SAD TRAGEDY OF VIENNA’S MISERY. STARVATION AND RUIN.
From A. Beaumont. Milan, Jan. 19.
Since I last wrote about Vienna, the distress of that unfortunate city has been steadily increasing, and to-day it is a wonder how its 2,000,000 people continue to live. To speak of 2,000,000 people is, perhaps, an exaggeration, as many of them have wandered away haggard and hungry into the woods and country places, if they have not actually gone to a “better life”. A census taken to-day would, perhaps, show a decline of two or three hundred thousand inhabitants in the past six months, and others, by sheer necessity, will have to leave a city doomed to ruin and woe. Not only did the Austrian Chancellor go to Paris last month, and to Prague at the beginning of this year, like an humble mendicant, begging for bread and the bare necessaries of life, and thus attracting the attention of the whole world to the sad state of poverty and destitution into which a once proud metropolis has fallen, but the representatives of every civilised nation still in Vienna have taken a personal interest in relieving its woes, though with only partial success … The Swiss have been the first in the field to invite Viennese children to their hospitable homes; the Dutch followed suit, and sent food by every train; the Italians despatched provisions from Trent and Trieste as fast as they could spare them; and the Mayor of Milan went in person to take away from Vienna as many starving children as he could, and place them with kind Italian families in the sunny villas of the Riviera, where they are sheltered at least from the pinching cold of winter.
POSITION GROWING WORSE.
Seven days ago the Government had to announce that: “In consequence of the miners’ strike in parts of Germany and similar strikes in Ostrau, Bohemia, the consignment of coal from those districts would be completely suspended. Moreover, as Poland has also interrupted her exportation of coal, the city would be supplied only by the small quantities coming from Western Bohemia … Therefore, from Friday, Jan. 16, all tram service in Vienna would cease, all theatres and cinema shows would have to be closed, and other restrictions would follow.” No more trams on the Ringstrasse, no more transport from the distant suburbs, no more, in fact, of that busy life and movement which marks a modern city. Instead, the streets were silent, thousands of pedestrians trudged along to their weary occupations, haggard and emaciated, from months of suffering of every kind and want of food. The only places of relative comfort that had still remained in Vienna were its cafés, where some slight alleviation was found by the regular customers, but even these began to have a woebegone look, and its frequenters look this day more like a gathering of ghosts and spectres than human beings.
A FATAL HURRICANE.
As if to remind them that the very day of doom had come, a fearful hurricane burst over Vienna the day these calamities were announced. It shook the most solid buildings, carried away roofs and chimneys, tore up the trees by their roots in the streets and parks, upset vans and heavy carts, carried away street signs and window shutters, threw down telephone and telegraph posts, leaving the streets encumbered with dangerous electric wires, and killed a number of people who were struck by falling material … At noon people walking in the streets were actually carried hither and thither and lifted off their feet by the force of the wind.
PLIGHT OF THE CHILDREN.
The sight of the little children brought to Italy from the starving families of Vienna excited pity and compassion. They were lean, sickly, and had pinched-looking little faces. A piece of bread excited them like something wonderful, and they snatched at it ravenously. In Switzerland, a little youngster coming away from the train, and led by the hand of a big, prosperous-looking father of a family, beamed with delight and jumped as he went along. Asked why he was so delighted, he said that his new “father was so big and fat he felt sure in his house there was plenty to eat”; It was not so in the house in Vienna; his poor father was so thin, and his mother the same. The moral of the Vienna population is reaching its lowest ebb. Courage is entirely gone from them. The proudest among them accept their fate with resignation. The one thought that haunts every citizen from the moment he wakes up is to start on the hunt for food. Millionaires would be glad to buy an apple for 5 crowns and a potato for 10 crowns. One of these recently realised all his possessions, and, coming to Zurich, meekly accepted 12,000 francs for 1,000,500 crowns. Five years ago he was a very rich man … To-day he and his friends are all beggars and starving, and humbly admit it before the whole world.