It was just six o'clock when we ran up the foot-bridge. A boat-load of workmen ran up with us. At the top we stood a minute and looked out over the harbor. A sea of lights! A bay of boats! More workmen! The old man in blue had said: "We are getting ready for the Hamburg of to-morrow."

THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN.

Standing in the main square before the town hall of Essen is a large bronze monument, representing not a king, nor yet a hero, but a man clad in a simple citizen's coat. His right hand rests on an anvil, and his penetrating eyes are overhung by a thinker's brow. The granite pedestal bears the name of "Alfred Krupp."

Long ago England knew the process of making cast steel, but she carefully kept it a secret. In 1800 Friedrich Krupp, the father of Alfred, began to experiment. He worked early and late. His friends told him that he was wasting his time, but Friedrich worked on. After eleven years he discovered the precious secret, and in 1818, on the present site of the Essen works, he built eight furnaces, each with one crucible. He employed only two laborers. And that was the beginning of the great Krupp works at Essen.

His son Alfred was born in 1812, just one year after the great discovery was made, and in 1842 Alfred assumed entire charge of the works. His father had been able to cast steel only in small masses. In 1855 Alfred Krupp sent a block of steel weighing 4500 pounds to the London Exhibition, and he was able to cast steel in one mass weighing more than 100,000 pounds. Alfred Krupp died in 1887, and it was under him that the Krupp works grew, to such enormous proportions.

Alfred Friedrich Krupp, the third in line, was born in 1854 and died in 1902. He was known as the cannon king. When he died nearly all his wealth went to his daughter Bertha. In 1906, at the age of twenty years, Bertha Krupp was married to a plain German gentleman with only a "von" to his name, Herr von Bohlen and Halbach. They have four children living and one child dead, and they live very quietly at "Villa Hügel" in Essen, a lovely villa built on the hills above the town. In 1900, before his marriage, Herr von Bohlen was an attaché at the German embassy at Washington. Bertha Krupp is the second richest person in the German empire, running the Kaiser a close second, and when this war is over her wealth may surpass his.

Essen lies twenty-two miles north of Düsseldorf on the main railway to Berlin. This is a very thickly populated district, and the center of a network of railways which makes it accessible to the Westphalia coal fields. It is a gloomy-looking town of gray slate roofs, only brightened by emerald green shutters. The whole town depends on the Krupp plant for their livelihood, except the store-keepers and a few hundred men who manufacture woolen goods, cigars and dyes.

The present Krupp works cover over 150 acres, and the daily output in time of peace is 1977 tons, and many times greater in time of war. In 1907 they employed 64,354 workmen, and each year this number had increased. They make all kinds of guns of all calibers—guns for naval and coast defenses, siege guns, fortress guns, field guns, armor shields and disappearing carriages for hoisting and transporting machinery for ammunition. They produce crucible, Martin, puddled and Bessemer steel, and also steel castings. They make ammunition with fuses and bursting charges, armor piercing shells, explosive steel shells, torpedo shells, cast iron shells, shrapnel, case shot and fuse setters. Besides these warlike productions they make railway material, engineering material, and sheet iron for motor cars.

Plans have been made to erect a gigantic branch of the Krupp works at Munich. These works will cover one hundred acres, and the city of Munich recognizing this opportunity for further developments, has provided enough ground for private industries that are bound to follow Krupp.

The house of Krupp has worked out an elaborate scheme for the benefit of their workingmen. It is not a charity scheme, but a building scheme for both workmen and employer. The scheme was carried out by Alfred Friedrich Krupp. He built 5469 dwellings, well lighted houses, with as much space between them as possible and each with a little garden. All the houses have good water. Three thousand of the houses were built within fifteen minutes' walk from the works. The men longest in the firm's employ and with the largest families were given the selection of the houses.

Policemen and teachers are eligible to become tenants of the dwellings. The leases are very binding and forbid the carrying on of business in the houses, sub-letting, quarreling with the neighbors, disorderly noises, the building of additions, misuse of the drains, the keeping of animals that are disturbing to the neighbors, smoking stove-pipes without covers and the lighting of the fire with oil.

The tenant on the first floor must clean the pavement every day before nine A. M., except Sundays and holidays when it must be done on the preceding day between three and four P. M. The rent of the houses runs from $15 a year for two rooms, to $85 for five or six rooms with a cellar.

The Essener Hof is a hotel run by the Krupps, and it is intended for the guests of the Krupps who are doing business with the firm. Then there is a boarding-house for bachelors and widowers. This boarding-house was started in 1855 with two hundred men and now it has over a thousand.

For the community of workers there are many stores, twenty-five grocery stores, two slaughter-houses, a bakery, a flour mill, an ice plant, a brush factory, two tailors, two shoemakers, a laundry, a hotel, eleven restaurants, three cafés, nine beerhalls and two clubhouses.

There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions. This came through the efforts of Bismarck, and it applies to all workmen with a salary not exceeding $500 a year. Alfred Krupp gave $250,000 to the workmen, the interest of which is used as a fund to encourage them to build their own houses and as a help for the needy. It is loaned to the workmen at a very small rate of interest.

Besides these benefits he established private schools the purpose of which is to qualify the children of the workmen to earn honest profitable livings. A fee of five cents a month is charged to each pupil, but if the child remains fifteen months, seventy-five cents is placed in the savings bank to his credit.

Krupp realized that a contented body of workmen brings about better results than unhappy ones, and he felt that his scheme was not only a philanthropic one but also a good business investment.

In the war of 1870 Krupp guns were used, and in this present war they have played a star role. The Kaiser sent his personal thanks to the house of Krupp for all that they have done for Germany. Frau Bertha is very proud of her works and also of the nickname of her howitzers: "Busy Berthas."

MUNICH IN WAR TIME.

No matter what you want to do in Germany if you are a foreigner, even a neutral, you have to go to the police. If you want to take a trip, the first thing that you do is to go to the police and ask them if you are allowed to go where you want to go, and then if you are allowed to go you must return to the police exactly twenty-four hours before you start and get your passport stamped.

Then you take your bread card, your butter card, your meat card and your potato card to the bread commission. They cut off tickets for as long as you are to be away, and in return they give you a traveling bread card, a little book with twenty tickets in it. Each ticket is good for either a roll or a piece of black bread, and for each week you receive forty tickets. In the hotels where you stop you receive a meat card on the days when meat is served.

As soon as you arrive at your destination you must go to the police and register. Here they write your whole history down on a field-gray card. One would think that it was an easy matter to slip away and the police would never know. This can be done very easily, but if you are caught you get in an awful muddle. Police come through the trains unexpectedly and ask to see your passport. If it is not in order you are liable to be imprisoned, and you must pay a fine for every day that you are not registered. Sensible people follow all the police rules. They are well advertised and one cannot fail to know them.

An American lady I know went from Berlin to Munich without registering at the police station. A man came through the train and asked her for her pass, and when he saw that it was not stamped she was ordered to report to the Munich police at once. When she got to Munich she forgot to go to the police for three days, and when she went there the good-natured Bavarian policeman let her off.

"I am so glad," she said, "I would not know what to wear if I went to jail.'"

It was in September, 1916, that I made my last trip to Munich. One seldom sees French prisoners in Berlin, but all the way from Berlin to Munich I saw them working in the fields. All of these prisoners had on blue coats and their famous bright red trousers. They made gay spots on the dull German landscapes.

Every little farm had geese, and every little town had its little garrison of soldiers, training. In some places the soldiers were out in the fields drilling. They were running, jumping and shooting.

The center of attraction of our whole train was a young sailor from the "Deutschland." He was a fine young fellow and he smiled at everybody. At every station he got out and bought something to eat. He seemed to have an endless appetite and a very long purse.

As one gets farther and farther into Bavaria, the wayside shrines begin to appear. They are everywhere along the roads and in the fields. At different places harvest workers could be seen gathered around the shrines in prayer.

When one is many, many miles away from Munich, one can see the two towers of the Frauenkirche, red towers with green tops. These towers are the symbol of Munich.

Outwardly, the only change that one can see in Munich is the substituting of soldiers for students, and it really spoils the place, for while the military spirit suits Berlin so well, it seems out of place with these more gentle southern people. The Bavarian uniforms are trimmed around the collar with a blue and white braid that looks like the edging on a child's petticoat. It is hard to understand how such artistic people could choose such a thing, but a Bavarian's artistic sense is in his mind and not in his dress. The Bavarian soldiers have a reputation all over Germany for being very fine warriors.

The loss of the old Prince Regent Luitpold meant much to these people, and his son can never hope to be as popular even if he did have to wait seventy years before he came to the throne. The Crown Prince Rupert is more popular than his father. He is nearly always with his troops at the front, and even when his eldest boy died, he felt that he could not get away. He said, "This is no time for a soldier not to be attending to his duty." His next son, Prince Albert, is now the heir to the throne. He is a beautiful little boy and is tremendously popular in Munich. The old Müncheners say that he is very much like what Ludwig II was when he was a boy.

Most things to eat are much more plentiful in Munich than in Berlin. For instance, a man can have a pint of milk every day and a woman can have more than that. Ham costs only seventy cents a pound without a card, and on meat days it can be bought in any of the restaurants. The meat portions in the Munich restaurants are one hundred and eighty grams while in Berlin they range from fifty to forty grams; and in Bavaria the price for the portion is no higher.

Vegetables and fruit are very plentiful, but butter and eggs are scarcer than in Berlin. One person gets only fifty grams of butter each week and one egg. In Berlin we generally got eighty grams of butter and never less than an egg and a half a week.

In Bavaria everything is divided among the people. For instance, if a man who lives in the country near Munich has a load of hay for sale, he brings that load of hay to Munich to what they call the central station. They have all kinds of central stations in Munich, for grain, for meat, for eggs, for vegetables, and for butter. The load of hay which the man brings is divided up and given out where it is most needed; he does not dare to sell the load of hay himself.

It is just the same with eggs. Suppose that you had a brother in the country, and he wanted to send you one hundred eggs to pack for the winter. He could not send you the eggs direct. He would have to send them first to the central station, and if eggs were plentiful that week, the central station would let you have the eggs; but if eggs were scarce and were needed elsewhere, you are given only a small part of the eggs. This plan is followed in everything. Even if you raise a pig, you cannot keep all the meat yourself, you must sell a part of it to your neighbor if he needs it.

The rolls in Munich are much better than in Berlin, and they seem to be made of entirely white flour. Cheese is very scarce in Berlin, but in Munich there is plenty of cheese, and it is very cheap. Pure coffee can be bought at a dollar a pound without a card, and although there is a sugar card the same as in Berlin, still all the restaurants and cafés serve pure sugar.

The price of beer has not been affected much by the war and beer that was twenty-eight pfennigs before the war is now thirty-four pfennigs, and the Hofbräu beer, or the beer made by the royal brewery, is thirty-two pfennigs. Fine malt beers such as Bock Beer and Märzen Beer are prohibited from being made, as they take too much malt and saccharine.

One evening when I was there we walked through the Mathazerbräu, the greatest beer hall in the world. The place was one mass of people drinking beer, soldiers and officers and women. Most of the guests brought their supper with them, and everybody was smoking. It was like walking through a thick fog, there was so much smoke.

We went to a lot of theaters, cafés and cabarets, and they were always full. Everywhere we went we had trouble in getting a seat. Everybody seemed to be having a very nice time. They were not hilarious, but they seemed to think that staying at home and moping would not help matters. The most astonishing part was the vast amount of money spent everywhere. Some cabarets only served champagne, and the spenders ordered it by the quart. No one got drunk in spite of the amount of fluid they poured into them.

The art show at the Glass Palace was on when I was there, but I did not find it as interesting as the great show I had seen there the year before the war. There were too many landscapes of a dull color. This did not interfere with the sale of the pictures, and one-tenth of them were marked sold.

One day I paid a visit to the studio of Herr Franz von Stuck. He was very cordial. He is a splendid, big, strong man. Lately he has built an addition to his house so that he can have more room for his work, and he has one of the finest studios I have ever seen. The first floor is for modeling, and the second floor is for painting. He said that it was very hard to get good models now as all the men of fine physique were in the war.

"Do you get the same amount of bread as an ordinary man?" I asked him.

"Exactly the same," he answered. "The poorest workingman in the streets gets the same as I. That is why our system is so splendid."

He hardly mentioned his work at all, indeed he seemed quite shy about it. On his table was a dish made of Brazilian butterflies. He picked it up and turned it so that it showed blue, then brown, and then green. "Isn't it beautiful!" he said enthusiastically, "Look at it now!"

I looked around the room at all his wonderful pictures. I thought of all the fame that was his and of all the honors that had been heaped at his feet, and yet there he was admiring a butterfly's wing. I had the feeling that a great man stood before me.

FROM BERLIN TO VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

You would naturally think that it would be a very easy matter to go from Berlin to Vienna in war time, because Germany and Austria are allies, and that it would be as easy as traveling around Germany; that all you would have to do would be to pack your trunk, go down to the station, buy your ticket and get on the train. Of course you must do all these things, but you must do a great many other things before you do that.

The first thing that you do is to go to the police where you are registered and get what they call a Fragebogen, which means a question sheet. You cannot get this sheet unless you have a letter from some important person or firm stating that it is necessary for you to go. Your reason must be a very good one.

You fill out your Fragebogen, the police look up your record and if it is found out to be all right, they put your letter of recommendation, your passport, the Fragebogen and half a dozen pictures of yourself in an envelope and seal it. You take this sealed envelope to the main police station in the district in which you live. Here the package is opened by several different men in several different rooms, and finally, after many questions and much stamping, you are told to write your name across your picture which has been pasted on a card.

After you are through with the German police, you must have your pass viséd by the Austro-Hungarian consul. Here you must go to three different men and be "stamped" and the last man takes two more of your pictures and pastes them on a pink card. Then you pay four marks to another man who does some more stamping. After all these things are done, you go back to your local police and register that you are going away, and then, after showing your pass at the railway ticket office, you are allowed to buy your ticket to Vienna. This was what a neutral American had to do before we got into the war—now I doubt if an American could go to Vienna at all.

It is a sixteen hours' ride from Berlin to Vienna with a one hour's wait at Tetschen on the Austro-German frontier. Our first stop was at Dresden, and like all German stations it was full of soldiers. The ride from Dresden to Tetschen is very beautiful. It runs through the Saxon Switzerland, a lovely country with mountains, streams of water and little villages. How peaceful everything was! How quiet! It did not seem like a country that was taking part in a great war.

At noon we reached Tetschen, a cold, dismal looking place. First we had our baggage examined by both Austrian and German officials. These officials are all clever men. Some of them are dressed up to look like common soldiers, but they are all fine lawyers and criminal experts.

A soldier stood up on a box and said that any one who had any writing about him should give it up. In my stocking I had my money and a letter of introduction that I had brought from America and which I was going to use in Vienna. I understood perfectly well what the soldier said, but for some unknown reason or other I simply didn't feel like pulling the letter out of my stocking. This was madness on my part, for I had learned long ago that if you follow directions in Germany you don't get into trouble, and if you don't follow them, you are sure to get into a mess.

After this, we were taken through a gate where we gave up our passes and they were taken away to see if the picture corresponded with the one sent down by the German police. The men here had a dreadful time with my name. All Germans find my name a difficult one. One soldier here just insisted that my name was "Auley" without the "Mc," but finally another soldier gave him a poke and said that "Mc" was a title and that I was of royal blood.

Everybody who didn't have a German or an Austrian pass had to undress, and as soon as I got into the searching-room, I gave the woman who was to search me, the letter out of my stocking. She took it and gave it to some one. My heart was in my mouth, for I had no idea what they would do, and I knew if they did anything to me it would be my own fault for not following directions.

I got a very good searching, and I had to take off all my clothes, only when she told me to take off my shoes and I commenced to unlace one boot she said never mind that one, to take off the other one. I had hardly gotten dressed before there was a knock at the door of the dressing-room and some one said I was wanted. I put on my hat and went out, and there planked in front of the door with both legs spread out and a long sword at his side, was a good-looking little Saxon officer aged about twenty years.

He had a fierce look on his face as he demanded, "Why didn't you give this up in the other room?"

"I couldn't," I answered, "it was in my stocking. You couldn't expect me to take it out of my stocking before all those men, could you?"

Then we both laughed and I said, "I hope you will give it to me again."

"Of course I will," he answered.

I went with him to the commanding officer, but that man would not give me back the letter. I didn't care, I was so glad I hadn't been arrested. When we came back from Vienna, I was the only one of our party that had to undress. I never noticed it, but there was some kind of a mark on my pass, and as soon as the official saw it I had to undress. But this time I had nothing in my stocking. When they searched my trunk they took away from me all the post cards and photos of Vienna I had, and didn't give them back.

After leaving Tetschen, the train runs for hours through Bohemia. It does not touch at Prague but at a number of small picturesque towns such as Kolin and Znaim. The country is extensively cultivated and very fertile. The train was supposed to be an express train but it stopped at every little way-station.

At one station, a very beautifully dressed lady with a little girl got on the train. I thought that she must be the wife of some high official and I was surprised at her lovely clothes away out there in Bohemia. She sat next to me, and in a short time she began talking to the woman who sat across from her and who kept asking over and over if any one in the coupé knew when we got to Deutschbrod. The beautifully-dressed lady said that she knew for she was going there. And then she told the whole coupé about the place.

To my surprise she said that she was the wife of the apothecary at the Barracks at Deutschbrod. The Barracks is a city built since the war on the hills above the town. It was built by the Austrian government and is the home of the refugees of East Galicia whose homes were destroyed by the Russians. Most of these Flüchtlinge, as the Germans call them, are Polish and Russian Jews, but they have also two hundred Italians from near Görz.

The wife of the apothecary, who was a Hungarian woman, said that the refugees had everything they needed and that everything was free—clothes, food, wine, beer, doctor's service and medicine. She said that unless there was some contagious disease in the camp the people were allowed perfect freedom to go and come as they pleased. Most of the inmates have their own gardens and raise their own chickens.

It was dark when we came to the place, but the apothecary's wife pointed it out on a distant hill. It was like a great city, one mass of electric lights sparkling in the darkness. When I came back from Vienna I had a good look at it. It was a hillside town made up of new frame houses, mostly small houses laid out in regular rows separated by straight streets.

After Deutschbrod was passed, our compartment was empty except for a young Jewish woman who had been sitting quietly in the corner. After a while she leaned over to us and said, "You speak English. I can see it that you are Americans. I was once in New York." And then she told us that she was a refugee from East Galicia.

"It was terrible," she said in rather good English. "I was in America for a whole year. I saw Niagara Falls. Then shortly before the war broke out my mother wrote for me to come home. We had such a nice house, and such nice things in our house. They belonged to my ancestors. On the 4th of October we heard that the Russians were coming toward our village and that they were only forty kilometers away. We had already sent our best horses to the army. The ones left behind were sent to the village for the old people. My mother and father rode, and my husband and I walked or rather ran after them for two days as fast as we could. We hadn't time to take anything with us, and we had to leave even our glassware and silver behind. I had a new Persian lamb coat that I left hanging in the cupboard. We have never been able to go back to our homes since." She wept a little.

It was ten o'clock when we came to Vienna. We had a hard time getting a cab, and when we did get one it rattled over the stones as though it had no rubber on its wheels. The first thing we had to do the next morning was to go to the police, and it took us the whole morning until two o'clock in the afternoon to get registered. There were only two clerks and about fifty people waiting. We came in turns, and if any one tried to get in ahead of his turn the rest of us howled, "Wait your turn." One fat, important-looking foreigner tried to get into the clerk's room without waiting. Three men waiters jumped up and turned him out. This pleased the rest of us and we all giggled with glee.

VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

I had never realized the wonderfulness of the German food card system until I went to Vienna. In Germany you can buy at a reasonable price your allotted ration of food, and the poor people are just as well off as the rich, but in Vienna the rich people have everything and the poor people are in great need because of the lack of food regulations, and while there is an abundance of food it is so dear that the poor cannot afford to buy. And Vienna is not like Berlin—there are a great many poor people in Vienna.

For some time there has been a bread card in Vienna, and at the time of my visit, November 1916, the government was just beginning to take the food question in hand, and a few weeks before Christmas a coffee and a sugar card were issued. But the Austrians have not the gift for organization which the Germans have, and I heard that even six months later the food distribution was in a very poor state. I talked to many Austrians, and they all told me that they were anxious to have the entire German food card system established in Austria.

Austria is a great agricultural and wheat-raising country, and yet when I was there, there was very little bread in Vienna. The beautiful white Viennese bread had entirely disappeared, and a soggy brown stuff had taken its place. There was one kind called "Anker Bread" that was still very good, and the people stood in line to get it. And all this was not because flour was scarce but because of its poor distribution.

None of the restaurants are allowed to serve bread, even if you have a bread card you cannot get it, and the only place a stranger can get bread in Vienna is for breakfast at his hotel. People who eat in restaurants carry their bread with them, and generals and all sorts of high officials have little packages of bread concealed in their pockets which they slyly pull out at the table.

All the white flour is baked into cakes, and the Viennese cakes are as white and as wonderful as in their palmiest days. But the price! In a café a piece of cake of two thin layers costs one crown twenty-five hellers, about a quarter in our money.

In most German cities one person gets about a pound of meat a week, but in Vienna there is no meat card and you can buy as much meat as you like if you can afford to buy it. Every meat shop in Vienna is hanging full of meat—sausage, ham, pork, beef, chickens and geese. I went through the great Viennese market which is squares and squares long. Everywhere meat, meat, meat. I had forgotten that there was so much meat in the world. Stall after stall just loaded down with hams, but no bacon. Mostly young pigs. But no one was buying, only looking—like Till Eulenspiegel, as though the smell was enough. The hams were from one dollar to one dollar and sixty cents a pound, and the beef was even higher. Sausage was not so expensive, and geese were cheaper than in Germany.

I had never seen such an abundance of everything. Acres and acres of cabbages piled up as high as a house—great, hard-looking heads of a fresh green color. Then barrels and barrels of apples. Not such good apples as we have in America, but at such a fancy price! For thirty-two cents we got six little dried-up apples that we could hardly eat.

From the apple market we went to the onion market. Can you imagine a square as big as Union Square in New York where nothing but onions are sold? Well, they have that in Vienna. And the most wonderful onions! Small white ones, small red ones, big yellow ones and green ones! Onion peelings flew around everywhere, and do you know that they really smelled sweet? But the old women in back of the stalls did not look sweet, but as though they had stood among onions so long that they had become dried-up onions themselves.

They had no potatoes in the market, but the restaurants seemed to have plenty of them. Cheese was just beginning to be scarce, and one person could buy only a quarter of a pound at a time. We collected cheese to take back to Berlin with us, and we took turns going into the shops and buying a piece so that the clerks would not know that we were together. We collected a good many pounds and we got them safely over the frontier.

Eating in a restaurant in Vienna in war time is the most expensive thing of which I know. Small meat or deer orders were from eighty cents upward, and no potatoes go with this order. In Germany, you can get a piece of meat, two potatoes and a vegetable for thirty-two cents.

There seems to be plenty of milk and sugar in Vienna, but it is forbidden for any café to serve milk in coffee between the hours of two and seven o'clock, when every Viennese goes to a café to drink coffee. This restriction saves many gallons of milk. The coffee is real coffee and very good. You can have as many eggs as you like, very nicely cooked at fifteen cents an egg. Sugar is not served on the trains between Berlin and Vienna, but in a café they give you three lumps with a cup of coffee. Saccharine is served with tea.

The war has been very hard on the Austrians, and distress shows itself in the faces of the people you meet on the streets. They do not come of the sturdy stock that the Germans come from. They have always been a very religious people, and the war has made them more religious than ever, and now they are always burning candles before their favorite altar or saint's picture. The sacred picture in the Church of St. Stephen is always lighted by dozens of candles, and there is never a moment when the church is opened that some one is not kneeling before this picture, children, soldiers and old women with their empty market baskets. For the Catholic Viennese this picture is the center of everything, and in the war this inanimate object has played a big part. They pray to it to help the men in battle, to care for the wounded and to bless the souls of the dead. Centuries ago this picture was stolen by the Turks or some other kind of Pagan, and it is said that the eyes of the picture shed real tears until it was brought back and placed in a Christian church again. It stands on the ground on an easel, and people are allowed to touch the wire over it.

Small change is very scarce in Vienna, and they have torn the two-crown paper bills in two, and each half is good for a crown. They also use stamps for change as they do in Germany. Now they are making crowns and half-crowns of paper.

This winter is going to be terrible for the poor of Vienna, for last winter was bad enough. I really wonder what the people will do to get along.

SOLDIERS OF VIENNA.

I had been in Vienna, and each time I had thought that the most wonderful and exquisite things were the Viennese officers. They have always seemed to me like dainty paper dolls which had just stepped out of a fashion plate. I had imagined that in war time they would look less spick and span—but no indeed, they looked just the same, real war having made no difference.

The Austrian officer is of only one type. He is very tall, very slender and very graceful, and he is mostly rather dark than light. He has a small head and face, a straight nose, curved lips and a short but square chin. He may have eyes of any color, but he is clean shaven—a mustache is no longer the fashion. His nails are polished and his manners are delightful. He is generally well educated and very clever. But he does not look substantial. He seems to have no inner power.

The uniform of the Austrian army from the commonest soldiers to the highest official is away ahead of the German uniforms. The German uniforms have the tendency to make the men look wide and squatty, and the ugly little stiff flat caps of the Germans only emphasize this fact. The Austrian uniform on the other hand makes the men look tall and slender. The belt of the coat is high, and this makes the legs look longer, and the straight cap adds more to the height.

Most of the officers' coats are of field-gray color, but not all as in Germany. The artillery men, for instance, wear a coat of dark reddish brown that is very stunning in color. The Hussars wear a short gray coat of very heavy cloth and black trousers. Around their neck they wear a fur collar and over the fur a heavy gold braid is tied. Other officers wear white broadcloth uniforms, and although Vienna is by no means a clean city these white suits are always spotless. Most of the officers wear white kid gloves and their boots shine like a mirror. The streets of Vienna are full of these officers. One wonders who is at the front.

Nearly all the Austrian officers and many of the Viennese policemen wear corsets, and you can see the corsets displayed in the men's furnishings windows. They are not as long as a woman's corset and are generally made of fancy silk, yellow and black—the Austrian colors—preferred. All the officers wear such long swords that they drag on the ground.

They do not have shoulder straps to denote rank as they have in Germany, but stars on the collar are used instead. A single star made out of any kind of cloth denotes a common soldier; two stars an Unteroffizier, or a corporal; three stars a Feldwebel, or a sergeant; a silver star means a Leutnant, or a lieutenant; two silver stars an Oberleutnant, or a first lieutenant; three silver stars means a Hauptmann, or a captain; one gold star means a Major, and so on up the list.

All the uniforms are very practical and very well made. The overcoats of the common soldiers are lined all the way down, and the gray caps are not stiff but are made out of a soft cloth. The legs are bound in strips of heavy cloth which wind round and round.

All the common soldiers have their hats stuck full of fancy pins of all kinds, and the soldiers from Tyrol have Edelweiss pins stuck in their hats, for that is the flower of the mountains. The Viennese Red Cross girls also wear many pins. They wear a gray suit and a hat that is trimmed with bright red and is very becoming.

If Vienna is full of officers the country around is full of common soldiers. I saw them from the train windows. Some of them were farming, others were fishing, and still others were walking along the country roads, perhaps going home on a furlough.