The Note-Book of an Attache Part 15

Some provisions have gone up in price; flour is doubled in value and the government has had to fix a maximum legal price. Meat and game are cheaper than usual, perhaps because many people are killing and selling their animals to save the grain which would otherwise have to be used to feed them.

The utter ignorance of the people concerning everything that is happening outside of Vienna and Budapest is amazing. The government has somehow convinced the people that everything in the war is going wonderfully well, and this in the face of the unsuppressible facts that there are at present no Austrians in Serbia and that the Russians hold all Galicia and have been through the Carpathians.

_Sat.u.r.day, January 2d._ The German comic paper Simplicissimus recently made a cartoon comment on the Austro-Hungarian army and the whole issue was suppressed by the censor in Austria and Hungary. The drawing showed a group of three Austrians, a general, an officer, and a private. The soldier had a lion's head, the officer an a.s.s's head, and the general had no head at all.

Austria and Germany have not as yet produced one "great man." The Allies have two--Joffre and Kitchener and possibly a third in Delca.s.se.

The Austrian Emperor is a little man, slightly stooped, rather shriveled-up and possessed of a pair of keen, shrewd eyes. He is an able follower of the Emperor Ferdinand who once replied to the statement that a certain one of his subjects was a patriot by saying: "I don't care if he's patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?" Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the battle of Sadowa.

_Sunday, January 3d._ I have managed to get in a good deal of reading on boats, trains, and at odd moments since I left Paris, and it has enlarged my comprehension of this war. I have carefully studied every book on the war and subjects related to it. I have read several times each the books of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, and Steed's "Hapsburg Monarchy."

_Monday, January 4th._ In Hungary there are few princes or dukes; the highest n.o.bles are counts, whose t.i.tles retain something of the old significance of hereditary rulers of a "county." The serfs have only recently been liberated and to all intents and purposes the feudal system still exists, in spirit if not in form. Among the counts in Hungary, several stand out conspicuously above the rest; among them are the Karolyis, the Apponyis, the Hunyadis, and the Wenkheims, all of whom are interconnected by marriage and close social relations.

These people maintain themselves on their vast estates like rulers of small princ.i.p.alities.

At the request of the Countess X. I had written to her mother, the Countess W., before leaving Vienna, and found her answer awaiting me at the Consul's office when I arrived in Budapest. I learn that she also communicated with Count Berchtold, the Prime Minister of the Empire, with Count Szecsen, ex-Amba.s.sador to France, and with the Hungarian Premier, so that in case I missed her letters (she sent me one to Vienna and one to Budapest) these gentlemen would see to it that I went to visit her, as she wished to thank me personally for what I had been able to do for her daughter, and also to hear direct news of her grandchildren.

I left Budapest early this afternoon and arrived after dark at Bekescsaba, which is about half-way to Belgrade. I was met by a majordomo who appropriated my luggage and led me to a private car on a private railroad belonging to the Countess. We started immediately and ran in about twenty minutes to the gate of the estate where she usually resides. Here I was carefully transferred into a waiting carriage and was tenderly tucked into numerous fur rugs by two or three strong men. The two splendid horses turned through the gates for a ten-minute drive across a beautiful park to the castle--and such a castle! It is equal in size and charm to some of the famous French chateaux along the Loire which I studied last spring.

I was carefully unpacked again under a splendid porte-cochere and ushered by numerous flunkies into the presence of the Countess. She received me in a tremendous room with a lofty ceiling, and in a preliminary talk of an hour she took off the first keen edge of her appet.i.te for news.

My bedroom is perfectly huge and has two ante-rooms--for the personal servants whom I do not possess. We dined at eight, there being at the table, besides the Countess, a daughter and her companion, a Frenchwoman. During dinner the Countess mentioned that the war necessitated frequent readjustments in the management of her estates; that the military authorities had recently taken another five hundred of her men for service in the army. She asked me if I enjoyed hunting and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, said that she would send me for an hour or two with the pheasants in the morning. She warned me that the shooting would be poor because no care had been taken of the preserves since her sons departed for the war.

_Bekescsaba, Tuesday, January 5th._ I was awakened at nine by a valet who came in, opened the blinds, shut the windows, brought the breakfast specified by me last night, and a.s.sisted me to bathe and dress.

At ten I paid my regards to the Countess and then the cha.s.seur-en-chef who was to take me for the morning's sport was presented to me. I climbed into a shooting wagon, which then drove across fields some twenty minutes to a woody country. I was provided with two beautiful little English "16-bore," one of which was carried by a loader who walked always behind my right elbow. The game was pheasants, partridges, and hares, the latter perfectly enormous, being thirty inches long when held up by the feet. While hunting I was followed at a respectful distance by the shooting wagon in which I was expected to ride when going farther than fifty yards, and by another wagon which was to carry the game I was expected to kill. The game was all natural wild game, not the domesticated kind of the English system. The cha.s.seur had with him a dozen peasant boys as beaters. I "walked up"

and "flushed" game myself, except when there was a particularly good bit of cover; then I was conducted ahead with many bows to a well-selected spot, whereupon the beaters in a line began at a distance of a hundred yards and "worked through," knocking their sticks together, a process that several times resulted in my being absolutely overrun by a burst of pheasants flus.h.i.+ng from all directions, flying at all heights and angles and traveling like bullets. In two hours I killed seventy-three pheasants and partridges and twenty-three hares, and this in spite of the fact that my shooting was erratic. Thus at one spot I killed eight pheasants with as many sh.e.l.ls without changing my feet (it was there that the loader was useful) and then a few minutes later missed five running.

At noon the young Countess drove out with her French companion to join me. She watched the shooting until half after twelve and then drove me home for luncheon. It is the custom for the men who start shooting early to be sought out and brought home to luncheon by the ladies, or to be joined by them for lunch in the woods in case of an all-day shoot. The game is shot only by the n.o.bles and their guests and there seem to be no Robin Hoods among the devoted peasantry.

If this shooting to which I had been treated was considered by the Countess to need an apology, I was curious to ascertain what she called really good hunting, and so I propounded the question. She replied quite seriously that the best shooting to be had upon her estates was hare shooting and that on a good day five guns were usually expected to kill four thousand between the hours of ten and three.

To an American it is very extraordinary to see feudalism in full swing; to have every person whom one meets anywhere, stop, raise his hat, and make a deep obeisance; to have even the slightest word or request to anyone answered with a low bow and an instantly bared head.

It is still more surprising to realize how sincere and devoted is all this homage. Everyone for miles around acts in this same way to the Countess, to her daughter, and, of course, to any of their guests. To an American it all seems several hundred years out of date.

_Wednesday, January 6th._ There were guests for dinner tonight, n.o.bles from neighboring estates. One of the men is about to start on an automobile trip to the Serbian and Carpathian fronts. He is to be away some four or five days, leaving on Monday. He begged me to go with him but I resisted the temptation, for I am now forty-nine hours' travel from London and must soon be turning my face westward.

I went to ma.s.s this morning in the little plaster church of a village near the castle. The acolytes were small peasant boys, and whenever they knelt down they turned toward the congregation prodigious boot-soles studded with a surprising array of s.h.i.+ny hobnails.

_Thursday, January 7th._ In bidding me good-bye last night, the Countess took my hand in both of hers and before the a.s.sembled dinner party thanked me for my services to her daughter and said she appreciated my having given her two days of my valuable time;--all of which she did in so gracious and charming a manner that I not only was not embarra.s.sed, but felt it was reward enough for any _two_ trips to the front.

Nearly all my conversations since entering Austria-Hungary have been carried on in French, since it is spoken by virtually everyone with whom I have come in contact. In Hungary all the people of consequence speak four languages, Hungarian, German, French, and English, but French is generally preferred to English by all except those to whom English is the native tongue.

I left Bekescsaba at nine this morning and arrived in Budapest early in the afternoon.

_Budapest, Friday, January 8th._ I lunched today with Consul-General Coffin and dined with Countess Sigray.

_Sat.u.r.day, January 9th._ Yesterday on my arrival in Budapest I found awaiting me an invitation from Count Albert Apponyi to visit him at his castle at Eberhard, near Pozsony. I left Budapest at eight, reached Pozsony about eleven, and drove to Eberhard, where I was received by the Count.

I was extremely impressed on meeting Count Apponyi. I had antic.i.p.ated something unusual, but he was quite beyond my expectations. He is about six feet three inches tall, has a splendidly erect carriage, and is a most impressively handsome man. He has a broad well-shaped forehead sloping back steeply, splendid blue-gray eyes, the biggest thinnest nose in the world, enormous nostrils, a strong sensitive mouth, and a grayish square-cut beard. The "grand old man of Hungary"

looked up to his t.i.tle.

He has been a member of the Hungarian Parliament for forty-two years and has several times held ministerial portfolios. His progressive ideas have usually landed him in the position of leader of the opposition. He has invariably been Hungary's representative at all international meetings, peace conferences, and inter-parliamentary unions. He is a decade ahead of his day and generation, being probably the most progressive man in all Hungary. This, coupled with his blood, his magnificent appearance, and his wonderful education, make him an extraordinary power in the affairs of the kingdom. He has twice been in America. He has several times visited ex-President Roosevelt at the White House and at Sagamore Hill, and the Colonel has been a guest here at Eberhard. The Count also knows intimately such men as Lowell, Untermyer, Butler, and Taft, and appreciates their ideas,--"the American idea" as he calls it. It is no wonder that the other less advanced Hungarian n.o.bles criticize his ideas and methods.

The Count's French is exquisite, and he speaks English as I have seldom heard it spoken,--as the cultivated Frenchman speaks French,--with purpose, with science, as an art. His enunciation is wonderful and he instinctively picks out words to aid rhythm and enunciation. Of his native language, Hungarian, and of his German, I am not capable of judging.

I admired the Count's library. Three sides of the big room were covered with filled shelves, which lapped over into the rooms on either side. Such a conglomeration of books;--leather bindings, cloth, paper, stacks of pamphlets, all jumbled together and yet in order. The books were indiscriminately in French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Italian, English, and Greek, all languages which the Count knows with great thoroughness. In reply to my admiring comment, he looked around the library a bit sadly, I thought, and said slowly: "Yes, it means much to me. It has grown out of my life."

The Apponyi castle has stood in its present shape for over two hundred years. Like all contemporaneous residences of feudal chiefs, it was built primarily for defense and this determines its general structure.

It is square with a great court in the center, in the middle of which is a well-house. The castle walls are of stone nearly three feet thick, plastered over with cement and painted white. It is two stories high with a steep ungabled roof and is virtually guiltless of architecture. The only entrance to the building is through an archway leading under the front face into the interior court. No outside windows existed in the original structure but many have since been cut into it. The castle reveals many signs of age. The floors in all the halls and rooms, except those of the salons, are of stone, and little uneven hollows on their surfaces show where the feet of many generations have left their mark. The libraries and salons, six or seven in number, were remodeled some time during the last century and are remarkably fine.

At present one side of the castle has been converted into a hospital and here some twenty-five wounded Hungarian soldiers are cared for.

At luncheon there were as guests the Count and Countess Karolyi Hunyadi and two of their sons, and the Countess Herberstein, whose husband is a general in the army.

_Sunday, January 10th._ I had the honor of a very interesting walk and talk with Count Apponyi this morning. Among other things he said: "I sometimes let my younger daughter (aged 12) play with the children of the peasants on the place. It gives her an understanding of life, and besides, there is no one of her own age and rank in this part of the country." This for a Hungarian n.o.bleman is an extremely democratic remark.

The ma.s.s in Count Albert's private chapel was most interesting. The chapel is built into the castle as a part of it. The family a.s.sembled in a little oratory or balcony giving off the second-floor hall. From this oratory one looked down upon the service and upon the peasants crowded together below. It was gla.s.sed in so that one viewed the spectacle through windows, so to speak. These had two panes which could be opened if one desired to hear more clearly the service or sermon.

In a long conversation, Count Apponyi, in answer to my questions, made the following statements as to Hungary's att.i.tude in the war, which he defined as being a conflict between Orientalism and Occidentalism:

"You who live in America do not have to consider or define the differences between Occidentalism and Orientalism. You are geographically isolated from Orientalism and are so axiomatically Occidental that the issue is not yet a vital one for you. You do not have to search for concepts and definitions in this regard. The same would be true of the Chinese who are so extremely Oriental--who are so near the South Pole, so to speak--as to find thinking about the matter unnecessary. They take their Orientalism as a matter of course, as do you your Occidentalism.

"But we of Hungary who are on the geographical frontier of Occidentalism, who are, in these present centuries, Occidentalism's contenders in the everlasting battle between East and West, and who find ourselves at death-grips with Russia, the present-day aggressive representative of Orientalism, we, I say, have need to consider such matters and to find concepts upon which to build.

"Thus I, as a Hungarian, have my definitions, my lines of demarcation between the two. My definitions of Occidentalism are four in number.

Any nation which fails in one or more of them is on the Oriental side of the line. The four items are: