere proceeding that can be imagined. The 
 two American managers watch the dancers like a 
 pair of sharp-shinned hawks, and the second a 
 couple shows an inclination to shimmy a bit, or 
 even to semishimmy, one of them dashes out on the 
 floor and breaks the news that it isn't done; it isn't 
 the ordinary way. And austerity reigns once more. 
 
 3 6 7
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 England is spending money, but she's making 
 money as well. No one can accuse her of joy- 
 riding to destruction. 
 
 One of London's biggest business men — an Amer- 
 ican, by the way — was perfectly contented with the 
 outlook. 
 
 "Of course they're spending," he said, "and they'll 
 keep right on. They're saving as well. My pay 
 roll, for example, is twice what it was in nineteen 
 fifteen. We subscribed to seventy-five thousand 
 dollars' worth of war-saving certificates and offered 
 them to our employees, with a small bonus to the 
 lucky number. They were taken in two days. We 
 took another seventy-five thousand dollars' worth, 
 and they were gone in three days. Now we're going 
 to take another seventy -five thousand dollars' worth, 
 and they'll be gone in a few days as well. Some 
 people think that because fifty pianos are sold in 
 a short time the country is going to the devil. It 
 isn't. England is less off an even keel than any 
 country in the world. We have unrest here, but it 
 produces less high waves of discontent than it does 
 anywhere else. The common sense of the British 
 people is emphasizing itself and will continue to em- 
 phasize itself during these difficult after-war days."
 
 VIII 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 CERTAIN conditions are too frequently regarded 
 as being typical of the land which produces 
 them. There are many parts of Europe where 
 country life in America is thought to consist of the 
 pursuit of malevolent red Indians by tough, hardy 
 men in hairy pants and unbuttoned vests. Large 
 numbers of people still think of Brazil as being 
 chiefly made up of a large, tropical river edged with 
 Brazil nut trees from whose branches the amusing 
 monkey swings idly by his tail and throws nuts in a 
 wanton manner at passing voyagers, amid the 
 vociferous applause of vast flocks of parrots and 
 parrakeets. Borneo is supposed by some to be 
 populated entirely by wild men, just like the one 
 that had the cage between the bearded lady and the 
 Circassian beauty. 
 
 Similarly, when a newspaper report from Luska- 
 looloo, Ohio, announces that during a heavy rain- 
 storm the raindrops were mixed up with small 
 turtles, pollywogs, and kippered herring, visitors to 
 Luskalooloo expect to turn their ankles on a few 
 turtles whenever they round a corner. They are 
 usually somewhat surprised when they fail to 
 encounter any. 
 
 369
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Many travelers who entered Germany from 
 Scandinavian countries, from Belgium, and from 
 Holland last winter came in with their arm sockets 
 creaking and their knee joints buckling because of 
 the large amount of food that they carried. They 
 had heard reports that Germany was starving. 
 Food, they had been told, was as rare in Berlin 
 as humming birds at the South Pole, and they were 
 prepared to defend their provisions with their lives 
 and seek nourishment from their boots when they 
 had finished the food. 
 
 Just before Christmas of last winter, while talking 
 with a government official in the Foreign Office on 
 Wilhelmstrasse, a pile of magazines caught my eye. 
 They were printed in English. Being far from home, 
 the English type thrilled me. I picked up one of the 
 magazines and found that it was a very celebrated 
 publication printed in America for German-Amer- 
 icans. It had made fairly good time to Berlin, for it 
 was the November issue. And there were twenty or 
 thirty copies of this same issue in the pile. There is 
 no reason, of course, why copies of any magazine 
 shouldn't be lying around the German Foreign 
 Office in the greatest profusion, now that the war 
 is over and all that sort of thing. This particular 
 magazine makes a good deal of noise about being 
 published for America above all others, and for 
 America alone, and it makes frequent mention of 
 the fact that it is not "playing the game" of any 
 nation other than America. But there it was in 
 Wilhelmstrasse, and in its pages there were fre- 
 quent allusions to starving Germany. There was 
 a harrowing picture of "a little victim of the 
 
 37°
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 hunger blockade," reproduced from an original 
 photograph. 
 
 I might add that tales of starving Germany and 
 little victims of the hunger blockade are dinned 
 into the traveler's ears from all sides while he is in 
 German territory. Traveling Americans seem to 
 hear a trifle more of that sort of talk than any other 
 people. 
 
 The true state of affairs, I believe, is this: in the 
 industrial centers of Germany there are many chil- 
 dren, and grown people as well, who are very badly 
 nourished, indeed. They are in bad physical shape 
 because of a lack of fats and milk over a long period 
 of time. They are not so badly off as they were 
 immediately after the armistice in November, 1918. 
 This state of affairs could be greatly improved if 
 Germany would adapt herself to conditions in the 
 same way that England and France and America 
 do. But she won't. She cheats. And she makes 
 political capital out of her undernourished children. 
 She uses them to gain sympathy and leniency in the 
 outside world. Above all, she cheats. 
 
 The Germans have, since the war, applied a 
 new name to an ancient type of person. Broadly 
 speaking, he is the man who makes money out of 
 the misfortunes of his fellow men. He is called a 
 Schieber. Literally, a Schieber is one who shoves, 
 the idea being that he gets something at a low price 
 and shoves it along to some one else at a high price. 
 Actually, he is a man who cheats by dealing in goods 
 in which he is not legitimately entitled to deal, such 
 as flour and bread and sugar and meat. These goods 
 are supposed to be under government control, so 
 
 37i
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 that everybody can have an equal amount. But the 
 Schieber sells them at a high price to those who are 
 unwilling to subsist on a government ration. The 
 word has come to be applied to anyone who is 
 making large and sudden profits. There is no other 
 word in the German language which is heard quite 
 so frequently nowadays, except "/a," "Nein," and 
 "Bitter "Kultur" is heavily outclassed by "Schie- 
 ber," as is "Kollossal." 
 
 If the Schieber cheats by selling at a profit the 
 foodstuffs which he is not supposed to sell, then 
 there are hundreds of thousands of people in Ger- 
 many cheating by purchasing from the Schieber the 
 food which they are not supposed to eat. If the 
 children of Germany are starving, as the Germans 
 claim so loudly, then the people who buy the food 
 which the children ought to have are as bad as the 
 Schiebers. Therefore I say that Germany is a land 
 of Schiebers, who refuse to live up to the rules. 
 
 In England, when there is a shortage of certain 
 sorts of food, the food is rationed. That is so in 
 France and also in America. 
 
 Everybody suffers during a shortage, unless he 
 happens to have on hand a large stock of the food 
 in which the shortage occurs. 
 
 In Germany there is no shortage so acute that all 
 of the people suffer. The poor suffer, but the rich 
 continue to have everything. And they continue 
 to howl and shriek about the little victims of the 
 hunger blockade. They tell you, over their thick 
 soups and their golden butter and their white bread 
 and their rich wines, how the little ones are starving 
 to death. They get terribly excited over it. "There 
 
 372
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 you sit," cried one Prussian woman to an American 
 diplomat in Berlin — "there you sit with a hundred 
 billion dollars in gold in your pockets and won't 
 buy our babies a can of milk!" 
 
 I do not claim that there is not suffering in Berlin 
 and in all the industrial regions of Germany where 
 large numbers of people are crowded together. 
 There is. Large masses of the city children of 
 Germany are most wretchedly nourished because of 
 the lack of milk and fats. But I repeat, and I insist, 
 that if Germany would live up to the rules there 
 would be far less suffering than there now is. I 
 repeat that Germany is using her poorly nourished 
 children as political propaganda to create sympathy 
 in the outside world. There is no such suffering or 
 hunger or starvation in Germany as there is in Po- 
 land, the world's only barrier against the Bolshevik 
 armies. I have heard Germans moaning about the 
 pitiable conditions in Austria, conditions which are 
 unquestionably true, but I have never heard a 
 single German emitting the slightest semblance of a 
 moan over the ghastly conditions in Poland, devas- 
 tated by the passage of armies and stripped of her 
 cattle and her wealth and her means of industrial 
 livelihood by the Germans themselves. The Ger- 
 mans are making a most heartrending outcry against 
 the peace terms to every American that comes along, 
 but I was unable to detect any signs of sympathy 
 on the part of any German for any suffering which 
 other countries — with the exception of Austria — 
 endured during the war and are now enduring. 
 
 After I had seen the magazine which is supposed 
 to be printed for America above all others and for 
 
 373
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 America alone, but which was of sufficient interest 
 to Germans to be lying around the German Foreign 
 Office, I expressed a desire to see some Berlin children 
 in large numbers. The children that I had seen on 
 the street seemed no different to me, for the most 
 part, than the children that one might see on the 
 streets of Sanford (Maine), Sandusky (Ohio), or 
 San Francisco, except that their clothing was neater 
 and they made less noise. That, of course, was no 
 test. 
 
 So I was taken to a Christmas party given by a 
 Berlin film company for eight hundred school children 
 from one of the poor districts of the city. The 
 amiable American-German woman who received me 
 assured me that the eight hundred children came 
 from eight different schools and that from each 
 school only the poorest children had been selected. 
 
 I looked them over and they didn't look par- 
 ticularly well. They ranged in age from eight to 
 twelve years old, and the boys were so universally 
 sallow and thin and their hair was cropped so short 
 that they looked as though they had all been hacked 
 out of the same piece of wood by the same machine. 
 There were queer yellowish-pinkish circles under 
 their eyes and they seemed to have little or no energy. 
 The girls looked better, but not much better. It was 
 two days before Christmas, mind you, and every one 
 of these eight hundred children was to receive a fat 
 Christmas package and some money with which to 
 buy himself something more. Yet they sat in that 
 hall without a sound except when they started to 
 sing some song like "Tannenbaum" or "Heilige 
 Nacht," and sang it through from beginning to end 
 
 374
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 without missing a word. In America any eight 
 hundred children under similar circumstances would 
 have been making such an uproar that even the 
 loudest and most persistent thinker, such as the 
 late Thomas Carlyle or the even later John L. 
 Epictetus, would have been quite unable to hear 
 himself evolve a thought. 
 
 My guide, however, was not satisfied with the 
 appearance of the eight hundred children. She 
 thought that they looked too healthy, and she was 
 afraid that I would get the idea that the German 
 children were too well off. She felt quite sure that 
 the woman was wrong when she said that the eight 
 hundred were the poorest children from eight schools. 
 In fact, she hinted broadly that they were probably 
 the eight hundred richest children. I pointed out 
 that the woman who was running the show probably 
 knew what she was talking about, but my guide was 
 still skeptical. She would like to show me the 
 children in some hospitals. I assured her that I 
 didn't care to pick my examples from hospitals, 
 any more than I would want to judge the children 
 of Boston from the inmates of the Children's Hospital 
 on Huntington Avenue. So my guide suggested go- 
 ing to a school where she knew that the children 
 were really poor children. 
 
 We went there. A class had been assembled at my 
 guide's request, for the Christmas holidays were in 
 force. We saw a matter of thirty children about 
 seven years of age. They were sallow and they had 
 circles under their eyes and they were thin. They 
 were dressed just about as well as average American 
 school children of the same age. They looked very 
 
 375
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 badly nourished and I was very deeply touched by 
 them. 
 
 Some years ago I worked on a Boston newspaper 
 which annually played Santa Claus to the poor 
 children of the city, collecting money from its 
 readers and distributing gifts to every child who 
 wrote to the paper expressing a wish for one. The 
 paper's reporters worked day and night overseeing 
 the distribution of the gifts. It was soon found that 
 the reporters were so affected by the poverty and 
 suffering which they encountered that they would 
 not only give away all their money to the sufferers, 
 but also obtain advances on their salaries and give 
 much more than they could afford. I speak of this 
 to show that unpleasant conditions exist in every 
 country in the world, even in the land whose people 
 sit with one hundred billion dollars in gold in their 
 pockets and won't buy German babies a can of milk. 
 
 I questioned the children who seemed to be the 
 thinnest and sallowest. One was the child of a 
 railroad engineer; one a policeman's son; one a 
 cab driver's child. For breakfast they had eaten 
 bread and jam. Only five of them had had milk 
 recently, and they had had it because they were ill 
 and the doctor had sold them a prescription for it. 
 Their families lived on the rations which govern- 
 ment bread and meat and potato and cereal cards 
 permitted them to buy at a cheap price. They 
 didn't cheat. Therefore the children were not get- 
 ting enough of the proper sort of food. 
 
 But remember this: the children that I saw were 
 admittedly the poorest children from the poorest 
 sections of Berlin. There are many others not 
 
 376
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 nearly so badly off. And in the country the children 
 have whatever they want to eat. At any rate, all 
 the Germans say that they do and all the Germans 
 agree that conditions during the past winter were 
 far better than they were in the winter following the 
 armistice. 
 
 Now on the same day that I saw the eight hundred 
 poor school children, with their sallow faces and 
 their thin bodies and their hollow eyes, I started 
 out with an American who is in Berlin on official 
 business to see whether all the Berliners are suffering 
 alike. 
 
 I will say at this juncture that they are not all 
 suffering alike. I will furthermore remark that the 
 energy and even violence with which they are not 
 suffering alike is probably unequaled to-day in any 
 part of the world. In Berlin there is more wanton 
 spending and more license and more debauchery and 
 more vice than I have encountered in any of the 
 many cities I have visited since that summer day 
 in 1 9 14 when the German army started the world 
 on its wild career of blood and devastation and 
 misery. 
 
 We started in the largest restaurant in the city. 
 It is an awe-inspiring mass of red plush and gold, 
 and in the exact center there is a large fountain with 
 tiny streams spraying inward from the outer edge, 
 so that it looks like a large needle bath and is very 
 imposing. We got there at eight o'clock, which is a 
 trifle early for dinner in Berlin. The proper hour is 
 half past eight. Anybody who enters a large 
 restaurant before that hour usually has to sit all 
 alone, surrounded by nothing but vast distances and 
 
 377
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 slightly offended German waiters. A German waiter 
 is a very superior person and is easily offended by any 
 infringement on the conventions. When he is of- 
 fended he shows it by not being there when you 
 want him and by always being there when you 
 don't want him. It is no uncommon thing for an 
 offended German waiter to take two hours to serve 
 a frugal repast. Some time ago the German waiters 
 struck to have 10 per cent added to all bills, so that 
 their self-respect would no longer be damaged by 
 taking tips. The extra 10 per cent is divided pro- 
 portionally among the waiters. But in spite of this 
 extra charge the waiters frequently become quite 
 offended if an additional tip is not given. 
 
 We sat alone for a time, offending the waiters by 
 our presence. We ordered a thick soup and goose 
 breast and vegetables and butter and champagne 
 and dessert and coffee and milk. We would have 
 preferred beer rather than champagne, but none of 
 the good Berlin restaurants allow beer to be served. 
 They don't allow it because if they did undesirables 
 would come in and hang around and spend hours 
 sucking up a single glass of beer. We had goose 
 breast because neither of us had at that time learned 
 the proper manner in which to wink at a waiter in 
 order to get a beefsteak instead of a goose breast. 
 The regulation foods in Berlin restaurants are goose 
 breast, goose liver, hare, and venison, all of which 
 food can be had without meat cards. They get 
 very tiresome after a while, and when they become 
 tiresome one learns how to wink at a waiter. After 
 one has learned, one says to a waiter, "Bring some 
 of that goose breast, Gus." Then one winks preg- 
 
 378
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 nantly. The waiter bows and goes away, and in 
 half an hour or so he returns with a tender piece of 
 beefsteak. By half past eight the restaurant was 
 rilled with well-fed-looking individuals and hand- 
 somely gowned women, all of whom knew how to 
 wink at the waiter. We seemed to be the only 
 people who weren't eating meat — meat which the 
 poor can only get on meat cards if they are unable 
 to pay more than the government-regulated price. 
 Everyone in the restaurant was drinking some sort 
 of wine — usually champagne; and there were prob- 
 ably two hundred and fifty people there. I should 
 say that nobody consumed less than one hundred 
 marks' worth of food and drink, especially drink. 
 Champagne cost 60 marks per quart, and though 
 60 marks represented only $1.20 to an American 
 during my visit to Berlin, they represented a con- 
 siderable slice of the week's wages to the average 
 German. Everybody in the restaurant sopped up 
 champagne like a sponge, but nobody got "likkered 
 up," as the saying goes. I don't know whether it 
 was the fault of the champagne or of the depressing 
 Berlin weather or of the German temperament or of 
 the general atmosphere of gloom which pervaded 
 Germany, but the more the Germans drank the more 
 morose they became over their good times. A 
 crowd of Germans having a jolly session in a res- 
 taurant or a cabaret was about as jovial and spon- 
 taneous as a coroner's inquest. 
 
 After dinner we moved over to Berlin's largest 
 
 dance hall, though to call it a dance hall is rather an 
 
 injustice. It is a huge and gorgeous place, with 
 
 enough tables to accommodate upward of six 
 
 25 379
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 hundred people. The dancing floor, which is not 
 overlarge, is circled with tables, and at one end is a 
 large hall, raised a few steps from the dancing floor, 
 in which the bulk of the people sit and thrust their 
 noses into their champagne. Nothing but wine is 
 permitted in this super dance hall. Anybody who 
 insisted on having beer would, I suspect, be severely 
 hated by all the waiters. The place was crammed. 
 Whenever the band struck up the inevitable Amer- 
 ican dance — and the Berlin bands play nothing but 
 American tunes — the dancing floor became a solid 
 mass of people, jamming their elbows into one 
 another, pushing their hands into other people's 
 faces, and treading solidly on one another's feet. 
 It was a gay, abandoned performance, and the 
 Germans went at it very seriously. There was a 
 look of grim determination on the face of every 
 dancer. He was going to have a good time if it 
 killed him. He never applauded a dance, and the 
 band never played an encore. He saw his duty 
 and he did it. Whenever the band played he 
 danced, and when the band stopped playing he went 
 back to his table and took another shot of champagne. 
 Promptly at half past eleven the lights began 
 to go out and the people began to file into the 
 street. The coal shortage, you see, required early 
 closing. And did the people go home ? Not so that 
 it could be noticed by the casual passer-by. They 
 went rolling off down the street to various all-night 
 cafes. All that one needed to do was to follow a 
 crowd. He would come to a dark doorway with a 
 glum-looking bandit in front of it. As he approached, 
 the bandit would open the door with a mysterious 
 
 380
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 air and he would find himself in a regulation restau- 
 rant with all lights blazing, an orchestra going at 
 top speed, and everybody drinking the same old 
 saccharine-sweetened champagne. Here he could 
 sit and eat and dr nk until two or three or four 
 o'clock in the morning if he desired, and watch the 
 Germans devote all their energies to enjoying them- 
 selves. Occasionally, as the night wore on, he 
 would see a pair of them rise and one-step heavily 
 up and down the narrow space between the tables, 
 bumping into several of the revelers, knocking over 
 a chair or two, and upsetting a vase of flowers or a 
 dish of near, or Ersatz, caviare from one of the tables. 
 I don't know where the Germans get their Ersatz 
 caviare, but I suspect that they make it out of sand 
 which has been dipped in fish glue. At any rate, 
 that's how it tastes. 
 
 In Berlin alone there are approximately two 
 hundred of these all-night restaurants, gayly using 
 countless electric lights during coal shortages. 
 Night after night they are filled with revelers 
 reveling in their own stolid fashion and eating vast 
 quantities of forbidden food while the rest of the 
 nation converses glibly of starving children. 
 
 In the cafes of the good Berlin hotels during 
 the winter, candles were brought to every table at 
 half past nine and all the electric lights were switched 
 off because of the coal shortage. The effect was 
 excellent until one went around the corner to the 
 all-night joints and found all the lights burning with 
 unabated brilliancy. 
 
 The Germans themselves protest that it is unfair 
 to make much of the revelry, because the people who 
 
 381
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTEK 
 
 indulge in it are not, as they put it, Germans. They 
 are all foreigners and Schiebers — Swedes and Danes 
 and Dutchmen and Swiss and Americans. No de- 
 cent German woman would defile herself by going 
 to such places, they claim. That is unquestionably 
 true. As for all the reveling being done by for- 
 eigners, that is true to a very small degree. It does 
 not alter the fact that the Germans aren't playing 
 the game. If there is a coal shortage in Germany, 
 it doesn't matter whether a German wastes the coal 
 or a Swede or a Dutchman. It's wasted, and that's 
 all there is to it. If there is a food shortage and 
 children are starving, nobody has the right to eat 
 more than his share. During a shortage in America 
 or England everybody shares alike. They aren't 
 willing to do that in Germany, and the fact remains 
 that throughout last winter Germany had sufficient 
 food to ration everybody alike, and to deliver the 
 ration. In some other countries — Poland, for one — 
 there wasn't enough food to deliver a minimum 
 ration if everybody had been rationed alike. 
 
 On the day I arrived in Berlin, shortly before 
 Christmas, the hotels and restaurants were striking 
 against an honest observance of the food laws. The 
 government had passed a law that people should not 
 buy food except on food cards. It was utterly 
 ignored by everyone who had enough to buy food 
 from the Schiebers; and the government didn't 
 strain itself to enforce the law. None the less, the 
 law existed, and if the government had cared to 
 enforce it almost everybody in Germany could have 
 been incarcerated in the nearest calaboose. The 
 hotels and restaurants always saw to it that their 
 
 382 *
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 guests were plentifully supplied with meat and 
 sugar and eggs and butter and milk, and in order 
 to purchase such things they had to buy illegally. 
 The thought of what might happen to them in case 
 the law were enforced was an extremely poignant 
 one, so they struck to have the law repealed. They 
 claimed that if they lived up to the law they couldn't 
 feed their guests. The strike consisted of closing 
 every restaurant in town for two days. Not a hotel 
 served a particle of food in any dining room or 
 private room during these two days. Not a cafe 
 was open. It was one of the most enthusiastic 
 strikes that I have ever seen. There was no cheat- 
 ing on it. In my innocent childish way I started 
 out to persuade a restaurant to feed me, but after 
 two hours of fruitless hunting I staggered hungrily 
 back to my hotel and hung around the room of the 
 Associated Press representatives until they felt 
 obliged to share their lunch with me. I also per- 
 suaded them to invite me to return for dinner. I 
 could, it is true, have got food in a grocery store, 
 but if I had depended on a hotel or restaurant I 
 wouldn't have eaten. This first strike was only a 
 two-day strike, but the hotels and restaurants 
 planned to follow it with longer and longer strikes 
 until the government finally repealed its law against 
 the illicit buying of food. There were signs, how- 
 ever, that when the next strike took place the 
 striking restaurants would do a little cheating and 
 arrange things so that persons who knew the ropes 
 could get food. This would give rise to the complex 
 situation of people striking for the right to be dis- 
 honest and of not even being able to be honest in 
 
 383
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 their effort to be dishonest, if you know what I 
 mean. 
 
 Not only are the wealthy Berliners spending money 
 on food and champagne while the poor go without, 
 but all the Berliners seem to be getting rid of all 
 the money they can as fast as they can. They are 
 not overparticular how they get rid of it. Almost 
 any way seems to appeal to them. Some of them 
 send it out of the country in large bales. This is 
 known as the Flight of Capital. Others gamble it 
 away. There are lots of gambling houses in Berlin, 
 and it is popularly reported that the croupiers are 
 so busy hauling in money with their little rakes that 
 several of them have developed housemaid's knee in 
 their elbows. This sounds a bit exaggerated, but 
 the information cost me nothing, and I pass it on for 
 what it's worth. There are also three race tracks 
 in Berlin, and the betting that has gone on at these 
 tracks since the war would make the most hardened 
 New Orleans bookmaker cry like a child. The 
 amount of money that changed hands in one day 
 on the three tracks was 4,000,000 marks. Char- 
 women, laborers, Schiebers — people of all sorts — were 
 begging piteously to have their money taken away 
 from them. Great numbers of the betters never 
 saw the races and merely went out to the tracks to 
 get their money up. Charwomen discussed the 
 merits of the different horses as fluently as stable 
 owners. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty thousand people went to 
 the Berlin race tracks in one day. On race days 
 every imaginable conveyance was pressed into 
 service to take the people to the tracks. Fashionable 
 
 384
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 folk were glad of the opportunity to go out in the 
 workmen's carts. A taxicab could make almost as 
 much in two trips as a laborer could earn in a month. 
 At the tracks another severe jolt was administered 
 to the popular belief that Germans drink nothing 
 but beer, for beer was almost an unknown quantity. 
 Everybody drank wine — Moselle or Rhine wine or 
 saccharine-sweetened champagne. 
 
 The German government sits down rather heavily 
 on the betting figures, because it is evidently none 
 too proud of its share in encouraging the money- 
 scattering orgy. There is a law against gambling, 
 so that gambling houses are illegal. Yet the race- 
 track gambling is permitted, and the government 
 shares in the bets, taking a clean 50 per cent. As 
 I say, the government is averse to giving out in- 
 formation on the subject, so that I am unable to 
 quote exact figures. The government also squats 
 cozily on the state lottery figures. The lotteries are 
 extremely popular with the people, and they throw 
 their money into them with the utmost abandon, 
 but the government hates to admit that it is en- 
 couraging gambling to such an extent. The Prus- 
 sian state lotteries take place every month. The 
 capital prize is 500,000 marks, and there are many 
 other prizes, of course. Almost everybody plays 
 the lottery. 
 
 Every cabaret, every dance hall, every theater, 
 and every moving-picture theater in Berlin, as well 
 as all over Germany, is crowded every night. The 
 theaters are presenting plays whose standards of 
 morality are low enough to walk under the door of a 
 safe-deposit vault. In Berlin there are three plays 
 
 385
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 in particular which are so obscene and degenerate 
 that it is difficult to conceive of any government 
 permitting them to run. These plays — "Pandora's 
 Box," "Erdgeist," and "Schloss Wetterstein" — are 
 playing nightly to standing room only. "Erdgeist," 
 which was forbidden under the old regime because 
 of its nastiness, has played for a solid year to packed 
 houses. The French stage some plays which are 
 extremely loose, to put it conservatively, but they 
 seldom go in for straight filth, as do the Germans. 
 The Germans are also working a great deal of 
 obscenity into their films. Some German com- 
 munities, notably Munich, have rebelled against the 
 offensiveness of recent German film productions and 
 installed a censorship. In Berlin there is one 
 moving-picture theater which seats 5,000 people. In 
 nine weeks last winter it made a net profit of 400,000 
 marks. There are 325 moving-picture theaters in 
 Berlin, and the cost of tickets is from a little over 
 2 marks to a little over 8 marks per seat. Yet they 
 are crowded afternoon and evening. There are over 
 fifty regular theaters in Berlin, and they, too, don't 
 know what it is not to be doing a capacity business. 
 The stock market is another place where the 
 Berliners have a delightful time tossing away their 
 money. There is far more stock-market speculation 
 than there was during the war, and it's nothing at 
 all but speculation. That is clearly shown by the 
 prices of American railway shares, in which there is 
 heavy dealing. The day before I left Berlin last 
 winter Baltimore & Ohio shares were quoted at 270 
 marks per share, which at that time was equivalent 
 to about $5.50. Yet B. & O. on the New York 
 
 386
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 Stock Exchange was selling around $68. Canadian 
 Pacific on the same day was quoted at 1,000 marks, 
 an equivalent of $20, but in New York, Canadian 
 Pacific was around $154. The reason for this 
 strange difference in price is that the German-owned 
 shares in these railroads have drawn no dividends 
 and may not draw any. They are sort of outlaw 
 shares which may and may not be of value some day. 
 All dealing in them is pure speculation. The most 
 active stock on the Berlin stock exchange last winter 
 was Shantung Railway Preferred. On December 
 29th it leaped up 300 points to a price of 3,600 
 marks. It slides up and down from 300 to 400 
 marks a day. That also is pure speculation. 
 
 Most of the gay and care-free spending on the 
 part of Germans with money is caused by their 
 disinclination to have the money wrenched from 
 them by the German tax on capital, which is very 
 heavy. A somewhat decayed specimen of German 
 aristocracy, who had made several fruitless attempts 
 to get out of the country with the remains of his 
 fortune, appeared one day in the Adlon Hotel in 
 Berlin dressed up like a Christmas tree. The 
 gorgeousness of his appearance caused some com- 
 ment in the bar. He assured the commentors that 
 the clothes which he was wearing weren't a cir- 
 cumstance to the ones which he had at home. "The 
 government thinks they're going to get my money," 
 said he, "but they aren't. I've bought twelve suits 
 of clothes at two thousand marks a suit, and eight 
 pairs of shoes at one thousand marks a pair, and 
 more neckties and shirts and other wearing apparel 
 than I've ever had before in all my life. I shall buy 
 
 387
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 still more, and I shall buy jewelry and the finest 
 wines and the best food to be obtained, and when 
 the government comes around to collect my money 
 from me I shall show them the receipts for all 
 my purchases and they won't get anything at all." 
 Roaring with laughter over his astuteness, the de- 
 cayed specimen ordered another quart of champagne 
 and proceeded to guzzle it with keen enjoyment. 
 
 When the Germans with money grow weary of 
 spending it for the ordinary run of articles they blow 
 it in on postage stamps, but since there seem to be 
 about as many stamp stores in Berlin as there used 
 to be saloons in Milwaukee, I gather that there are as 
 many German stamp collectors as there were Milwau- 
 kee beer drinkers. On most of the business streets 
 every fifth shop seems to deal exclusively in postage 
 stamps, and in every shop there are usually from 
 two to five people engaged in gratifying their mad 
 craving for stamp collecting. The situation is 
 greatly complicated by the enormous number of war 
 stamps which have been issued during the past five 
 years. Whenever the army of any country occupied 
 a slice of another country it got out a special set of 
 stamps. Whenever any section of a country altered 
 its form of government somebody felt called on to 
 evolve some new stamps for the occasion. Places 
 that never got more than a three-line mention in any 
 American newspaper have broken out with postage 
 stamps that are considered very nifty by the Ger- 
 man stamp hounds. For example, there is Luboml. 
 I am not familiar with Luboml, though it sounds 
 interesting. If anybody threw Luboml into my face 
 at a moment's notice and wanted to know what it 
 
 388
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 was I would make a quick stab and say that it was 
 an Austrian mineral water. Nevertheless, it is a 
 place that has issued postage stamps during the 
 recent unpleasantness, as also are Checiny and Sos- 
 novice and Zarki and Przedborz. Przedborz has 
 some dandy stamps which are keenly gone in for 
 by the Germans. Two very popular Przedborz 
 stamps are the two and four-groszy stamp, which 
 can be had in Berlin for thirty marks. I do not 
 know how much a groszy is, though I suppose that 
 such a lack of knowledge is a very pitiful thing. 
 The Ukraine got out some stamps, as did the West 
 Ukrainian People's Republic, or Volksrepublik. Hun- 
 gary had her troubles with an issue which is known 
 to the German collectors as the Kriegswohltatig- 
 keitsausgabe. Then came the Hungarian Republic, 
 and after that the Hungarian Soviet Republic. 
 Austria adds her bit to the mess by getting out stamps 
 for the Austrian Field-post, the Austrian Field-post 
 in Serbia, the Austrian Field-post in Montenegro, 
 the Austrian Field-post in Rumania, the Austrian 
 Field-post in Italy, and the Republic of German 
 Austria. Then there are the Italian Besetzungs. A 
 Besetzung, as I understand it, is a sitting-down. 
 There were the Italian sittings-down in Austria, 
 Fiume, and Istria, and all of them required stamps. 
 Some day, perchance, Italy will get out some stamps 
 to celebrate her sitting down on D'Annunzio. And 
 then, of course, there were the German sittings-down 
 in Belgium, Lithuania, Dorpat, Russian Poland, 
 Rumania, and various other places. Some of these 
 stamps come high. A set of seventeen of the 
 Italian Besetzung in Austria costs 2,000 marks. 
 
 389
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 Forty-three stamps of the Italian Besetzung in 
 Fiume and Istria bring 1,500 marks. A complete 
 set of Jugoslav stamps costs 450 marks. A set of 
 nineteen Polish Corps stamps costs 5,000 marks. 
 A set issued during the Rumanian Besetzung in 
 Siebenburgen brings 400 marks, while one perfect 
 gem, issued by Turkey and known to German col- 
 lectors by the endearing diminutive Kriegswohl- 
 tatigkeitsausgabe mil kleinem sechszackigem Stern und 
 Halbmond-Aujdruck, sets one back 400 marks for the 
 one stamp. But the Germans pay the prices. If 
 they've got it, they'll spend it for anything. 
 
 There is another side to the picture, however, and 
 a very much larger side. As in most countries, the 
 bulk of the people have no investments, no income 
 from investments, and no savings. They are getting 
 along on salaries or on what they earn from day to 
 day, and they are making very hard going of it, 
 for the prices which they are forced to pay for the 
 necessities of life, when they buy them in the open 
 market, are enormous. Their problem is a bad one, 
 though not as terrible as it is in Poland and in 
 Austria. 
 
 I have heard people — Americans, usually — speak of 
 prices in Germany as being ridiculously low because 
 of the large number of German marks that can be 
 purchased for a dollar. This, of course, is unfair, 
 because the Germans are paid in marks, and the 
 mark, to them, is still equivalent to 24 cents, though 
 it is equivalent only to 2 cents to an American. 
 When I was in Berlin I received 47 German marks 
 for each one of my American dollars. My room in 
 the best hotel in Berlin — one of the best hotels, by 
 
 390
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 the way, in Europe — cost less than a dollar a day. 
 At a little restaurant which is frequented by the 
 American newspaper men I could get a satisfying 
 repast of soup, goose liver, potatoes, beer, bread, 
 butter, coffee, and cheese for about 60 cents. I 
 could buy a suit of clothes for $25 or $30. But all 
 these things were very different propositions for the 
 average German. Ten thousand marks a year is a 
 pretty fair salary in Berlin. A German who earned 
 that salary would have to pay out two months' 
 earnings if he wanted a good suit of clothes. Let's 
 suppose that $3,000 a year is a fair average of 
 earnings in America. If a man earning $3,000 a year 
 in America had to pay $500 for a suit of clothes he'd 
 be in about the same position that the average Ger- 
 man is in to-day. He would also be in a state of 
 turmoil that would make all previous turmoils look 
 like a Dorcas Society meeting. He would be very 
 apt to rush out on the street with ferocious cries, 
 tear up the cobblestones, and throw them through 
 the nearest plate-glass window. Why the Germans 
 don't do it I don't know. Some people say it's 
 because they're a beaten people, and therefore sunk 
 in a sort of despair that numbs them. Others say 
 it's because law and order have been so ingrained in 
 them for such a long time that they are incapable 
 of erupting. Whatever the reason, they show few 
 signs of kicking over the traces. One sees the out- 
 ward manifestations of fear of an outbreak in the 
 barbed-wire entanglements which are placed at the 
 entrances of public buildings, ready to be strung 
 into place by the armed guards at a moment's 
 notice. But outbursts on the part of the people 
 
 39 1
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 are rare. The Germans are not good rioters. They 
 have occasional demonstrations, but they usually 
 do their demonstrating in an orderly manner. If 
 the demonstration shows signs of cutting into their 
 dinner hour, they cut out the demonstration and go 
 home to eat. They also do not care to demonstrate 
 in the rain. It's "home, James" for any German 
 mob if the weather becomes inclement. A large 
 mob of Germans were rioting about something in 
 Berlin early in the winter. The riot consisted of 
 standing on the broad walks of a park and shouting 
 il Hoch! " or "Raus! " or something similar, at regular 
 intervals. But they were very careful to keep off 
 the grass. In the middle of the riot a small boy 
 broke away from the mob and ran across the grass. 
 Every head in the mob turned toward him, and a 
 score of angry voices shouted to him to get back 
 on the walk where he belonged. A few days before 
 I left Berlin thirty thousand workers marched 
 through the streets in protest against the meagerness 
 of their salaries. They marched without a sound, 
 except for the scuffling of their heavy feet on the 
 snowy pavements. Not a word, not a shout, merely 
 a dull and silent protest. The Bolshevik menace, 
 though widely press-agented in the vicinity of Ber- 
 lin, seems to be somewhat exaggerated. 
 
 The great Spartacist uprising of a year ago could 
 have been handily squelched by two hundred New 
 York policemen, and if the bullets could be elimi- 
 nated, a life-size reproduction of the entire uprising 
 could be presented in the Harvard Stadium. There 
 may be and probably will be a few Spartacist or 
 Communist outbreaks during the winter — "Spar- 
 
 392
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 tacism" and "Communism" being another way of 
 saying "Bolshevism" — but if there are any, it is a 
 good bet that they won't grow to such proportions 
 that they couldn't be produced on the stage of the 
 New York Hippodrome. 
 
 As in all countries at the present time, the man 
 who is having the hardest sledding is the clerk and 
 the small government official. His salary hovers 
 between 5,000 and 7,000 marks a year, unless he is 
 an unmarried man from eighteen to twenty-two 
 years of age, in which case he receives from 3,500 
 to 4,200 marks a year. 
 
 Now, I talked with a great many people in Berlin 
 in an effort to find out on how small an amount of 
 money a man could live. Practically everyone 
 whom I asked said that nobody could live with a 
 semblance of decency on less than 8,000 marks a 
 year. A few put 7,000 marks per year as the 
 absolute minimum. All of them agreed that they 
 couldn't see how it was possible to live on 6,000 
 marks a year. Yet there are many people in Berlin 
 and other German cities who are doing so. How 
 they do it nobody knows, least of all the people 
 themselves. They live entirely on their government 
 rations, buy the cheapest sort of clothes, and exist 
 somehow. I was talking one day with the Berlin 
 manager of a big steamship office, which sells noth- 
 ing nowadays except railroad tickets. He began to 
 talk, as everybody in Central Europe always does, 
 of the frightful living costs. "I used to buy my 
 collars for eight marks a dozen," said he, "and now 
 they're ten marks apiece. A pair of shoes used to 
 cost eighteen marks, and now they cost three 
 
 393
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 hundred. An apartment that used to cost eighty 
 marks a month now costs three hundred and fifty." 
 He sighed despondently. "The people are living on 
 what they had before the war," he continued. 
 "Otherwise they couldn't live. After they've used 
 up everything, God knows what will happen to 
 them." 
 
 I spoke with a government official who occupies a 
 responsible position. His family consists of his wife 
 and four children, one of whom is away at school. 
 His salary is 1,000 marks a month. He has given 
 up his home and fives in two rooms in a boarding 
 house. The two rooms and the meals cost no 
 marks a day. Anybody with a comprehensive 
 knowledge of higher mathematics can see from this 
 that his bill for one year at the boarding house would 
 be 40,150 marks, which doesn't leave much out of 
 his 12,000-mark salary to spend on clothes, shoes, 
 street-car fares, amusements, charity, and sundries. 
 He has a private income, however, and so he gets 
 along. 
 
 If a woman wanted a single room and board in a 
 fairly good part of Berlin she would find it very 
 difficult to get it at a smaller rate than 20 marks a 
 day. That figures out to 7,300 marks a year for the 
 room and food alone. That is one of the reasons 
 why the streets of Berlin are full of unfortunate 
 women and why the dance halls and cabarets are 
 crowded with them nightly. Here, for example, is 
 a typical case : a young German woman was married 
 to a lieutenant in the German army. He was killed, 
 leaving her with two small children. She draws a 
 government pension of 150 marks a month. She 
 
 394
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 has a position as typist, which pays her 300 marks 
 a month. She has sent her children to relatives and 
 she is engaged to be married to one of her husband's 
 brother officers. But she must either go on the 
 street or starve. Our government investigators in 
 Berlin state that there are between 20,000 and 
 30,000 war widows in Berlin alone who are in the 
 same position. 
 
 An American in Berlin went out to Pottsdam to 
 take dinner with a retired German officer who had 
 been wealthy before the war. He lived in a beauti- 
 ful home, magnificently furnished. "We don't often 
 ask our friends to dinner," said the old officer, "be- 
 cause we don't like to have people see the extremities 
 to which we have been reduced. We have only 
 asked you because you could give us news of our 
 friends." He made no further apologies. When 
 dinner was served it consisted of a plate of hash 
 and a bottle of rare old wine — nothing more. 
 
 Two days later the same American went to the 
 home of a Schieber for dinner. The Schieber met 
 him at the train with an expensive automobile. 
 His home was full of servants. The table groaned, 
 as the saying goes, beneath meats, asparagus, fruits, 
 rich desserts, and fine wines. The Schieber was 
 proud of his luxurious surroundings. "I want you 
 to smoke a cigar that cost eighty-six marks," said 
 he to his guest. "You must have some more of this 
 Tokayer; it was laid down in eighteen forty-six and 
 it is the best in Berlin." Food troubles don't exist 
 for the Schiebers, and the government is too weak 
 to enforce its own food laws. 
 
 The German laborer is fairly well off. The un- 
 26 395
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 skilled laborer earns from 16 to 40 marks daily. 
 An engine driver receives 180 marks a week, so 
 that his year's work nets him slightly over 9,000 
 marks. Laborers live in the east end of Berlin and 
 are able to get a two or three-room apartment for 
 500 or 600 marks a year. The clerks, who refuse to 
 live in the east end, have to pay double and even 
 triple that amount. 
 
 Everybody in Germany who makes an attempt to 
 live on the government rations guards his food 
 cards as though they were precious jewels. There 
 are cards for meat, cards for potatoes, cards for 
 sugar, cards for coal, cards for butter, and cards for 
 bread. A meat card permits its possessor to buy 
 half a pound of meat a week at the government 
 prices, and half a pound of meat a week is just little 
 more than enough to provide a goldfish with adequate 
 nourishment. The butter which a butter card allows 
 one to buy every week will just about butter one 
 slice of bread. The coal cards and sugar cards are 
 all right in theory, but in practice they frequently 
 fall down with a dull thud because there is no 
 sugar or coal to be had on them. The Schiebers 
 and the war profiteers are getting all of it. With 
 the help of butter cards one can get a pound of 
 butter for 7 marks, but without the cards one must 
 pay 32 marks for the same amount. Theoretically, 
 there is no butter except at the government-regulated 
 price. Actually there is all of it that one wants. 
 On bread cards a person can get a loaf of bread for 
 a trifle over i}4 marks; without cards a loaf of bread 
 costs sH marks. 
 
 There was so much stealing of bread cards and 
 
 396
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 counterfeiting of them that the government issued 
 cards of various colors and placed a password, such 
 as "Steamboat" or "Tomato soup" or "Shake- 
 speare" or "Overcoat," on each one. At the end 
 of each week the government publishes the color 
 and the password of the card for the following week. 
 If any sort of card has been counterfeited or stolen 
 in large numbers, that particular sort can be with- 
 drawn from circulation without difficulty. If a 
 man isn't satisfied with his half pound of meat a 
 week at 2)4. marks, he can easily go out and buy more, 
 but it will cost him 15 marks a pound. He cheats 
 when he buys it, and the man who sells it to him 
 cheats, and the government cheats in permitting 
 it to be done. I never carried a food card of any sort 
 with me during my stay in Berlin, but after I had 
 learned how to wink at the waiter I would get what- 
 ever I wanted. Yet I was supposed to have cards in 
 order to get nearly all the things I ate. 
 
 Food can be distributed to the people in very 
 much larger quantities and at far lower prices than 
 the present unregulated prices, for all the food deal- 
 ers were making money almost as easily as the gov- 
 ernment makes it on its printing presses. For ex- 
 ample, a Berliner borrowed 50,000 marks on which 
 to start a restaurant. Practically all his food was 
 bought illegally — "under the hand," they say in 
 Berlin. In four months he repaid the man who 
 loaned him the money and had enough left to enlarge 
 his restaurant. 
 
 So much money is being printed in Germany that 
 one rarely sees a bill of high denomination that is not 
 brand new. What becomes of all the old money I 
 
 397
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 couldn't find out. It is being shipped out of the 
 country in large quantities so that it won't be taken 
 by the government, but not all of the old money 
 can have participated in this flight of capital. 
 At any rate, one doesn't see it. But the nice new 
 fifty-mark bills are everywhere. They are piled up 
 in the banks like cordwood, fresh every day. There 
 isn't a wrinkle or a smudge on them, and they are 
 as sticky and as odorous of printer's ink as though 
 they were less than half an hour off the presses. 
 
 Every city in Germany took a hand at printing its 
 own money during the war. All of the leading ar- 
 tists assisted in the money-making orgy, so that 
 some very attractive specimens were produced. All 
 of the cities have legends connected with them, such 
 as the legend of Gilda von Googleburg, who haunts 
 Googleburg Castle, or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, 
 or the Terrible Hans von Stein of Steinfels. These 
 legends were frequently depicted on the war money 
 of the different cities, so that, although the money 
 is no good at all as money, it makes nice pictures 
 to paste up in the nursery for the purpose of amusing 
 as well as instructing the little ones. 
 
 One who enters Germany by way of Treves and 
 Coblentz, let us say, gets out at the various stations 
 and buys food or postcards. At Treves the innocent- 
 faced Fraulein behind the counter, observing that he 
 is one of those boobish outlanders, hands him a fistful 
 of money which the helpless outlander tries in vain 
 to count. If he has started with a dollar in American 
 money and has bought enough postcards and stamps 
 to apprise his friends in Philadelphia, Boston, 
 Kennebunkport, Indianapolis, Carmel (California), 
 
 398
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 and Glen Ridge (New Jersey) that he is still stagger- 
 ing weakly on his way, he gets back the equivalent 
 of ninety-two cents in American money, or about 
 forty-two marks. About half of the forty-two marks 
 which the innocent-faced Fraulein hands out will 
 be in regular German money and the other half 
 will be in the phony, or near, money which the city 
 of Treves issued just to show that it could make 
 money as well as anyone else. There will be enough 
 of it to fill two pockets, and it will all look alike to 
 the boobish outlander. When he gets to Coblentz, 
 however, and attempts to give a cab driver some of 
 the money which he accumulated in Treves the cab 
 driver at once throws a harrowing and convulsive 
 fit. The Treves money is worth nothing except in 
 Treves. One must, therefore, pay the cabman in 
 good German money, and after one has done so one 
 receives about two quires of money in exchange. 
 Half of this will be good and the other half will be 
 money issued by the city of Coblentz for reasons 
 best known to itself. When one has passed on 
 from Coblentz to Cologne one unsuspiciously at- 
 tempts to get rid of the Coblentz money, only to find 
 that Coblentz money is about as highly esteemed in 
 Cologne as a nice case of typhus fever would be. 
 As a result of all this the progress of a newcomer in 
 Germany bears a vague resemblance to a hare-and- 
 hound chase, for as he proceeds from city to city 
 he is forced to throw away the phony money 
 which he has unwittingly acquired and which is 
 causing his pockets to bulge like the stuffed owl of 
 song and fable. 
 
 In Germany, as in all other parts of Europe, one 
 
 399
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 has almost as much trouble in locating a place to 
 sleep as he would have in locating a pair of ear muffs 
 in Borneo. There is the shortage of buildings 
 caused by the lack of construction during the years 
 of war. In the good residential section of Berlin, 
 for example, 5,000 buildings were erected every year. 
 Since there has been no building for five years, the 
 west end of Berlin alone lacks 25,000 buildings. In 
 addition to this, refugees from various places have 
 been pouring into Germany since the armistice. 
 The French have chased the Germans out of Alsace, 
 the Poles have run them out of German Poland, and 
 the Ukrainians have ejected them from south 
 Russia. Then there are the Germans who have 
 been sent back by England and the United States, 
 and who have left former German colonies, to say 
 nothing of the Russians who have fled from the 
 Bolsheviks and find that the favorable rate of 
 exchange in Germany makes it possible for them to 
 settle down there and exist on their capital for three 
 or four years before they finally go broke. Owing 
 to the fact that the government has fixed the prices 
 which may be charged for houses and apartments, 
 the cost of them remains fairly reasonable, if they 
 can be found. Usually, however, they can't be found 
 either for love or for money. Foreigners wishing 
 apartments frequently pay a bonus which amounts 
 to an entire year's rent. The landlords have also 
 learned the war-time Washington dodge of insisting 
 that a tenant buy the furniture in order to get the 
 apartment. They charge nominal prices for rentals, 
 but when it comes to selling the furniture they charge 
 a matter of 40,000 marks for articles which couldn't 
 
 400
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 be worth more than 5,000 marks at a liberal estimate. 
 Travelers can usually be squeezed in at a good hotel 
 if they adopt the startlingly original system of allow- 
 ing the room clerk to catch a fleeting glimpse of 
 200 or 300 marks artfully disposed in the palm of the 
 hand in such manner that the figures can be plainly 
 seen. In fact, travelers can get almost anything 
 they want in Germany if they are willing to hand 
 out money. There is always a hand stretched out 
 to take it. 
 
 In most of the German cities one goes around and 
 bribes at will, but in the occupied area along the 
 Rhine one keeps his money and allows the military 
 authorities to work their will on him. The occupied 
 area is known to the Germans as "the Hole in the 
 West." Through the Hole in the West come con- 
 traband goods on which the Germans can collect 
 no duty, and through it go out German money and 
 art treasures and commodities which are needed at 
 home. Consequently, Cologne, for example, which is 
 the vortex of the hole, is crammed with traders 
 of every nationality, as well as with the British 
 army. In order to get sleeping accommodations one 
 must go to the billeting office and take whatever is 
 handed out. I drifted into the billeting office of 
 Cologne around midnight on a cold December 
 evening, and one of the officials took me to his home 
 and soaked me the exorbitant sum of fifteen marks 
 for a night's lodging and breakfast the next morn- 
 ing — fifteen marks representing about thirty cents 
 at the then rate of exchange. Before inserting my- 
 self between the two feather mattresses which rep- 
 resent the German idea of the height of comfort, 
 
 4.01
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 I sat with my host and his wife and daughter for 
 about an hour and received a commodious earful 
 regarding the German plans for the total wrecking 
 of France in the not distant future. This was the 
 first I had heard of it, and it intrigued me greatly. 
 It was not the last I heard of it, however. Wherever 
 I went in Germany the Germans assured me that 
 the day was coming when France would be beaten to 
 a creamy consistency and poured out of the kitchen 
 window. Germany may be whipped, and she may 
 realize it to the full, as some people claim, but, 
 taking the German people by and large, they are 
 quite unaware of being in any position which will 
 make it impossible for them to knock the stuffing 
 out of France with one hand tied behind their 
 backs as soon as they consider that the time is 
 opportune. I asked my host in Cologne — as I 
 asked all the other people with whom I discussed 
 the matter — when he thought France would be ripe 
 to knock off the tree, so to speak. He made the same 
 reply that all the others made. "When England 
 and American stand not by France," said he, "then 
 we will fight again." And then he leered at me and 
 clenched his fist and went through the motions of 
 delivering a corkscrew punch, significant, I assume, 
 of the mulelike wallop which France is to receive. 
 
 I wish that the people who think that the last war 
 has been fought, and who are therefore averse to 
 preparedness and universal military training, could 
 wander through Central Europe for a few weeks. 
 Everybody is spoiling for a fight. Boundaries are 
 vague. All the nations want something that they 
 haven't got. The people are hungry and cold and 
 
 402 

 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 desperate. The situation of constant ferment which 
 formerly existed in the Balkans has, with the creation 
 of new, small states, spread throughout Central 
 Europe. The attitude of each nation seems to be 
 that of a small boy who has been prevented from 
 beating up an enemy by a number of the enemy's 
 friends. "You wait 'til I get you alone," he says. 
 "You just wait 'til I get you alone!" They're wait- 
 ing, in Central Europe, to get each other alone. 
 Each nation fairly burns to entice another nation 
 up an alley and beat it to a pulp. 
 
 France seems to be the only nation against which 
 the Germans bear any ill will. So far as America 
 and England are concerned, she has already forgiven 
 and forgotten practically all things — though both 
 nations, the Germans recall, wronged and harmed her 
 severely. Almost all the German business men and 
 officials with whom I talked found the opportunity 
 to ask me why there still existed in America such a 
 strong dislike for Germans. I told all of them that 
 much of our distrust arose from the discovery on the 
 part of Americans that Germans could neither be 
 trusted nor believed during the war, and that nothing 
 sticks so tenaciously as a reputation for dishonesty. 
 I also made some reference to their methods of 
 making war, as well as to the frequent assurances 
 which came out of Germany from responsible 
 officials that America was to be made to bear the 
 entire cost of the war so far as Germany was con- 
 cerned. In each case I was assured that all of the 
 stories of German atrocities were due to British 
 propaganda, and that the war was started by 
 Russia. When I ventured to give them the dip- 
 
 403
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 lomatic, though unmistakable, raz, I was reminded 
 that the war was over, anyway, and that it was 
 inhuman of America not to let bygones be bygones. 
 My answer to that was that they had asked me why 
 Germany was distrusted in America, that I had 
 answered them as inoffensively as possible, and that 
 any argument concerning the unsoundness of Amer- 
 ican opinion was not passionately craved by any 
 American at the present juncture. 
 
 Once in a while one of the old-line Prussians gets 
 to brooding over the situation and erupts against 
 an American. It happened to a couple of friends of 
 mine while I was in Berlin. One, a former major in 
 the American army, was riding in a street car and 
 conversing with a friend in English, when a Prussian 
 tapped him on the shoulder and growled, "If you 
 have got to talk, talk German." The American 
 was held down by his friend and bloodshed was 
 averted. The other, an American newspaper man, 
 was quietly talking to a friend in the lobby of the 
 Adlon when another Prussian stepped up to him and 
 informed him that he was in Germany and needn't 
 speak English. After the newspaper man had re- 
 covered from the shock, he assured the Prussian in 
 sonorous phrases and well-rounded periods, that if 
 it pleased him to speak in Chinese, Hindu, or Arabic 
 he would so speak, and that any Prussian who sought 
 to make him speak otherwise would wake up out 
 on the sidewalk with his nose pushed around into 
 his right ear or thereabouts. 
 
 These incidents, however, are freaks. Americans 
 in all parts of Germany receive nothing but the most 
 courteous treatment and the kindest consideration. 
 
 404
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 True, the German shopkeepers see them coming 
 miles away and raise all prices for their benefit, 
 but they can scarcely be blamed for so doing, even 
 though a clause in the Peace Treaty stipulates that 
 no nation is to be discriminated against. All shops 
 add 25 per cent to the marked price when selling to 
 foreigners whose currency has not depreciated. 
 Some stores add much more, and do it brazenly. 
 The largest department store in Berlin raises its 
 prices 125 per cent to Americans. The hotels, also, 
 were last winter attempting to agree on a scale of 
 excess charges to be levied on the citizens of the 
 countries which are profiting by the low commercial 
 value of the mark. 
 
 There has been a great deal of wild talk recently 
 about the size of the German army. Such figures 
 as 1,500,000 have been tossed about freely, and the 
 intimation has been that Germany has that number 
 of men ready to spring, fully armed and equipped, at 
 the solar plexus of any enemy. This belongs to that 
 class of conversation loosely designated as hot air 
 or bunk. There is a considerable amount of evi- 
 dence which tends to show that there are organiza- 
 tions of officers in Germany who would act as the 
 nucleus of a very large force of men, but as far as 
 effective fighting forces go, Germany is not, as one 
 might say, there. In fact, she is very far from there. 
 Reliable sources of information indicate that Ger- 
 many could mobilize an army of 400,000 men, with 
 such arms of the service as infantry and artillery 
 in pretty good shape. All auxiliary arms, however, 
 are in poor shape. The air service and the signal 
 service are out of training. Specialists, such as 
 
 40S
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 bombers and mine throwers, have had no instruction. 
 The motor transport service is very bad. These 
 points are very important ones, for if there is a lack 
 of instruction for specialists and if the auxiliary 
 arms are weak, an army may be technically referred 
 to, in military parlance, as on the fritz. In addition 
 to all this, the entire German railroad service is bad. 
 It is not only bad; it is superbad. If I had not seen 
 the railways of Poland I would say that the German 
 railroad service was bad enough to be classed as 
 entirely decayed or rotten. At any rate, it is very, 
 very bad. It is bad as to equipment and bad as to 
 personnel. And if a nation wishes to mobilize its 
 army it won't get very far with that sort of railway 
 service. If the railway succeeded in bearing up 
 under the strain of mobilizing the army — which it 
 wouldn't — it would never have enough punch left 
 to put the army's supplies in place. And Germany 
 hasn't a sufficient amount of supplies to create 
 reserves. If by any chance she did succeed in creat- 
 ing reserves, the population of the nation would go 
 back on the government, for to get the reserves she 
 would have to take the supplies from the people, 
 and if she did that the people would have nothing 
 at all in the line of food. If by hook or crook 
 Germany should succeed in achieving a military 
 victory anywhere at the present time it would be 
 the emptiest thing imaginable, for it would leave 
 her economically helpless. The one thing that 
 Germany wants and must have in order to achieve 
 a victory later on is to get on her feet again. She 
 doesn't intend to do any fighting — unless Poland 
 should collapse — for at least fifteen years; and the 
 
 406
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 people who rave about the German army of 1,500,000 
 men are at liberty to put that in their pipes and 
 apply a match to it. 
 
 Traveling in Germany is anything but pleasant. 
 The British military authorities run a train from 
 Cologne to Berlin, and if one puts on a uniform and 
 goes around to various military missions with docu- 
 ments to prove that the heart of the world will 
 probably be broken unless he is allowed to ride on 
 that train, he has a fair chance of getting a com- 
 fortable berth in a comfortable sleeper. But all 
 other trains are a snare and a delusion. German 
 time-tables during the past winter were based 
 largely on rumors; and trains were due to arrive 
 at their destinations when they got there, and not 
 before. The coaches were not the absolute height 
 of luxury, as many of them lacked windows and a 
 large part of them had leaky roofs, while their heating 
 systems, in frequent instances, seemed to be suffering 
 from an attack of arterio sclerosis and were function- 
 ing in a very evil manner. When I traveled from 
 Berlin to the Polish border I was unable to find any- 
 one in Berlin who could tell me anything at all about 
 my train, except concerning the hour at which it 
 started. They could tell me lots about that, the 
 only trouble being that each person told a different 
 story. I finally took the word of the Polish Con- 
 sulate. In order to be sure of a seat on the train 
 I drove out to Charlottenburg, which is the suburb 
 of Berlin where the train makes up. When the train 
 headed in toward Berlin there was only one other 
 person in the coach with me. He was an Austrian 
 diplomatic courier, and he was carrying four large 
 
 407
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 gunny sacks filled with foodstuffs in addition to his 
 regular luggage. When he had succeeded in stuf- 
 fing the sacks into the luggage racks there was 
 room for no more luggage anywhere except on the 
 floor. At the next station four more people got in 
 with large quantities of luggage and sacks of food. 
 Since there were seven seats in the compartment 
 there was room fcr only one more person, and 
 scarcely that, because of the manner in which every 
 available inch of the compartment was filled with 
 luggage. At the Berlin station the door was torn 
 open by a seething mob and hoarse voices asked 
 how many seats there were. Everybody in the 
 compartment shouted il Ein!" whereat three very 
 large people hurled themselves among us with 
 several traveling bags. The two largest ones stood 
 up or leaned heavily on other people's knees or 
 sprawled on their baggage all the way from Berlin 
 to Bentschen — a journey of seven hours. One of 
 them, I regret to say, was a woman. I felt no 
 particular urge to give her my seat, because she was 
 twice as broad as I am, and if she had tried to 
 squeeze herself into the space I occupied she would 
 have smothered the person beside her. Besides, I 
 was holding two suitcases which didn't belong to me 
 on my lap, and if she had sat in my seat she would 
 have had to hold the suitcases, and since she didn't 
 have any lap to speak of she would have had to 
 hold them on her head, which would have been 
 nothing if not unpleasant. Every little while one 
 of the travelers would get out a bottle of wine and 
 a sandwich and allay his hunger pangs. When time 
 hung heavily on their hands they would take things 
 
 408
 
 SCHIEBER LAND 
 
 out of their pockets and show them to one another. 
 All of the males in the car had postage stamps 
 secreted on their persons. The fattest man in the 
 compartment, who left the train just before we 
 reached the Polish border, with the evident intention 
 of escaping the customs authorities by walking from 
 Germany into Poland, had a set of Russian stamps 
 with a Polish superscription. He had paid 3,000 
 marks for them. When he displayed them to the 
 assemblage of stamp ferrets they were greeted with 
 a volley of "Achs!" that almost blew out the win- 
 dows. Three of the travelers had diplomatic pass- 
 ports about the size of a blanket for a baby's crib, 
 and the examination of them by the other travelers 
 whiled away many a tedious moment. Traveling has 
 its bright spots, even in Germany, after one has been 
 through it and come out safely, but that is also 
 true of an earthquake, a typhoon, or a war. If I 
 had my choice between enduring an earthquake and 
 standing for a day of travel on a German train I'd 
 be inclined to pick the earthquake. 
 
 The preliminaries to travel in Germany, as in all 
 other countries, are as painful as the actual traveling. 
 To go to Poland one must go to the Polish Consulate 
 and spend hours in getting a vise for his passport, 
 after which German police headquarters must be 
 haunted for the best part of a day in order to get 
 the German permission to leave the country. One 
 must fill out a long pedigree which tells everything 
 except the size of his hat and the way he likes his 
 lamb chops cooked. With this he must march up- 
 stairs and downstairs and along interminable cor- 
 ridors, interviewing gruff, pipe-smoking Prussians 
 
 409
 
 EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER 
 
 who spend most of their time hunting for misplaced 
 commas and blurred letters in the passport, so that 
 they can declare the whole business illegal. To go 
 through this ordeal without the aid of an interpreter 
 is one of the most nerve-racking experiences in the 
 world. All of the lineal descendants of Oscar D. 
 Bonehead, founder of the great Bonehead family, 
 appear to have been gathered together in the 
 foreign passport offices, and their family traits crop 
 out so frequently that it is with the utmost difficulty 
 that one restrains himself from permitting his loaded 
 walking stick to drop on their heads with a resonant 
 and hollow plunk. 
 
 The German people are not having a pleasant time 
 of it, but their condition is improving every minute. 
 They are eager to work, and as soon as they can 
 get raw material in sufficient quantity they will be 
 working day and night. And if they can get credits 
 from America the value of the mark will rise, so 
 that food can be bought more cheaply by the 
 government and consequently sold more cheaply 
 to the people. Thus wages would be stabilized and 
 much of the unrest would disappear. 
 
 In the meantime there are a number of things that 
 Germany could do if she cared to. She could stand 
 a few Schiebers up against the wall and shoot them; 
 she could see that waste and cheating are stopped 
 so long as she finds it necessary to talk about starv- 
 ing children; and she could begin to impress on 
 everyone in the nation the mossy, but still valuable, 
 precept that honesty is the best policy. 
 
 THE END
 
 V 
 
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