Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
In the following days Herr Renner called upon me several times at the Bristol. It was evident he wished to discuss further the Anschluss, but as I had delivered my message and had no further instructions I kept off the subject. Our purpose had been achieved, at least for the present, and Allize, the French agent, told me that, in high dudgeon, the German Minister, Botho Wedel, had gone back to Berlin. The secondary purpose of his visits was to renew his plea and to induce me to take up my residence in the…- 128.6 K • Completed
- Today, alone, I again visited the Burg Palace. All the great figures who in their little day had strutted across this scene, the aged Francis Joseph, the beautiful Elizabeth, the luckless Rudolph of the Mayerling mystery, have vanished now, and the millennial empire of the Hapsburgs lies in squalid ruins. But there was one in the hungry crowd who recalled the well-fed days. He was tattered and torn, but from his manner it was evident that in the happier days he had been a palace lackey and his thoughts ran…
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- I dined tonight with Admiral Hohnel; General Margutti was also his guest, but how different were the circumstances and the temper of the party from that evening in March 1915 when they dined with me at the Bristol. Then the Russians were being driven back over the Carpathians, according to War Office reports, and the war would be over in a few weeks! Now the war was over, and the government that had displaced the Empire had told them that as they had both been appointed to their respective services from…
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- A man who knows history and recalls it, as so few of us do, wrote interestingly yesterday in the Frankfurter Zeitung about the flight of Emperor Karl: “This is indeed poetic justice,” he writes. “For hundreds of years the House of Austria sought to destroy the independence of the Swiss Confederation and the rights of free men. Had it succeeded, the Swiss would have become lieges of Austria and today they could not have offered a refuge to the last of the Hapsburgs, now landless and forlorn.…
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- M. Allize (the French agent), who is always urging, at least unofficially, the union of Austria with Bavaria, handed in a note to Dr. Bauer, secretary of the Government for Foreign Affairs, yesterday, in which he broached a new topic, and also revealed the anxiety, which so many feel, that the present government here is turning very rapidly to the Left. He said: “France, like the other Allies, is seeking to send food here for the distressed population; hitherto this has been scanty because with us at…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- The papers here are filled, you might even say ablaze, today, with contradictory reports from western Europe in regard to the proposed war indemnities. Lloyd George is reported as saying that Germany must pay the full amount of war damage, even if it takes fifty years to do so. Wilson is reported as not backing him up very strongly. He thinks the Allies should be content with getting the money to replace what has been actually destroyed, and no more—reparation payments but no indemnities. Also, under…
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- Vienna, always a cave of the winds, with every breeze bearing upon it a fantastic rumor (such certainly was my experience here in my days as a correspondent), is even surpassing itself in this respect now. I shall make a brief record of the news that reaches me from many quarters, but I begin with one that is certainly not fantastic. Here it is in black and white in all the official newspapers. This one explains perhaps why the authorities are so desirous for me to live in one of the palaces and so protect…
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- To escape the hospital smell that pervaded the Bristol, I went to the opera last evening. I was in uniform, and when I presented myself at the ticket window they were opposed to taking my money. “Soldiers, officials, do not pay,” quavered a voice through the little window, but I insisted. I was hardly settled in my stall and was gazing up at the fourth or fifth gallery which was where I sat in my student days, when I was suddenly surrounded by what seemed the whole management. There they were crowding…
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- Evidently the wires are crossed between Archibald Coolidge, of the Enquiry, and the delegation in Paris, and doubtless this is one of the reasons why I am detained here. Coolidge says, in his indignation, that a letter to Santa Claus has a better chance of being answered than an inquiry sent to the delegation! The Peace Commissioners come back with the statement that if you ask Coolidge for facts to aid in an appreciation of the actual situation, he replies with a learned disquisition on the Pragmatic…
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- “Would you like to talk to Paris?” said young Captain Clapp to me the other day. “I should say I would,” was my answer, “but, of course, it is impossible.” (Telegrams were greatly delayed and letters rarely reached me and always many days old. Lacking definite instructions, I was in something of a quandary.) Clapp is a telephone expert attached to the Hoover organization and, as it turned out, something of a miracle worker. “Nothing is easier,” explained young Clapp. “We have a…
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