April, Vienna, Monday

I am back from a brief dip in the troubled waters of the Balkans, for so many years my familiar swimming hole, where, surprisingly enough, I did not hear a hostile shot. In this respect it was a record-breaking journey. Down there, with stoical determination, all the peoples are digging themselves out of the wreckage that four years of war have wrought, and now back in peace-loving and traditionally frivolous Vienna I find myself involved in riots and in mass killings so surprising that at times I am inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own eyes. I came back on the morning of what they call in Germany, and here, Gründonnerstag, our Maundy Thursday, a day of penitence and sorrow, on which it is traditional throughout Christendom for those who can to share at least a crust with the disinherited and the needy.

Leaving my bags at the hotel and feeling stuffy from the long railway journey, I immediately started out for a walk on the Ringstrasse. I noticed a greater number of police than was usual, and that most of them were mounted. Here and there I also caught sight of small detachments of troops half hidden away in the courtyards of the great apartment houses on the Ring between the Opera and the Parliament building. The fact is, however, that I paid little attention to the actual scene; I was living over again in memory what had happened on Maundy Thursday more than twenty years ago. On that day, through the courtesy of Count Taaffe, the Prime Minister, I had been invited to the Burg and had witnessed the medieval ceremony which then survived in the Holy Roman Empire as perhaps nowhere else. There in the great hall of the Hapsburg Burg, surrounded by the gorgeously attired dignitaries of the realm, the Emperor Francis Joseph, with a silver ewer in his hand, knelt down before a row of some twenty carefully selected beggars, and with perfumed water washed their poor, misshapen feet. Before the curious and the interlopers from distant lands arrived, the great Salle was already crowded with the mighty ones of the earth and the high dignitaries of the realm who had assembled to see the Emperor “with the pride that apes humility” perform this penitential act.

In appearance and garb, at least, the most striking were the Knights of St. John, the traditional defenders of the Holy Sepulcher, at this time, alas! still in the unholy keeping of the Turks. Two of them very graciously led us to a raised gallery from which we could in comfort survey the scene. They were gorgeously appareled in white satin robes with the Maltese cross of the Crusaders embroidered on their breasts and armlets. They had escort and other duties to perform and were constantly hurrying hither and thither, but the great dignitaries stood stock-still, waited and yawned. Among them were the men of the high army and navy command, the members of the General Staff ^ywith their haughty plumed hats, and not a few of the great magnates from Hungary, their tunics encrusted with medals and their shoulders covered with leopard skins. Among them also were the great territorial lords of the Empire, the Schwarzenbergs, the Liechtensteins, the Kinskys, the Trautsmansdorffs and scores more whose possessions are now scattered to the four winds, as are the dust and ashes of those of their caste who perhaps had the good fortune to fall in the battles on the Carpathian Mountains.

Suddenly the beggars, politely called pensioners, appeared— twelve men and twelve women; some were so feeble that they had to be supported by halberdiers and court servants. They were hardly in their places before the Emperor came in, and he was flanked by the cardinal archbishop of the apostolic city and the papal nuncio, the famous Monsignor Galimberti.

From now on the Church was in control of the ceremonial proceedings and it was the cardinal archbishop who gave the Emperor his cue. Reading from the Gospel of St. John, he announced: “Posuit vestimenta sua [He laid aside His garments],” and the Emperor obediently entrusted his sword and his hat to an adjutant. Then the Cardinal read “et coepit lavare pedes Discipulorum [and He began to wash the feet of the Disciples].” A servant now appeared with a silver ewer and preceded by a court chaplain who sprinkled the protruding feet of the pensioners with what was evidently perfumed or aromatic water, the Emperor began his task. Half kneeling before each of his humble guests, the lord of many lands wiped the moisture away from the now obviously shrinking feet. Then he gave them new socks and stout shoes. He led them to a great table, groaning under a weight of meat and drink, and, for the first course of this banquet, the Emperor-King served them with his own hands. The Emperor did not seem to enjoy the unusual experience, but he went through with it doggedly, with the determination with which he complied with all the requirements of his profession. The Emperor even tasted the soup and told one of the lackeys to put in several more pinches of salt, which he did. I do not think the pensioners enjoyed the repast. They ate sparingly and looked about with curious eyes. Then they were told that receptacles would be given them to carry away the rich food to humbler surroundings where they could eat more at their ease—and this pleased them. So their eyes wandered over the scene which was, I have no doubt, as strange to them as it was to me. So, following their roving eyes, I also looked about me.

. . . But evidently I am a poor substitute for Froissart. I cannot recall whether the beautiful Empress was there. Had she been there, the memory of her grace would doubtless have remained with me throughout the drab years that have followed. But I am almost certain she was not present; doubtless she was breaking in the wild horses of the Hungarian Pusztas down at Godolo, and probably the carefully selected old ladies in their prim hats and gray smocks, now brought in, had their feet washed and were otherwise comforted by her ladies in waiting in a side apartment, to which we, the curious spectators, were not admitted. But, certainly, few other members of the Hapsburg family were absent. There was the sturdy Karl Ludwig, fat and rosy, although he is surviving his fourth marriage. By his side stood his eldest son, Francis Ferdinand, whose death at Sarajevo set the world ablaze and started the holocaust of disaster. Also, there were two little boys in sailor suits, the sons of the Archduke Otto, who was not present. He never attended Church festivities if he could help it, and on this day he could not have been present even had he wanted to; it was an open secret that because of a certain indiscretion the handsome Otto was being detained under arrest in a Tyrolean castle—at least for the duration of his uncle’s displeasure.

The elder of the little boys was Karl, who succeeded to his great uncle’s tottering throne in 1916. He could not cope with the difficulties that confronted him, and he is now in Switzerland in none-too-affluent exile. And there was little Elizabeth, a scrawny elf with a wizened but shrewd, uncanny face. She is the only child of the luckless Crown Prince Rudolph, who died so mysteriously at Mayerling, and the Princess Stephanie, who, plump and plain, survives her unhappy marriage, but, no favorite at Court, she is not present today. The Viennese of both high and low degree blame her for not holding her “man,” or if she could not do that, for not having overlooked his gallantries. She is particularly criticized for the gala Court carriage she on a memorable occasion maliciously stationed outside the apartment of the soubrette Rudolph was visiting; that was a thing that had never been done in Court circles before-at least not since the days of Maria Theresa, who, after all, was a warm-blooded woman as well as a fighting empress, and who tried to rule her flighty Franz with an iron hand.

. . . Now came the last of the scriptural scenes. Preceded by a noble boy carrying heavy purses in a great basket, the old Emperor, with somewhat unsteady step, climbed upon the estrade where the Court pensioners sat, exalted. Around the neck of each of them he placed the corded noose of a purse, which doubtless contained the traditional forty pieces of silver. The eyes of the pensioners were wide open now.

Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the pageant came to an end. Preceded by the noble boys, the nuncio and the archbishop, the Emperor vanished behind an arras, “and the assemblage disbanded. We went down the corridor and the gala steps out into the Schweizerhof. It was crowded with Court carriages and lackeys in gorgeous liveries. I recall helping a charming French lady into her carriage and also what she said, with a touch of cynicism, which, had it been overheard, in those days would have been regarded as treason.

“C’est jouer la comédie—mais au moins, la pièce est fort belle.” To me it certainly seemed a strange pageant, a relic from the medieval world, which probably nowhere else survived. . . .

What a contrast is the scene with which I find myself confronted today. There are no gala carriages and no bemedaled courtiers to be seen. The Ring smells of the accumulation of garbage. Here and there a shabby taxi rattles by. Here and there along the broken railings of the Volksgarten there slinks an invalid soldier of the Hoch und

Deutschmeister, once the darling regiment of the Viennese, the pride of the Imperial City. How gaily they sang as I saw them sally out to war in 1915:

“Ach du mein Ostereich!
Du bist ein schones Land.”

Today they sang no more. Many had empty sleeves, all were pale of face, many seemed to be starving; some were asking for alms from those who had nothing to give, or pleading to be taken to the reconstruction hospitals, which were already overcrowded. And yet perhaps these were the lucky ones in contrast to their comrades I had seen in 1916, dying like flies in the prison camp at Khabarovsk on the Amoor in faraway Siberia. Lucky they doubtless were, but certainly they did not seem to know it.

. . . Deep in this reminiscent mood it was natural that my thought should travel back to the last time I saw the mighty ruler of this long-lived, millennial empire, whose ruins lay strewn before me. It was in February 1915, but what I saw then is as plainly etched in my mind s eye as though it had happened but yesterday. Francis Joseph was coming down the Mariahilferstrasse on one of his last visits to his post of duty in the Burg. Perhaps it was his very last as a few months later an attack of gentle pneumonia, that blessing to octogenarians, eased his departure from a world where he certainly could not have had any desire to linger. As I saw him for the last time he did not ride in a gilded Court carriage nor was he surrounded by the pomp and panoply of the Imperial Guard. Indeed he sat in his private zwei-spanner only to be distinguished from the public vehicles of that category by the fire and the beauty of the blooded horses that drew it.

The mighty Emperor whose empire was crashing about him was on his way to the Burg, to hold a war council, to hear the dark news that was coming in from so many fronts. By his side sat Count Paar or General Margutti, which of his personal adjutants it was I could not tell, so swiftly they passed me. On the box sat a Jaeger. The great man was late, and the horses were being pushed. Persuaded, perhaps, that this was an historic moment, I stood still on the curb, almost spellbound, and my coat was flecked with the foam from the snorting onrushing horses. The strange old man was greatly changed. He seemed to me quite ripe for the end that awaits monarch as well as serf. His expressionless eyes were glazed and from one corner of his mouth there hung unlit the inevitable Virginier cigar, a libel on the noble state where really sweet tobacco is grown (only second to our Maryland crop), that the Austrian tobacco monopoly had proclaimed to the world, unashamed, for so many generations. Had the Emperor not said: “It would seem no misfortune is spared me”? But he was wrong. He, at least, was to die in his bed and still an emperor, while Kaiser Bill skulks, a refugee in Holland, and little Nicholas, but yesterday the autocrat of all the Russias, trapped in an Ekaterinburg cellar with all his nearest and dearest, has been butchered to make a Communist holiday.

Perhaps beyond the Styx, but never again in this world—this vale of tears, at least in part of their making—will the mighty men meet to reshape their dominions. Never again will the cloth of gold be spread for their Imperial Majesties on the dreary Polish plain of Skerniwicze. Never again in “shining armor” will they strut about on that lonely island in the fogbound Baltic, remaking maps of their world and redressing balances of powers. Indeed they will not ever again hobnob, and drink the waters at Tyrolean Ischl, which they were told, at least by the Court physicians, could not fail to have a rejuvenating effect on their senile bodies.

Now the old empires are being partitioned, and the new boundaries are about to be drawn by those who were for so long the underdogs. A herculean task it will prove to be, but one consoling thought suggests itself—they cannot possibly make a worse mess of it than did those who claimed to rule by Divine right. And at least Crown Prince Rudolph presents no problem except to the writers of mystery stories who have such unrestrained license in dealing with historic facts. About the mystery of Mayerling, as it is called, best sellers have been written in many tongues, but little light emerges’. Unlike most of these brilliant fictionists, I did investigate the mystery. I did bring to light at least two long-veiled facts, but unfortunately they proved contradictory, and so while the unfortunate young man who was the heir to the apostolic throne has long crumbled into dust, the mystery, the deepest of the many in his line, survives and will doubtless always remain unsolved.

If I had a reputation to lose, say, as a transatlantic Sherlock Holmes, I could advance the plea that when my services were called in it was a cold trail, indeed it was three months old. I was in Constantinople when the news of the sudden death of Rudolph shocked Europe, and in a few hours the many versions of how it had happened set many tongues wagging. A few hours later I received a wire from the Commodore¹ ordering me to Vienna and urging me to elucidate the mystery. Nothing could have been more unwelcome to me. Owing to one or two minor achievements during my first sojourn in the waltz capital, my chief had a wholly exaggerated notion as to the sources of information I enjoyed there, and now I was sure that this myth would be exploded. A few hours later, however, another wire came, which was most welcome. “Have made other arrangements in Vienna. Stay with the Armenians.”

Three months later the myth came to dangerous life again. I was called to Paris to confer on the tangled Macedonian situation but also instructed by the Commodore to stop off for a week in Vienna and “clear up” what was still known throughout the world as the Mayerling mystery. Neither the unfortunate man who had substituted for me nor any of his competitors had accomplished this and so I was put on the cold trail and told to go to it.

The discoveries I made, particularly the unmarked grave in the Heiligenkreuz, “peace Acre,” cast doubt upon many of the popularly accepted solutions. It certainly was dug within a few hours of the tragedy—but unhappily it did leave my own theory in the “not-proven” class. I was, as so often before, mulling over the inconclusive end of my researches when suddenly I was recalled from my Rip Van Winkle dreams of court splendors and unsolved mysteries to the ugly present by musketry fire. I heard the rattle of sabers being drawn from scabbards and the cobbles in the driveway of the Ring rang with the approach of mounted men and the sharp orders that brought the slouching troops out of the courtyards and to attention fell on my ear. Fully aroused now and looking about me, I saw a disorderly mob of men, women, and barefooted children marching down the Mariahilferstrasse and I also saw that the police were drawing a cordon across the street which leads from the industrial quarters, with the evident purpose of preventing them from reaching the Parliament building a few hundred yards farther along. As they drew nearer I could see how miserably clad they were and I could hear their cries:

“We are starving! Give us bread and jackets! Es Friert uns! Wir verhungern! We are famished and we freeze.”

In all the uproar and the confusion that followed, in which so unexpectedly I was involved, I cannot say that I have a very clear idea of how the battle began. Suddenly, however, shots rang out, followed by volleys, and these were certainly not warning shots. Some of the police fell and many of the horses. There ensued a regular fusillade and peering from behind the newspaper kiosk where I had sought refuge, I could see that many of the starving workers had fallen and riderless horses were prancing over their bodies. Some of the workers were running away but other more resolute groups were pushing on. The troops now entered the melee, in support of the police, and soon the Ring was cleared of the living. Here and there lay groups of dead and tangled masses of the writhing wounded which showed how deadly the firing had been while it lasted.

When the shots became desultory and finally died away, or almost, I saw a sight which gave me full realization of the dangers starving people will face under the compelling urge of hunger. Men, and women, too, now crept out from their refuges in the adjacent buildings and though frequently fired upon could not be kept from hacking with their dull knives at the bodies of the horses that had fallen and then making off with hunks of bloody booty!

When the last of the rioters had disappeared and ambulances for the police, at least, arrived on the scene, I emerged from my makeshift bombproof which had served its unusual purpose and did what I could for the wounded. Many indeed were past helping. Among these was a handsome Englishwoman who had been shot through the heart and had died instantly. It developed from her papers that she was a Mrs. Thompson, a casual passer-by, as was I, the wife of a distinguished engineer who had come to Vienna on the invitation of the new government to advise them on the water-power projects that are being planned to give employment and bread to the thousands who are literally starving. After what I had seen of the reckless courage of the rioters who were risking their lives for a chunk of horse meat, there could be no doubt that the need is appalling and that our Food Administration is getting to work none too soon.