Saturday, April

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. Had the Swiss not driven out this family five hundred years ago, and by so doing preserved their independence, they could not be offering, as they are doing today, safe refuge and asylum to the last of this unhappy line. Today the Hapsburgs are flocking for safety to their home country they sought to enslave. They come as aliens to their old home, but, like all refugees from oppression, they are eligible to citizenship if they demonstrate that they have the proper qualifications for this honor and are alive to the responsibilities that go with it.”

* * *

This afternoon Dr. Lodgmann, Landes-Hauptman of German Bohemia, as rightly or wrongly he styles himself, came in with four or five of his indignant followers. He accused Masaryk of doubledealing, of disseminating misleading information, and indeed of many other and even more terrible things. He is especially outraged by a report in the Viennese papers that the new President (in Prague) proposes to give the Germans (of Bohemia) complete autonomy. “This news comes from Berne and we do not think much of news from Berne. Masaryk will never let us vote on the question as to whether we would like to join up with German Austria or remain with the Czechs as a self-governing state. He is simply trying to mislead the conference in Paris. If the powers really want peace, and I try to think that they do, they must take into consideration our situation, and they should remember that neither the people in Prague nor the delegates in Paris can determine our future; that is in our hands; there is no possibility of Gemeinschaft or even federation with the Czechs, and they are entirely responsible for this strong and universal lack of sympathy. If they should wish to put it to the test, we do not shun an election, but of course such an election would have to be held under non-partisan, international control.”

An hour later came a delegation of the German citizens of Reichenberg. They are greatly excited as to the purpose of the Smuts visit to Prague. They think he wanted to urge Masaryk to send Czech troops into Hungary, and they sought to find out what I knew on the subject; this was easy. Officially I knew absolutely nothing; personally, I knew next to nothing.

They then placed before me a manifesto or a petition signed by five or six members of what they call the Provisional Government of

German Bohemia; among them was the name of the famous Dr. Herold. The petition was addressed to President Wilson and read: “Hearing through the European press that the German populations of Bohemia, Moravia, and German Silesia are to be denied the right of self-determination, we, members of the Peoples’ and of the Socialist parties, called upon to rule provisionally our communities, draw your attention to the injustice of this decision and request that our representatives may be admitted to the Peace Conference. If it is decided to hold a plebiscite, and that is what the ends of justice demand, we hope that you will insist that the vote be taken under the control of the Allied and Associated Powers. In no other way could a fair election be held. We do not hesitate to say that in case this step is not taken, there is grave danger to the peace of Europe. Three and a half million Germans will never submit to the alien rule that the Czechoslovaks are seeking to impose.”

I accepted both of these statements¹ and promised to send them on to Paris by a courier who was passing through Vienna on the following day, but I urged them to also send formal copies to the secretary general of the Peace Conference, M. Dutasta. Many here are of the opinion, and among these are the members of our Food Administration, that Botho Wedel, the German Minister, is very active in stirring up these complaints. It is evident, however, that there is rough going ahead for Masaryk. How these people hate one another—talk of the Kilkenny cats!

Chancellor Renner, who, owing to the illness of Dr. Bauer, is also acting as Minister of Foreign Affairs, took me yesterday to visit the Burg, and though I suspected from the first that behind the courteous gesture there was a plan, perhaps a deep-laid plan, I was glad to go. I visited Francis Joseph’s apartment. I saw that, as the tradition had it, there was no water laid on. I scrutinized his Gummi portable bathtub and saw that now it was full of holes. The starving mice that had formerly lived on the fat tidbits that fell from the imperial table, reduced to starving rations like all living things in the Danube capital, were gnawing on it. I sat in the window from which in 1904 I had seen the old Emperor presenting his grandson, little Karl, to the loyal populace. The old Emperor had smiled his empty, vacant smile and the people had shouted: “What a magnificent Buberl he is.” Now the Emperor is moldering in the vaults of the Capuchin church and little Karl is a refugee in Switzerland. Wild-eyed people were pushing their way through the dark and dismal corridors and the few guards in evidence did but little to control their curiosity. And then Renner developed his plan.

“You would be more comfortable here than at the Bristol,” he suggested, “and you would be better protected. Wild people from all over the monarchy are streaming into the starving city, and a man who is well dressed and well fed, who looks as though he had foreign valuta in his pocket, is far from safe. But if you moved here and raised your flag over the Burg you would be perfectly safe and you would protect the palace from the roving bands of hoodlums who may at any moment get out of hand.”

I expressed my appreciation of the invitation but declined it. It would never do for a democrat with no heraldic quarterings to take up his abode where once the Caesars of the Holy Roman Empire had lodged. Besides, I had no flag except the little pennant which I flew from my car when I was fortunate enough to have one. That would look ridiculous flying from this great edifice with its hundreds of deserted, unswept, and smelly rooms. . . . Renner then very good-naturedly dropped the subject.

As to the contacts which General Smuts may or may not have had with Herr Renner before he returned to Paris, I have little or no information. In one of our talks Herr Renner said: “Ich bin mit ihm nur fliichtig in beruhrung gekommen [My contact with him was only of a superficial character].” Evidently nothing very satisfactory had resulted from the conversations that may have taken place—which are reported at great length in all the sensational papers.

I made a pilgrimage this morning to the imperial vaults under the Capuchin church where all, or nearly all, the Hapsburgs, with their secrets, their sorrows, their benefactions, and alas, as I also fear, their crimes, have been laid away. The aged monk who opened the postern gate to my knock seemed not a little nervous at the sight of my uniform, but after I dropped a silver coin in the little leather bag for contributions which he carried, he lit a great beeswax candle and led me through the purple twilight of the great cellar. I stood by the leaden coffin of Francis Joseph, whom I had seen as an act of penitence washing the feet of the selected beggars on Maundy Thursday, years ago. I tarried for a moment by the smaller leaden sarcophagus that contains all that was mortal of the beautiful Empress Elizabeth—she whom I had first seen in my boyhood as alone and unattended she walked through the garden of the Hofburg. What a noble bearing she had and what a carriage! To me she appeared as a goddess descended from on high, and in the words of Aeneas I hailed the beautiful vision as that of a Dea certe! What a strange life was hers and what a strange ending! Her troubled, tumultuous heart was pierced by a stiletto in the hand of a crazy anarchist, and those who saw the weapon say that it looked no more formidable than a hatpin— and yet it sufficed. At her side rests her unfortunate son, Rudolph, the hero, or the victim, of the mystery of Mayerling where he died. Ten weeks after the tragic event I came from Turkey to investigate the mystery that so intrigued the world. How Rudolph met his end I do not know, and I do not think the world will ever know. The official stories, as well as those put out by the Empress Eugénie, who had also lost an only son in the heyday of life, as well as the doubtless sincere gossip of Kâthi Schradt, the Emperor’s dearest friend, were invented with the natural purpose of misleading a morbid world. Someday, perhaps, I shall set forth the reasons why I do not think the Archduke shot himself after killing his mistress. They are, I admit, not entirely convincing. Of all the royal mysteries, that of Mayerling remains unsolved, and is likely to remain so.

With some show of emotion the monk now led me to the little vacant space, all that now remains unoccupied in this centuries-old charnel house. He lifted his eyes to the roof of the dark vault and said:

“Who will occupy?”

I had no answer; no one knows, and perhaps the leaden coffins will all disappear in the next whirlwind of war. Even in 1917, I am told, the suggestion was made by the editor of a fugitive Communist sheet that they be melted down into bullets to kill the oppressors who ride roughshod over the proletarian world.

As I turned to leave, I caught sight of my old friend of the Balkan days, René Pinon, now for many years the lynx-eyed observer of the European scene for the Revue des Deux Mondes. He had been kneeling in prayer, and as we walked out together he brushed the dust of the ages from his trouser knees. I think I understood his thought which, however, he did not voice. He was a loyal and patriotic Frenchman and he was happy that France had survived the world catastrophe that for four long years had menaced her; but he was also a true son of the Church, and a Rightist. There was moisture in his eye as he greeted me and surveyed the uniform I now wore as a pawn in the crusade to make the world safe for democracy. I do not think he mourned the fall of the Hapsburg emperors, but he did regret the disappearance of the great Catholic power which as recently as 1903 had exercised its traditional veto and prevented Cardinal Rampolla, suspected of being tainted by a touch of modernity, from becoming the successor to St. Peter.