Dorothy Thompson
Greensboro Record/December 21, 1920
Vienna, Dec. 21 — Officials are the curse of Vienna. The pensioners of the army, the remnant of the old bureaucracy, and the members of the new add to the great population of those who consume but do not produce and help impoverish a country already so poor that it is inconceivable that it can fall further. And to all these Viennese officials are added the new officials of the entente. The members of the interallied commission and of the various foreign missions—generals, lieutenants, military officers, civil officials—occupy all the leading hotels, fill the theaters and are to be seen wining and dining at the best restaurants and cafes, their tables loaded with exquisitely prepared meats, delicate white bread and the Viennese cakes and confections, which are devised from materials furnished by speculators at unbelievable prices, are still the most delicious to be had in Europe.
The fate of the Austrian officials is the fate of the country. They are not among those who wine and dine. Their pensions or their salaries buy them black bread and bare lodgings, if they do that much, and though they add nothing to the prosperity of the country still they furnish no contrast to the life around them.
Luncheon an Event
But the officers of the foreign missions are a world scandal. We were sitting at luncheon in parliament on the opening day of the session. The luncheon was a great event in the life of every member present. There was soup and boiled beef and potatoes and a sweet. The member who sat on my right, Emmy Reundlich, the food controller of Austria, a woman universally acknowledged to be the ablest woman in Austrian public life today, confessed that this was the first meat she had had in two months. She did not eat the “kuchen” that was served for dessert, but put it in her pocket to take home.
On my right sat the outgoing Minister of War, Dr. Julius Deutsch. He had just returned the previous day from a conference with Giolitti, the prime minister of Italy, in regard to the foreign missions in Vienna, and he gave me the following figures and facts: “The military commission appointed to Austria to control the fulfillment of the peace treaty is of course paid by Austria. It is composed of an exceedingly large number of officers and soldiers. A simple sergeant receives from 30,000 to 50,000 kronen a month. That is by way of comparison seven times the salary of a member of the Austrian parliament. A lieutenant of a foreign mission receives six times the salary of the Austrian minister of war. A general receives about a quarter of a million kronen a month, which is more than the entire Austrian government, including the president, is paid.
“The salaries of the foreign officers in Vienna today cost Austria as much as the total sum of her government expenditures.”
Some of these officials have no conceivable purpose. At the time that the inter-allied commission to watch over Austrian affairs was appointed, Austria still had a navy. Now she has no navy but the naval section of the commission still continues.
That Austria simply must have raw materials for her industries unless she is to become increasingly a charity charge on the world is universally conceded. The entente has time and again expressed its willingness to help Austria by supplying her with raw materials. But the military commission appointed to Austria to control the fulfillment of articles 133 and 148 of the peace treaty, concerning the delivery of arms and munitions, has under lock and key in Ausstria today raw materials needed for industries — copper, leather, brass, aluminum, implements for construction, etc.—to the value of from thirty to fifty billion kronen.
The greater part of the materials confiscated by this commission are war materials that are equally fit for peace purposes. For instance, during the recent flood at Salzburg, when sappers had to be dispatched to that city, there was a great shortage of spades, although there were plenty of them in the materials controlled by the commission. Some of them were finally released for use, but only after the most wearisome negotiations.
This condition continues not from any fixed purpose on the part of the allies, but because of the endless red tape involved. The commissions are composed of military men under strict injunction. Complaints must be addressed to the reparation committee in Paris or to the conference of ambassadors. Someone is always on leave from the conference of ambassadors and the reparation committee is a slow bureaucratic body from which speedy action cannot be expected. So two years have passed since the armistice and America is feeding Austrian children, and Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland are adopting starving children but still the embargo on these materials which are desperately needed and are helping no one continues.
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