Committee,' composed of sixteen British, six French, and three Japanese officers, in case any little shred of Austrian resistance had been left. The Reparations Commission has been in Vienna since June of last year, and is still going strong.' It has already spent more than 500,000,000 kronen from the Austrian treasury. There were 112 military officers and 437 soldiers with the first Commission; there are some 500 members of the latter.

The Reparations Commission started their work with the magnificence worthy of conquerors. They immediately took possession of four hundred rooms in the Austrian War Ministry, and not satisfied with the luxurious furniture which the pretentious generals of the luxurious Hapsburgian régime had used, they ransacked the other offices in the building, taking carpets, easy chairs, any furniture from beneath the feet of the state officials. Finding that their rooms were still unworthy of war-lords, the Commission ransacked the Hofburg, or former Emperor's palace, and took from it rugs, chairs, hangings, and furniture. They then shipped furniture and knick-knacks from Paris, at the expense of the Austrian Government. By the time they were satisfied, the Austrian Government had spent four million kronen for the adaptation of offices to their needs. To-day they have confiscated three of the four elevators in the building, for their own use.

Now the Reparations Commission is at work to see what the six million inhabitants of Austria can be forced to pay for having sinned against the sinless Entente. What they are doing, few Austrians are permitted to know. 'We do know,' one Austrian Socialist official said, 'that they are at work with a number of pretty Entente stenographers, the lowest paid one receiving a salary equal to more than the President of the Austrian Republic. And then we know

that all the Czech members of the Mission are the Entente spies.'

The Austrian spoils, however, have not been so rich as was expected. The Commission soon learned that, if they plundered too much, Communism would result. The people would take the country into their own hands, establish their own government, and defy the Entente. In order to prevent this tendency from spreading, capitalistic props had to be found to keep the state in a position to be bled, year by year, by the Great Powers. Thus, from June down to February, the 500 representatives of civilization had managed to hatch a British scheme by which the Great Powers would grant Austria credit of 250 million dollars, coal and raw materials. But this plan was rejected by London. The plan now proposed and favorably considered is a French one, to induce private capitalists to grant credit and to invest in Austrian enterprises. In this way, many capitalistic countries would have influential citizens interested in keeping Austria from adopting Communism, and concerted pressure could be brought upon the state that tried to disturb their profits. Other plans for the solution of the Austrian misery consist of a Danube Confederacy, and making Vienna the 'ward of the Entente.' The Danube Confederacy is much opposed by the Austrians, because to them it means the restoration of the monarchy, backed by the terroristic Horthy régime in Hungary, and backed by France. The French, in particular, are said to be working for this scheme; and the Austrian Christian Socialists, the Clerical party now in power, are suspected of favoring it, despite the fact that on paper they accede to the popular demand for union of Austria with Germany. Then, the plan to make Vienna the seat of the League of Nations and the 'ward of the Entente,' is a

British proposal. In this way, a few Canutes would sit in Vienna and raise restraining fingers when necessary to stop the oncoming tide of Communism. But here in Central Europe the British are not suspected of having so much to do with affairs, as have Italy and France. France, in particular, is feared; because it is known that either a secret treaty, or an understanding, exists between France and England, whereby France is given a free hand to do what she wishes on the Continent, and England is given a free hand to subject the Near East, and to advance her imperialism in Asia. It is a sort of 'fifty-fifty' game, as it were: France takes Europe; England takes Asia and the routes to Asia.

It can be said without exaggeration that every scheme for the reconstruction of Austria, even the relief-work of the American and British religious or government groups, is a conscious plan to counteract Communism. The Entente knows that its own capitalism is doomed if Central Europe adopts a communal form of government. It is certain that reactionary Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Roumania, and Poland (the children of the Entente) will remain true to their capitalistic masters. But the spirit of Austria and Germany is not yet quite crushed.

The Austrians themselves appear to beabsolutely helpless beneath the hands of the Entente. The Socialists, the second strongest party in the state, talk a lot, and issue manifestos against the Communists, the capitalists, and the Entente alike. The Christian Socialists, the clerical conservatives now in control of the government, sit tight, taking orders from the Entente and holding its power. The Communists, but 300,000 strong, smile a bit as they watch the struggle, while they continue to hold classes and public meetings, and issue newspapers and a magazine propounding the doctrines of the Com

munist state. The dreaded Communists are fairly young men and women. 'We are weak,' they say, 'in comparison with the other parties. But that is because the Socialists keep telling the workers and peasants that, if they follow us, the Horthy régime in Hungary will be extended here; or, they hold up the spectre of an Entente army. But we know that if Germany makes a move to form a Communist state, and we follow, the workers of Austria will follow us almost to the last man. But we are too weak to act without Germany; we already starve; we would be starved to death within a week.'

Dr. Frederick Hertz, the famous historian and authority on nationalities of Central Europe, briefly sketched the problems facing Austria:

There are many vicious circles, consist

ing of questions mutually interdependent,

which do not admit of isolated treatment. For instance, the depreciation of money leads to trade-restrictions, and these again depreciate still further the value of the currency. Vienna cannot get coal because she cannot pay in goods, and she is not able to produce sufficient goods because of the lack of coal. Scarcity of rolling-stock hinders the transport of coal, and the lack of coal prevents the production and repairing of rollingstock. The insufficiency of agricultural supplies leads to state control of food, and the effect of this control still further restricts the supply. It is impossible to raise the value of the currency as long as the budget shows a big deficit which must be covered by continually printing new notes; and, in turn, the deficit arises chiefly from the low value of money, which raises state expenses to an enormous degree particularly for foreign food. Austria is now living on foreign credit and foreign food. Economically this is ruinous to the country and detrimental to the givers. Austria, with the lowest monetary value in the world, has to buy its food in the market with the highest exchange, and at the farthest distance, that is, America. But I think that, with all our difficulties, if the Entente and the foreigners

who come here would only leave us to work out our own problems, we could, in some way, muddle through.

Many of the state officials consider it indiscreet to speak of the actions of the Entente representatives in the country; they fear more suffering. They fear the guns of the 'civilized' nations, if they raise a voice of protest against their extortions. When asked if the report of a newspaper man, concerning the grotesque salaries which the Entente commissions paid themselves from the Austrian treasury, were true, an official in the Foreign Office tried to evade the question.

'Newspaper-men are indiscreet,' he said. 'We can't say anything; we can't afford to say anything. But-of for your own information you may know that the newspaper-man was right and that his report is absolutely correct.'

course

Commission, which left February 20, was no less magnificent than the present Reparations Commission. They also came as war-lords, and they lived like conquerors of the Middle Ages. Their true attitude found expression in the action of Colonel Fletcher, Englishman, the President of the Aeronautics Department of the Commission. Just before closing his work, Fletcher made a last visit to the aeroplane factory at Wiener Neustadt, a short distance from Vienna, to see if the many fine engines had been destroyed. The chief engineer argued that the engines could be used for industrial purposes. Fletcher replied by striking him across the face with his hand.

It may have been, indeed, that the engines could have been used for Austrian military purposes; and perhaps the chief engineer thought that an Englishman, representing a world-empire built upon militarism, might sympathize.

Other war-material has been divided up between the conquerors, Italy taking 70 per cent, France 11, Great Britain 8, the United States and Serbia 4 each, and Japan 3 per cent. Much raw material, necessary to Austrian industrial life, was taken, such as leather, brass, copper, and aluminum. Then, in a further effort to effect a peaceful solution of the world's problems, France sold her share of the spoils to Poland, and Austria, in violation of her peace with Soviet Russia, is compelled by the Entente respecters of treaties! to ship these war-materials to Poland, which, under Entente guidance is planning a war against Russia.

Representative Austrian officials whose names cannot be given here, for obvious reasons, charge that the members of both commissions here mentioned have found their associates among the high reactionaries and decadent Austrians, exploiters like them

selves, and that they have strengthened the reactionaries in the bordering states. They, with thousands of other foreigners, have come to Vienna, to live cheaply; they jam the most expensive hotels, live in the greatest extravagance, ruin the valuta, and keep the prices of food and clothing beyond the reach of any Austrian. Only the new-rich profiteers, and the thousands of unfortunate Austrian girls who have learned the value of the American dollar and the English pound, can now buy the necessities of life. Their moral life becomes of secondary importance as is always the case everywhere-to their economic necessities. And of Vienna, perhaps the most beautiful, artistic, and cultured city of Europe in the past, you gain the impression that it is now a city of parasites, who have come in swarms and settled down upon its magnificent boulevards, to live as cheaply as possible upon the ridiculously low valuta.

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Two pictures may be shown of Viennese life one the side of the foreign life here, where an Englishman or Frenchman or American spends thousands of kronen in one night; and the other the life of the very poor Austrians to whom one thousand kronen would mean wealth. Yet, in showing these pictures, one is not unaware of the fact that the same or worse scenes may be witnessed in India as well.

In the first week of February, when a notorious and extravagant Vienna dance-hall and cabaret became too odoriferous for even the Viennese police, the place was raided; of 76 men and women arrested, only 12 were Austrians (perhaps all girls) while 15 were members of official foreign missions, who were released because of diplomatic immunity.'

The following day, the writer, in company with some relief-workers, and an Indian as well, visited a number of Aus

trian homes. In one hole they found a nineteen-year-old girl lying under an old bed covering, waiting for her mother to come home. Her mother, they learned, was out washing, for which she earned 30 kronen a week. The girl had walked the streets for weeks and months in search of work; but the factories, cut off from their source of supplies, are running at less than six per cent of their former capacity. The girl was in bed to keep warm. In Austria, it is very cold, yet the girl had no underwear whatever; one ragged skirt, one rag for a blouse, one pair of stockings, and some rags for shoes, constituted her clothing. The room contained not one piece of clean cloth, no sheets, no towels, no fuel for heating, no food. In other rooms we found even worse scenes: half-clothed mothers, who, like animals, had crawled into corners and given birth to children doomed to death, while no physician, no person attended them; half-starved children, with legs so twisted and deformed from malnutrition that they will be crippled for life; and tuberculosis everywhere.

The relief-workers have sent out their calls for help to the farthest corners of the globe; it is inhuman, they say; nothing has ever existed like it. Yet the Indian recalled them time and time again:

'We in India have suffered this on a national scale for one hundred years,' he said, 'and you have not been horrified. We have witnessed such scenes as this all our lives. Yet one little corner of Europe, suffering what we have suffered for ages, arouses a world to frantic tears.'

Yet the relief-workers say that the misery must be relieved. And why? They give as their first answer, 'Because Communism will spread if you don't help the Austrians!' So the various British, French and Italian and American representatives here issue

calls for relief. And always one is convinced that it is not because they are torn by the suffering, but because they fear for their own skins: they fear that Communism would destroy capitalism in their own countries if it were permitted to establish itself in Austria. And thus it is that the American Relief Administration is feeding 300,000 Austrians a day, the British are feeding 58,000 in Vienna; the Swedish, the French, the Danes, and the Hollanders are feeding the Austrians. Feeding them on the one hand, and on the other permitting their Military and Reparations and other commissions to drain the Austrian treasury, when the sums paid for their salaries alone would keep thousands of Austrian families from starvation and charity.

The following costs of the Interallied Military Control Commission are of interest, particularly in view of the cries of the starving for food, and in view of the fact that the Austrian state has a rapidly increasing annual deficit, amounting now to more than 42,000,000,000 kronen, and a total debt of 105,000,000,000, while its industrialized territory is entirely cut off, by the many new surrounding national boundaries, from the sources of raw materials, coal, and markets upon which it previously existed.

In connection with the following figures, let it be remembered that the Austrian Cabinet ministers receive annual salaries of 172,000 kronen a year, that a few skilled workers are able to earn 12,000 kronen a month at the utmost, and that 1,000 kronen a month would keep a starving baby in all that it needs.

These are monthly salaries of the Interallied Military Control Commission, as shown by documents of the Austrian State. Kronen are used, instead of French francs, as in the documents, the calculation being made on the present

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