Part 35

He was looking over the food-lines in the Nineteenth Municipal District of Vienna one fine morning in December of 1916. Finally he came to a shop where petroleum was being issued. The line was long and moved slowly. Charles and the "Red Prince" wondered what the trouble could be. They soon found out.

At first the shopkeeper resented the interest the two men were showing in his business. He wanted to see their authority in black on white.

"That is all right, my dear man!" said the "Red Prince." "This man happens to be the Emperor."

The storekeeper grew very humble of a sudden.

"It is this way, your Majesty," he explained. "The authorities have limited the allowance of coal-oil for each household to one and one-half liters [2.14 pints] per week. This measuring apparatus [a pump on the petroleum-tank whose descending piston drives the liquid into a measuring container] does not show half-liters, only one, two, three, four, and five whole liters. The customers want all they are entitled to, and usually think that I am not giving them the proper measure when I guess at the half-liter between the lines showing one and two liters. To overcome the grumbling and avoid being reported to the authorities I am measuring the petroleum in the old way by means of this half-liter measure. That takes time, of course. While I am serving one in this manner I could serve three if I could use the pump."

"Do these people have the necessary containers for a larger quantity than a liter and a half?" asked the Emperor.

"Yes, your Majesty," replied the storekeeper. "Nearly all of them have cans that hold five liters. Before the war petroleum was always bought in that quantity."

An hour afterward the burgomaster of Vienna, Dr. Weisskirchner, to whose province the fuel and light supply belonged, was called up by the Emperor on the telephone.

The conversation was somewhat emphatic. The mayor felt that he was elected by the people of Vienna and did not have to take very much from the young man whom accident had made Emperor. He offered to resign if he could not be left a free hand in his own sphere.

"You can do that any time you are ready!" said the young man at the other end of the wire. "But meanwhile see to it that petroleum in the city of Vienna is issued in lots of three liters every two weeks. The food-line is necessary as a disciplinary measure to prevent waste, but I do not want people to stand in line when it is unnecessary. I understand that nearly every shop selling petroleum uses these pumps. Kindly see to it that they can be used. Three liters in two weeks will do that." Thereafter petroleum was so issued.

The case led to a general clean-up in every department of food administration and regulation. In a single week more than eight hundred men connected with it were dismissed and replaced. And within a month food distribution in Austria and Hungary was on a par with that of Germany.

The question has often been asked, To what extent is the scarcity of food in Central Europe the cause of the ruthless submarine warfare?

Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, the former German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, discussed that subject with me several times while I was interviewing him.

On one occasion he was very insistent that Germany would have to shorten the war. Though there was no reason why in 1916 that statement should have seemed unusual to me, since the Central European public was thoroughly tired of the war and all it gave rise to, I was nevertheless struck by the insistence which the Secretary of State put into his remarks. I framed a question designed to give me the information I needed to throw light on this.

"England has been trying to starve us," said Mr. Zimmermann. "She has not succeeded so far. In the submarine we have an arm which, as our naval experts maintain, is capable of letting England feel the war a little more in food matters. I am not so sure that it is a good idea to use this weapon for that purpose, seeing that the measures incident to its use would have to be sweeping. So far as I am concerned, I am not for a policy that would make us more enemies. We have enough of them, God knows."

I may say that this was in a general way the policy of the Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg. I have been reliably informed that even Emperor William was at first an opponent of the ruthless-submarine-warfare idea. Much of his gray hair is due to criticism heaped upon Germany for acts which were thought justified, but which others found nothing short of outlawry. He had always been very sensitive in matters of honor affecting his person and the nation, and, like so many of those around him, had come to believe that Germany and the Germans could do no wrong.

Emperor Francis Joseph had been a consistent opponent of the ruthless submarine war. The Ancona and Persia cases, with which I occupied myself especially, convinced the old man and those near him that a recourse to the submarine, even if it were to end the war more rapidly, was a double-edged sword. The old monarch, moreover, did not like the inhuman aspects of that sort of war, whether they were avoidable or not. He came from an age in which armies still fought with chivalry--when a truce could be had for the asking. From his familiars I learned that nothing pained the old man more than when a civilian population had to be evacuated or was otherwise subjected to hardship due to the war.

His successor, Emperor Charles, held the same view. One has to know him to feel that he would not give willingly his consent to such a measure as the ruthless submarine war. His sympathies are nothing short of boyish in their warmth and sincerity. When he ascended the throne, he was an easy-going, smart lieutenant of cavalry rather than a ruler, though the load he was to shoulder has ripened him in a few months into an earnest man.

In January of 1917 Emperor Charles went for a long visit to the German general headquarters in France. He was gone three days, despite the fact that he had lots of work to do at home in connection with the public-subsistence problems.

Connections informed me that the submarine warfare was the business which had taken him into the German general headquarters. Count Ottokar Czernin, I learned, had also quietly slipped out of town, as had a number of Austro-Hungarian naval staff men and experts.

It was Count Czernin who, a few weeks later, gave me an all-sufficient insight into the relations between the ruthless submarine warfare and the food question.

It would not have been proper, under the circumstances, to publish without some words of comment even so detailed a statement as that contained in the joint German-Austro-Hungarian note announcing the advent of the ruthless submarine war. Something had to be said to show the public why the risks involved were being taken.

The German public was taken into the confidence of the government in a speech made by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Reichstag. That was a convenient method. In Austria-Hungary that way was not open. The Reichsrath was not in session. Count Czernin decided that I should be the medium of bringing before the world why the Austro-Hungarian government had decided to adhere to Germany's new submarine policy.

Although knowing what was coming, the actual announcement that the crisis was here was somewhat of a shock to me.

Count Czernin was seated at his big mahogany roll-top desk as I entered the room. He rose to meet me. I noticed that there was a very serious expression on his face.

"We have notified the neutral governments, and through them our enemies, that the submarine war zone has been extended and shipping to Great Britain and her allies laid under new restrictions," said the Foreign Minister, after I had taken a seat.

With that he handed me a copy of the note diplomatique with the request that I read it. This done, he placed before me a statement which he wished me to publish.

"I should like you to publish that," he said. "If you don't care for the text the way it is written change it, but be sure that you get into your own version what I say there. At any rate, you will have to translate the thing. Be kind enough to let me see it before you telegraph it."