The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Blockade' by Anna Eisenmenger Part 2

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

55 MinutesPG-13Pete continues a reading and lite commentary on "Blockade: The Diary of an Austrian Middle-Class Woman 1914-1924."FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/VIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. Brenda wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it, if you ask me, it's the fastest way to a meltdown. Me, I just prepare the fastest way to get stuff, and it doesn't get faster than Appliances Delivered.com. Top brand appliances, top brand electricals,

and if it's online, it's in stock. with next day delivery in Greater Dublin. Appliances Delivered.com, part of expert electrical. See it, buy it, get it tomorrow. Or you know, fight, Brenda. I want to welcome everyone back to part two of my reading of Blockade by Anna Eisenmanger. Before I get started, I want to remind everyone that Thomas and I, Thomas 777 and I are doing watch and comment party. on movies and the first movie we started with was taxi driver, the 1976 Martin Scorsese

classic written by the great Paul Schrader. And it's available at Gumroad. If you go to Freeman Beyond the wall.com forward slash taxi driver, all one word. You can access the gum road page for the video there. And also I did the audio because I knew some people weren't going to be able to sit for three hours and watch video. They just don't have the time to do that. But if you know the movie and you want to hear our commentary on it, the audio is there for you. Ten bucks.

Someone told me that that's what it is for a tub of popcorn in a movie theater nowadays. And I would suspect a lot of you are not going to movie theaters because I know I haven't been to one in a very long time. So, all right. Let's start and take a sip of water. We're up to November 1st, 1918. I think this is a very long entry. It says,

Wretched Meals, Extra Edition. Ernie comes back. Lysbeth, Volfe, and I were seated at our wartime breakfast table. From a hamstered tin of milk, I was spooning out the scanty rations for Lysbeth and Wolfey into bowls filled with hot water. After the spoon had been used, it was carefully scraped so that not a drop of milk should.

be lost. Wolfie was then allowed to lick the spoon, which he did with great thoroughness, which he did with great thoroughness and obvious enjoyment. Fortunately, the milk was sweetened. For months, we have been getting our only saccharine on our ration cards or very small portions of sticky, yellow, unpalatable raw sugar. The rations, if one gets them at all, are so small that it is impossible to meet one sugar requirements with them for a week, allowing one cup of tea a day. Tea and coffee, I have in fact long... Tea and coffee I have, in fact, long since banished from our menu as luxurious stimulants without any nutritive value.

Strangely enough, it was our old cook, now my only remaining help with the housework and otherwise not at all given to complaining, who objected most strongly to this rule. She is a Viennese, and even in prosperous times, many Viennese live mainly on coffee and milk with the famous and excellent Viennese bread and rolls. Both now belong to history, and Volfi only knows Kipfell, small loaves, and s'malt white rolls, from the enthusiastic descriptions of Kathy, who keeps on sighing, if I only have my coffee and my roll again. The portion of the loaf which we draw on our ration cards, I divide up very carefully by means of scratches on the crust. I use a very sharp knife for cutting the loaf for any crumbling would mean waste. The bread is pale yellow and moist as long as it is fresh.

Though it is kept in the bread pan, it gets dry very quickly. When it is bitten, it grates against its teeth as though it contains sand. It is made of a mixture of maize flour, horse chestnut flour, and a little rye. Lasbeth can hardly digest it, and I have difficulty in persuading her to eat a part of her ration. A so-called plum jam is supposed to make the bread more palatable. It looks like cart greased and has an indefinable but at any rate a Swedish taste. It is my unpleasant duty as housewife to find all. all these dubious food stuffs, excellent and tasty,

and order not to rob my three table companions of their appetite, which at any rate, in Wolfie's case, is still approximately normal. He tolerates the bad and insufficient fare comparatively well, whereas we adults frequently suffer from digestive troubles, which take away all our appetite. Wolfie is not exactly robust, which is not surprising in view of the lack of nourishing food, but he has kept his sunburn from the summer, although we never left the city.

Our large southeast terrace has overlooking the park of the boys' school has proved a real boon. Wolfie can play all sorts of games there, and in the fine weather, Lysbeth was able to sit out on it and work at the sewing, which is always accumulating in the household. And now that the weather has turned raw and cool, Lysbeth can save herself the fatigue of a walk with Wolfie, for the little fellow is warmly wrapped up and sent to the terrace where he rides round on his little bicycle and busies himself with the bricks. Though being always with grown-up people, Wolfie is rather precocious. He has an extraordinarily quick understanding, and in spite of his highest spirits, is a gentle, patient child. Vienna is one of those cities that is just, it's a pearl. It's a jewel.

Just 20 years before this, it was where people flocked, where poets, romantics flocked. And now people are starving. People are, they have food, but they can get no nourishment from it. And this is what happens,

not only in a war, but it happens when you're a targeted people. When the powers it, maybe not in your own country, as it is today, but the powers of be decide that you are no longer important, that maybe even you need to be wiped out. So, extra addition. Our quiet street lies apart from any main thoroughfare so that we hear none of the tumult of the city, not even the shout extra addition, to which the population has grown accustomed during the last for years. But our house porter, who himself has two sons at the front, and therefore takes a great

interest in the war news, supplies us with all the war bulletins. That is to say, he reads the newspapers first, and I pay for them when he brings them to us. He himself is exempted from military service on account of his gout. Today, Kathy opened the door to him. The old man was obviously excited. Now we're done for. Now the game's up. That rascal Coralli, has called back the Hungarian regiments from the front, and now we're left there. I let the old man go on talking while Liesbeth and I read the latest bulletins. Count Kouroulli was yesterday appointed prime minister by the emperor. Count Kouroulli has recalled the Hungarian regiments from the Italian front.

Count Tiza has been shot by two soldiers. A second extradition brought the war bulletin. On the Italian mountain front, our troops will systematically carry out the proposed measures of evacuation and occupy the same positions as at the beginning of the Italian campaign. In the Venetian plan, the retreat across the Taliumento is in progress. The total evacuation of Serbian territory is about to be affected. Lysbeth and I were plunged in consternation. The Hungarian regiments recalled what was Corolli thinking of and why. Why had he, of all people, been appointed Prime Minister when everyone knew that he was an ambitious

revolutionary? What was going to happen? We had no soldiers to spare. How could we replace the Hungarian regiments? We could not replace them. That the bulletin made quite clear. Retreat all along the Italian and Serbian front. We tried to reassure and comfort each other, but were both filled with secret apprehension.

There is no need to worry about Rudy. He is with headquarters staff, I said. But you know, Mother Rudy wrote in his last letter that he was going to volunteer for service at the front because they were so short of officers. Oh, mother, how terrible, said Lysbeth, and she began to cry quietly. What, you, a soldier's wife, and my daughter crying for shame. Lysbeth tried to hide her, tried hard to smile. We're not all as brave as you, mother. I stroked her fair head.

Am I brave? I thought to myself. At night, I shed hot tears and gave. vent to all the grief which had been weighing on my soul during the day beneath a mask of indifference, and can one call women cowardly if they break down under the prolonged anxiety for their dear husbands? Wolfie, who saw his mother crying, pressed himself against her in mute affection. Then he seized her hand, and so to distract her thoughts, he began his childish game, addressing each of his fingers in turn. This is the thumb which shakes the plums. This

gathers them up, this carries them home, and this little rascal swallows them all. The telephone bell rang. Edith, Carl's fiancée, had read the alarming news and was very anxious, for she knew that Carl was in the trenches. I determined to go to the war ministry where a cousin of my late husband, a lieutenant general, has a responsible position. I found him in a very grave mood. He, too, criticized Corolli bitterly. He showed me an Italian and general staff bulletin, irresistible advance of our victorious troops. The Czechoslovakian troops are taking part in the attack. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. Brenda wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it, if you ask me. It's the fastest way to a meltdown. Me, I just prepare the fastest way to get stuff, and it doesn't get faster than appliances delivered.com. Top brand appliances, top brand electricals, and if it's online, it's in stock. With next day delivery in Greater Dublin. Appliances Delivered.aE, part of expert electrical. See it, buy it, get it tomorrow.

Or you know, fight Branda. The Lieutenant General told me that the commander-in-chief, realizing that in view of the withdrawal of the Hungarian regiments and the increasing difficulties of supplying and equipping the armies, it would be impossible to hold the Italian front, had requested the Italian military leaders to open negotiation for an armistice. My God, then they will come back, I said joyfully. The lieutenant general quenched my delight by saying, that is far from certain.

The Italians answered our request for armisticeousings by violent attacks, supported by the English and Americans, which caused us a large number of dead and wounded. That is cruel and barbarous and also utterly incomprehensible, I said. Not so incomprehensible as you imagine. I looked upon it as a sign that our enemies mean to impose on us very severe armistice terms, declared the lieutenant general. But they must be in accordance with Wilson's 14 points. We have been promised that.

Nonsense. Wilson is a civilian and will have to leave the peace terms to the soldiers. I hurried home. In the streets, groups of people were standing exchanging views concerning the latest bulletins. I reflected what I should say to Lysbeth in order not to alarm. her too greatly. The old house porter was standing outside our front door. It almost looked as though he were waiting for me. He came a few steps to meet me. Now, frau, a great surprise. The young gentleman has come home, which, I seized his arm with a sense of mingled joy and alarm. Why, air Ernie? I rushed

up the stairs as fast as my feet would carry me until I was completely out of breath. I rang the bell. Kathy opened the door and tried to tell me the news. I thrust her on one side. On the way to Ernie's room, I heard the notes of the piano. I stood still and I listened. I heard Ernie's favorite melody from Mozart's C-sharp string quartet. On the tips of my toes, I stepped to the door of the sitting room and opened it quietly. Lysbeth was standing at the end of the piano. Bulfi was leaning against her, holding her arm. She put her finger to her lips. Ernie, with a black bandage over both eyes, was seated at the piano. He looked very pale. His face was turned upwards, and an ecstatic smile played off his soft.

soft childish lips. He passed from the Mozart to a melody that was strange to me, but it's wonderful. Melancholy harmonies seemed to enrapture him. I had stepped up to him from behind very quietly, but he was conscious of my approach. Without interrupting his playing, he said to me so softly that I had to bend down to catch the words. Mother, that is a memory of the 10th of May, 1914, when you could not help crying on the balcony. Out at the front, these notes were sounding in my head all the time. I smoothed one of the fair, wavy locks of his hair that had been disarranged by the eye bandage. He stopped playing and clutched his head with a low sigh. It still hurts. He stood up and fell for my hands. But the professor in Innsbruck told me that the pains would soon stop altogether,

and that everything would be all right. Yes, my boy, I said. Everything. Everything is all right, almost all right, because you are here. And with a side glance at Lysbeth, now if only Rudy and Carl would come too, everything would really be all right. But come, tell me everything. I know nothing yet. When and how are you wounded? It was just a fortnight ago today. Mother, it really, there is very little to tell. What has happened to me is only what is happening or might have been happening for years to others. And he told me how he and his men were repelling an airplane attack on his gun position when a bomb dropped from an airplane exploded near them and killed seven of his men, while he himself was wounded in the left eye by a small splinter.

As they were in an advance and very inaccessible mountain position, he could not get to the ambulance until the next day. They sent him with the next batch of wounded to Innsbruck, where the professor operated on him at once, but said that it would be a long time before he could use his eyes again, for the wounded eye had infected the sound one. You will have to be. be patient with me, mother, until it is cured, he added. And this thing, he caught hold of a large silver medal for valor attached to his field-grate tunic. They hung on, they hung on to me afterwards. But I would rather have my sight, for it is terrible to be blind. You must have patience, my boy. Tomorrow we will go to Professor X at the eye clinic. You know what a high opinion your

father had of him. If he takes you in hand, you will soon get back the use of your eyes. November 5th, 1918, Ernie's eyes, Carl comes back. Events cried upon one another, but alas, not happy events. Nothing but fresh trouble and anxiety on all hands. Yesterday, I took Ernie to Professor X at the Eye Clinic. I assume she's using Professor X, so as not to use the name of the, of the, of the, the, the, the real, used a real name of the doctor. I'm assuming this has nothing to do with X-Men. While Ernie was having a new bandage put on his eyes,

the professor told me that he had practically no hope of saving his sight. The optic nerve was injured. Possibly an operation might be tried later and so on. But don't say anything about this to the patient. It is important to accustom one's self-gradually to such a great misfortune. I must have turned pale when he told me this, for he pressed me gently onto a chair and told one of the nurses to give me a glass of water. I could not speak a word, but I was filled with utter despair.

Dear Frow Martha, don't lose heart. I know that you are an energetic, devoted, and unselfish mother. I repeated that later it may be worthwhile to try an operation. What shall I say to him? That the cure will take some weeks, at the end of which time you are come to see, you are to come and see me again. Do not rob him of all hope. I was choked with rising tears.

I stepped into the adjacent waiting room in order that my voice might not betray my distress to Ernie. The long room was filled to overflowing. The benches round the walls were crowded with patients waiting to be attended to, and many had to stand because they could not find a vacant seat. Most of them had bandages over their eyes and dark glasses or eyeshades. Nearly all were accompanied by friends and relations because they were helpless, and their steps had to be guided. I closed the door behind me and leant against it.

The thought of Ernie's blindness made my knees tremble and my heart throb. A young, poorly dressed woman seated near me on the end of the bench was chattering with apparent gaiety and unconcerned to a soldier who looked hardly more than a boy. She rose from her seat and came up to me. You're not feeling well. Do sit down. And she pointed to her place. When I thanked her, she went on with the ingenious and persistent curiosity peculiar to the women

of the lower classes of society. Have you got someone out there? Have you got someone out there? Hold on. Have you got someone there with the professor? Who is it? Your husband or brother? My son, I answered. Well, and is it bad? Blind. And suddenly I felt a longing to flee from all this misery and horror and insensibility and oblivion. My head was in a whirl. The woman seized my arm and laid her finger on her lips.

She made a movement with her head Towards the young soldier who was seated on the bench next to us Staring with sightless eyes into vacancy Blind too my husband But he thinks he is going to see again And so he can bear it And believe me I am very happy to have him back I was crazy with fear that my Poldi

Would be shot dead like all his brothers I shall help him to bear it He just got to get you I mean All the brothers Just one laugh I shall help him to bear it. He's just got to get used to it.

That's all. The woman spoke in a whisper. Then the blind man called out. Marigdell, where are you hiding? She went up to him quickly, and I heard her say softly. It's the son of a grand lady in there. He's worse off than you, shot quite blind. This beastly war, said the man, and a scornful smile played over his lips.

But there's one good thing about it. Bullets and shrapnel treat everyone alike, rich and poor. With a superhuman effort, I roused myself. I shall help him. He's just got to get used to it. The woman's words echoed in my ears. The nurse opened the door leading into the consulting room. I entered. Ernie was standing there unexpectedly. Help him. He's just got to get used to it. The tempest within me had calmed. I recovered my self-control and my invincible energy, which up to now had helped me over every difficulty once more gained the assessment. tendency. I went up to the professor and pressing his hand, I said aloud, thank you, Air Professor. I am delighted to know that everything is so satisfactory. Ernie heard my words and turned his face with a smile in the direction from which they came.

The professor patted me on the shoulder and nodded, come back in a fortnight. By this time, we shall see an improvement. In a fortnight, by that time we shall see improvement. That's what the professor said, didn't he? asked Ernie when we left the clinic. Yes, my child. And during this fortnight, we will all see for you and always tell you what is going on around you. You know, mother darling, I really ought to be thankful that I have escaped so lightly. Just think if I had lost my hearing or my arms, then it would have been all over for my music. I don't need eyes for playing the piano or the cello. And even when I compose, you or Lisbeth will sometimes write down the notes for me, won't you mother?

Of course, my dear boy. I know you will make it easy for me, and so I am quite well again. Make it easy. He must get used to it, echoed in my ears. My God, help me to make it easy for him. Carl has come back, owing to a slight attack of diarrhea, he was taken to a military hospital and then by train through Trant to Vienna. Since the Hungarians have withdrawn from the field,

the war has ended for our soldiers, too. Carl looked very ill. He had no under linen or socks. His uniform was dirty in rags. Mother, I am famished, he said, and walking straight into the kitchen without waiting for me to bring something he began to devour our rations of bread and jam. Forgive me, Mother, but we have gotten into the habit of taking what we can find. He only greeted us very casually and did not notice until much later that Ernie, who had come in to welcome him on Lee's best arm, was wounded. Hello, so it's caught you too, and then still hurriedly chewing and swallowing, well, just wait. We'll pay them out yet, the war profiteers and parasites.

We've grown wiser out there in the trenches, far wiser than we were. Everything must be changed, utterly changed. I got ready, the bath and clean under linen. I got ready the bath and clean under linen. After his bath, Carl went straight to bed, but he was too excited to sleep, although it was almost 11 o'clock at night. He telephoned to Edith, and then he made us all come to his bedside, for he wanted to tell us about himself. He told us that he had been lucky to get the attack of diarrhea, and that the others who would remain at the front were all dead or taken prisoners. The Italians had gone on attacking in spite of the armistice.

For another whole day, they had fired on our retreating columns in the fellethal, and had captured several divisions. That, however, was the only victory they had won. But war made everyone base him contemptible. He had become so too. Carl also told us, in his section near SETI communi, Americans in English were fighting against us, and that the Americans in English had already occupied Trieste. For the first time in the history of the world,

Americans in English had landed as enemies on our coast. After the proclamation of armistice, all military discipline went to pieces. everyone was intent only on getting home and made for home by the way that seemed to him quickest and surest. The men trampled down whatever stood in their way, even if the obstacles were their officers. Woe to the officers who were unpopular with their men. The soldiers be seized to transport trains and plundered the stores to supply themselves with food for the journey. Carl told us that he was crowded with almost a hundred other men in goods truck intended for 40 men or 10 horses.

Wounded, nurses, generals, soldiers were jumbled together anyhow. Soldiers who could not get into the carriages sat on the steps. The buffers are the roofs. Many of them fell off from sheer exhaustion and were run over. The Sudban tunnels were full of seriously wounded and dead, who had been pushed down from the roofs of the carriages, but after all, what did it matter? A few hundred dead more or less among the millions of war victims.

But in the next war, there would be no one foolish, enough to risk his life. They would see to that. Carl was evidently in a nervous, over-excited state, but he went on talking, and only after I had entreated him several times did he consent to try to get to sleep. We are all tired, Carl, and is already past midnight. Do you know, Mother, how I feel here, in a clean bed, washed and fed? As if I were in heaven. Oh, no, there is no heaven so beautiful, as if I were in a beautiful dream, and in that dream I shall try to find sleep. We left Carl's room in order to go to bed ourselves. As I was helping Ernie undress, he said,

Mother, Carl seems to me like a complete stranger. Perhaps it is only because I can't see him, but that I should hope I shall be able to do so again soon. Although I was nervously and physically exhausted, sleep refused to close my eyes. For a long, long time, I lay awake, agitated by the horrors of the war. I found myself marveling the civilized human beings

could live through all the brutalities which war entailed, for themselves and others without going utterly to pieces. How terrible must have been the privations and sufferings of those poor men, quite apart from the constant danger to their lives. And I said to myself, what have you to complain of? You have got back two out of three sons, though one is blind and the other's mental balance obviously upset. I folded my hands and lost consciousness as I murmured, deliver us from evil. So if somebody's, coming home from this war and they're angry and they're upset

and they want to rebel and they want to seek to overthrow and to pay back the people who they see did this to them and it's November of 1918

what is the one revolutionary ideology that is spreading and has already taken over one major country. I think you're you're seeing where this is going. November 6, 1918. No news from Rudy, the emperor in Eckertzaw. A Roman poet says, in a palace of resounding brass with a thousand doors, dwells rumor. His housemates are credulity, error, malice, and fear. Wild rumors were in circulation,

and alas, bitter truths are as well. People are afraid of the undisciplined troops who are streaming home, the men who have banded themselves into associations for self-defense against plunderers. That is to say, we must protect ourselves against the defenders of our own country, who, owing to the destructive and demoralizing influence of war, have learned not to shrink from any deed of violence. Vienna will be the rallying point of the returning soldiers. In Vienna, the soldiers will help themselves to what they have so long been deprived of during the war. The soldiers of the guard at the Imperial Palace of Schoenbrun, whither Emperor Carl and his family

had returned after abruptly terminating their visit to Hungary, have deserted their posts without permission. As the safety of the imperial family of Schoenbrun could no longer be guaranteed, the emperor has moved to the castle of Eckerdstaw on the Danube. All the prisoners are said

to have escaped from Mollerstorf and fled to Vienna. As the railway lines are blocked by trains full of returning troops to transport of our scanty food supplies to Vienna is interrupted. Most of the provision shops are closed and so on. With all these rumors, it was difficult for a housewife to keep a cool head. One thing was certain. I must somehow get hold of food. The Czechs and the Hungarians have completely closed their frontiers against the export of foodstuffs. In the whole of Vienna, there is no milk to be had on our ration cards.

I resolved to go to the farmer's wife at Luxembourg again and ask Carl to help me on this ham. Amstering expedition. With some reluctance, he agreed. In the army, Carl made a friend, who fills his head with violent political notions and seems even to try to turn him against us. Carl was to have visited a soldier's meeting with him. That was more important than hamstring. Only by Edith's influence was Carl persuaded to accompany me. When we left the house, we found the streets filled with excited crowds. There were some desperate-looking types among them. Several times we saw officers being mishandled in the streets in order to force them to take the Imperial Eagle from their caps. I was indignant, but Carl seemed delighted. The Imperial Eagle is at the point of death. Quite a different

Phoenix will arise from its ashes. An elderly higher-grade officer was being jostled by some hooligans because he refused to strip off his former distinctions. Carl, go and help him. I shouldn't dream of doing such a thing. It's these great men who have grown fat on the war and looked after their own safety. I wouldn't raise a finger to help one of them. Carl's conduct appalled me, but just then the officer helped himself. He gave the most aggressive of his assailants a vigorous box on the ears, whereupon all five heroes retreated in confusion. It was clear that they were not used to encountering resistance.

I had just made up my mind to go help the old gentleman, and I shouted to him a loud, Bravo. In turning to Carl, I said, What right have these young hooligans to rob our officers of distinction, which it is only their duty to wear. Oh, mother, said Carl, the difference between officers and soldiers is vanished with the war. Just as in future, there will be no privileged social class. No emperor, no princes, no counts, no barons.

Tell me, Carl, I said. Where did you get hold of these anarchist and nihilistic ideas? You always used to be a good patriotic Austrian. My ideas are neither anarchistic nor nihilistic. I am a communist. Good heavens, Carl, you are not speaking seriously. Quite seriously, Mother. How is it possible to be anything else when one sees the injustice suffered by those who are not born into a privileged classes of society? My face must have worn an expression of horror for Carl cast a side-long glance at me

and said, laughing, come, come. That doesn't mean that I'm a criminal. But with those ideas, you might easily become one, Carl, and I know, too, who has put this nonsense in your head? Well, who? So you won't credit me with any ideas of my own. No, I don't credit you with such ideas of your own. They come from your friend, Dr. Arunstom, and since you came back from, have been visiting the house far too often for my taste, I am not an anti-Semite, but I don't like that muddle-headed fanatic. I'll see that you don't meet him. That won't do any good. It would be better if you saw that you didn't meet him, Carl. Carl's face wore a sullen expression, as he said. Arnstom is my friend and one of the most brilliant political thinkers that I know. And how will Edith your fiancé

like being engaged to a communist? That's my business. In any case, I beg you not to speak to her about it. I was silent. I felt that an opposition on my part would only widen the breach, which now separated Carl from his family, a communist. I pondered why this political concept inspired me as a middle-class woman with such horror. Is not communism a walled philosophy like any other, and is not every man entitled to his own opinion. I was afraid less bourgeois prejudice engendered by the environment in which I lived should make me unjust. My mind traveled back to the great French revolution and I tried to discover its connection with the communism of our days. I found it immediately and therewith the explanation of my instinctive loathing and horror. Communism is despotism.

It is a tyranny entailing the forcible suppression of every other free expression of opinion, political opponents and all who do not belong to the proletarian class are treated as deadly enemies and criminals. Communism wants to wipe out deliberately and utterly all the historical tradition that we have learned and loved. It wants to set its vague schemes for promoting the happiness of the nations in place to the old and well-tried political institutions, because it declares that these institutions are unjust, one-sided, and out of date. Every work of a man is incomplete. Nothing on earth is perfect. This is what communism is not yet realized.

It is not communism unjust and one-sided, with murder and destruction as its henchmen to assist in carrying out its plans for ensuring the welfare of the people. If you don't want to be my brother, I'll smash your skull. How many skulls are smashed for the purpose of realizing communistic ideals

is of no importance to a thoroughgoing communists, for it is not the communistic skulls that are smashed. I summed up my reflections. My loathing of communism is not a prejudice born of my bourgeois milieu, but is based on the inhumanity, which goes hand in hand with the practical realization of communistic ideas. To my bourgeois feminine mind, humanity, and communism are as mutually incompatible as are humanity and war. Every practical realization of an idea achieved at the cost of wholesale murder and brutal violence, I feel it to be a transitory victory. and the former values and existences whose destruction it involves, I believe to be needless victims of a gloomy fanaticism. A healthy, natural progress, truly beneficial to mankind, will leave no destruction in its wake.

Isolated voluntary martyrs who play the role of redeemers in the cause of progress, I am prepared to admit, but never brutal fury and destruction. Slowly but irresistibly, the history of human evolution is unfolded, where the limits are set to this evolution is it is beyond our power to divine. But if an idea, which is human because sprung from a human brain, is also grounded on humanity, that it is irresistible and cannot be suppressed, its time will come. But if an idea requires violence and brutality for its realization, it is poisonous and poisons the atmosphere in which it is transitory floating. Even beautiful and humane ideas may become poison if, in the manner of their realization, they stray from the path of

humanity. We have had experience of inhumanity during this war, inhumanity, which might have been avoided by the rulers of the belligerent states if true humanity had dwelt in their hearts. Such inhumanity cannot bring any blessing. If the communistic idea, the realization of what calls for no less destruction than war, is to be the sequel to the war, which we have hardly yet surmounted, then God have mercy upon us, for then the acts of violence will begin in our own camp. I looked at Carl as he strode along beside me no less absorbed in thought than myself. My boy, a perpetrator of violence in the service of his ideas, my motto in life, in accordance with which I have striven to guide my ideas and actions

and whose beautiful words I owe to St. Augustine came to my mind, in the essential unity, in the doubtful freedom, in everything love. I share, I shall need this rule more than ever to understand and to forgive. As we reach the streets leading to the railway stations, the scene completely changed. On the edge of the pavement, soldiers returned to the front were seated in long rows with their rucksacks. Many of them looked neglected and ailing. These crowds were still more dense around the railway stations, where the square and adjacent spaces looked like some disorderly military camp. Although the weather was cold and stormy, many of the soldiers were only wearing their threadbare uniforms without overcoats.

Several times we were asked for cigarettes or food, but we had none to give. Among the soldiers there were also groups of civilians, and upon looking more closely and listening more attentively, one suddenly discovered that a market had sprung up on this place, though certainly without the sanction of the authorities. In this market, clothes, shoes, weapons, blankets, and other still usable articles in the possession. of the soldiers were being bartered for food or tobacco. It's an agorist paradise. Money was refused for what could anyone buy with money when everything that is of practical value to us at the present day, such as foodstuffs and clothes, is subject to government control and only obtainable in exchange for the corresponding sections of rationing cards and frequently not even for these.

Galatian refugees, mainly Jews, generally afforded one party to these transactions. Hundreds of thousands of these refugees have sought safety in Vienna, where in all probability they will settle down for good. The government has done its best to provide some sort of shelter for the men returning from the front, but many of them preferred to remain in the neighborhood of the railway station because they hope thereby to secure all earlier opportunity of being sent back to their homes by the local trains. Although most of the people, in spite of the brutalities they had experienced during the war, looked tired and peaceable, political agitators who had obviously remained in the hinterland during the war were already at work. On the square,

where ordinarily cabs and taxis picked up the travelers, some hundreds of soldiers were standing, listening to a speaker. This agitator, who was evidently attacking the existing social order and whose face was distorted with his efforts, had so overstrained his voice that only now and then was it able to catch one of the familiar cliches from the political textbook of a tub orator. Otherwise, all that was audible was a hoarse bellow. But the cliches sufficed and were greeted with applause, a proof that logical argument is superfluous for the success of a popular orator. No one does anything to help them, so they are electing their soldiers' councils, and they are quite right, Carl explained. How sad, how terribly sad, no one does anything to help them. Amid what ardent

enthusiasm on the part of the civilian population did our soldiers set out for the front. The wounded returning to the hinterland were pampered and extolled as heroes. At the railway stations, the men from the front were made almost ill with the good things that pressed upon them. And now, what a contrast. Thrown entirely upon their own resources and railway trucks filled to bursting, no food during the whole journey, which often lasted for days, yet every soldier was longing in his heart to be at home and in safety. at last, freed from the heavy shackles of war discipline which he had borne for so many years.

The disappointments which await them in the hinterland are bitter, for that which most of them craved, plenty to eat and tranquil sleep, is still for many no more than a beautiful dream. Our government is not even able to supply the civilian population with the most necessary foodstuffs. What is to happen now? When hundreds of thousands of demobilized soldiers will be making additional demands on our food control centers. We shall all starve together, Carl, I said, looking at a train which had just come in, bringing back hundreds of soldiers to Vienna. Why, said Carl? The war has ended for us, Austrians, and so the hunger blockade is bound to end too. For a moment, I felt a shame that I had not thought

of this myself. Now, for the first time, we noticed that the railway booking office was closed. We asked an official how we could get to molding, a modeling. He told us that until the demobilized soldiers had been conveyed to their destinations. No civilians would be allowed on the trains, but that an old war lorry whose chauffeur had a turn for business took passengers to Baden, and he advised us to try to get to places in that. Carl wanted to seize this opportunity to go back home, but I found the chauffeur, and since, in addition to the very high fare for the journey, I gave him a packet of tobacco. He agreed to take us. There were no seats, and in any case, sitting would have been impracticable, for we were standing pressed tightly together.

Fortunately, the sides were high enough to prevent our being jerked out. We all swayed in one compact mass, now to the right and now to the left. It was lucky that the chauffeur was careful how he took the bends and the wretched roads, or we should probably have been overturned. Battered and bruised, we alighted at maudling, and as a train service from there to lock Luxembourg was suspended, there was nothing left for it to do but to journey on foot. The shortest route was by the side of a railroad track which ran across field in the direction of Luxembourg Park, visible like a green oasis in the distance. We noticed some horses with no one in charge of them searching for the scanty fodder among the stubble.

Already in the neighborhood of modeling, we found on and near the railway track objects, which would not be found there in normal times, military caps, pooties, used cartridges, food tins, and the like. As we approached Luxembourg, these items of soldiers' equipment became more and more numerous. We even found a pack saddle and portions of a machine gun.

Some children came toward us carrying cartridge boxes and rifles. When we asked how they got a hold of them, they said they had found them. At Luxembourg, we were told that after the proclamation of the armistice, every man and a woman engaged in military service had simply run away without waiting to be formally disbanded.

The regiment of Taira Lise Kaiser-Yager stationed there had really no longer any connection with the genuine Kaiser-Yager, who had been practically wiped out in the repeated Italian offenses. This regiment, except for a few Taira-Lise officers, composed of Czechs, Croats, and Poles. The men, seized with a sudden freedom psychosis,

had, despite the exhortations of their officers, set off then and there to march to mottling after first paying a visit to the military storehouses. They hoped to be able to abort a train passing through a modling. On the way they had simply thrown away any articles of equipment that happened to be inconvenient or superfluous, we were stopped at Luxembourg by an armed citizen who told us that he belonged to the Self-Defense Association. He informed us that it was forbidden to take away provisions from Lockheaval. Luxembourg and its surroundings. I thanked them for the information and discussed with Carl what we were to do. Carl was in a very bad temper and told me that he had, from the first, looked upon this journey as a waste of time.

Indeed, and yet you all want food. Where am I to get it, if not here? Carl assured that we should soon have plenty to eat, for the government would be transferred to other hands, and this would put an end to all the existing mismanagement. I made no reply, for I had no faith in his theories, and felt no desire to engage in an argument. When I reached the farm of my benefactress, I found her husband at home with what appeared to be a serious injury to his leg. She complained to me that he had vainly implored the village doctor to come and see him. He was so busy attending to the crowds of sick and wounded men from the front that up to now he had not been able to find time, as they knew that I had often helped my husband with his patients. The farmer asked me at any rate to loosen his bandage as he thought it was causing him acute pain.

I did as he asked and found a very nasty-looking leg so that I resolved to go to a doctor whom I knew at the Schloss Military Hospital and try to ensure that the man had proper attention. The doctor was very obliging, but he told me that he was suffering from a sudden shortage of assistance and nurses, since many of the ambulance staff had deserted their post when the armistess was proclaimed. He was also very short of bandages and had grave doubts whether it would be possible to continue the work at the hospital. Although overloaded with work, he came to see the wounded farmer and declared that he needed hospital treatment as there was danger that the leg might have to be amputated. The farmer, however, refused emphatically to go back to the war.

The military hospital being associated in his mind with the horrors of war from which he had just escaped. We were obliged, therefore, to confine ourselves to endeavoring to relieve the pain and putting him to bed with fresh bandages. Both the doctor and I impressed upon the wife that she must let him know at once if her husband got worse, as his life might depend upon it. I was told that at the telephone exchanges, the soldiers and non-commissioned officers on duty had simply made off, and that Luxembourg volunteers, women and girls, were managing the telephone services best they could. thus the whole military apparatus so laboriously built up was utterly broken down and unusable, how long it may be before everything is once more proceeding along normal, peaceful lines.

The farmer, who now, after a successful injection, was lying in bed free from pain, was engaged in conversation by Carl, and soon they were both of one mind that the food control centers in the hinterland were thoroughly mismanaged and were trying to rob the farmers of all they had without in any way benefiting the soldiers. The farmer swore that he would not take part with any more of the scanty remaining supplies, seeing that half his land was lying fallow for lack of working hands. At this moment, the farmer's 10-year-old son, Pepe, rushed into the room, very excited. He was wearing shoes with wooden soles, which made a terrible clatter on the hard floor.

Father, father, I've got a white horse, a beautiful white horse. I've tied him up by the spring outside. He's drinking and drinking. He's so thirsty. And as no one knew what he meant, and his father said crossly, Peppel, have you turned crazy? He ran to the door opening to the farm yard and flung it wide open. Now you see the white horse father. And indeed, tied up by the spring was an animal, which, though rather thin, was indubitably a white horse. Peperle did not wait to be asked. It was in our field. field. Ah, so that's it, said the farmer in a tone of understanding. They've let it loose so that someone else should look after it. And he told us that in Carinthia and other districts, which lay on

the return route of the army hundreds of onerless cavalry horses were roaming about. The military authorities did not bother about them. People who thought they could feed them caught them to use as drought horses. A number had been slaughtered. The white horse must be one of them. Come here, Pepe. You're a clever lad. Put the horse in the stable and give him an arm full of hay. Mother shall tell the police he's here, and they can fetch him and pay the cost for his feed, else here he shall stay. Hurrah, said Pepro, and clattered out of the room.

He's a sharp little lad, is Peppro, said the father's wife proudly. He helps me on the farm already. I, said the farmer, till the next war, then perhaps they'll make a cripple of him. No farmer, said Carl. there'll be no more war. We'll see to that. If it were only true, said the farmer's wife. At this point, I turned the conversation on to the purpose of my visit, and the farmer declared that he would help me, but he wouldn't take money, for there was nothing to be bought with it. But in exchange for tobacco, or a dress for the wife, or shoes for the children, I could have something. Fortunately, my husband had quite a large quantity of tobacco and boxes of cigars left over from peacetime.

I promised the farmer half a pound of tobacco and told them I could give him a small sample of it at once. Meanwhile, the farmer's wife had filled Carl's rucksack and my handbasket with dainties such as black bread, bacon, lard, butter, flour, peas, eggs, and potatoes. Carl stuck a large bottle of milk in his military overcoat, for the farmer still had a few cows left. In order to evade the Luxembourg local guard, we decided to go to the station at Guntrostorf. which was an hour's walk from the farm and try to get on there, get on from there to Vienna by a Subban train. On the roads, we met groups of soldiers from the front, making their way back to their homes on foot.

The people in the villages and farms were terrified of them, for it was said that not a hen or pig was safe against their depredations. Could one blame them? Torn away from their certain means of livelihood in order to defend the country, broken and exhausted in body and soul, they returned to the hinterland and home for which they had yearned so passionately and were met with only hunger and privation. What was the use of our going through all that? Was the question one heard again and again. A good-natured old countrymen had attached himself to us. When a large group of soldiers became visible in the distance, he advised us to

go out of their way, and we hurriedly took refuge behind a haystack and waited until the men had passed. Carl did not approve of this at all. He grumbled and muttered to himself, and I was thankful that he was still so weak from his illness and the fatigue of carrying the heavy rucksack that he turned faint and had to sit down beside us pale and panting. The countrymen handed him a bottle of brandy, drink some of that as plum brandy. And when Carl had recovered his breath, it's shameful to hide from one's comrades as one wood from thieves and murderers. But that's what they are, trained thieves and murderers, the men who are coming. back from the war, said the countrymen. They've been taught to rob and murder. The men passed us, walking wearily and out of step. They had two goats with them. Look there, said the countrymen. They didn't find those goats on the Italian front, since a cow is difficult to feed in the hinterland, owing to the shortage of fodder, and moreover, most of the cows were requisitioned in orders to supply meat for the soldiers at the front. Recourse was had to goats for the milk supply,

and happy as the man who can feed a goat, and so procure milk for his children. A November wind was blowing across the fields, and we were chilled to the bone. When at length we reached Guntropstorff and were taken on by a goods train to Vienna. At the station, the soldiers' council had assumed control. Their activity consisted mainly in searching the arriving and departing civilians for foodstuffs. Fortunately, Carl was wearing his uniform from which, in accordance with his political views, he had removed the marks of distinction. His clothes were so shabby that he was taken for a common soldier,

left unmolested. On the other hand, they tried to take away the contents of my basket. Carl, however, took two of the soldiers aside, and after a brief conversation, which I was unable to hear, they allowed me to pass, a little grudgingly, but without lightening the contents of my basket. I was protected by my son's communistic views and trouble and wanted, and one had so far demoralized me that I made no protest, but I was ashamed nonetheless. When we reached home, a new incest. surprise was awaiting me. Rudy had been sent back wounded. He was lying in the Weidner Hospital, where immediately after arrival, one of his legs had been amputated at the knee and the other halfway up the thigh. Lysbeth was almost in despair, for this meant that her husband's career as an

officer was ended. Lysbeth told me that Rudy had been wounded immediately after the conclusion of the armistice with the Italians. After our troops had ceased to make any resistance, the Italians pursued and fired at them for hours, so that large numbers of our men were killed and wounded, and several divisions were taken prisoners, after the armistice. Our soldiers, our generals protested, but to no purpose. The Italians felt that they were the victors and proceeded to trample and the vanquished in the most brutal fashion in order to make us realize that we were utterly at their mercy for our wheel and woe, or woe. I was indignant. The Italians ought not to have degraded themselves by this cheap and barbarous success, but such a very much.

his war, the very epitome of all human vileness. Rudy insisted on being conveyed to Vienna, as he did not want to risk falling into the hands of the Italians. It was also reported that the Italians had occupied the old German towns of Bozen and Moran, and that even Innsbruck was not safe from them. Where was it all going to end? I sued Lisbeth agitation with hackneyed phrases to the effect that things might be worse, and that one must be thankful for small mercies. After I had given Ernie and crawl some food. I fell to my, I fell onto my bed, dead tired, and slept deeply and heavily. Some may wonder how a woman, a housewife in 1918, has such an education of the French Revolution and the communist ideal. She, she would be well educated. She did not come from a poor family.

she would be a reader. Her husband, as a doctor, would have a library. As you can tell from the way she writes, she is a very well-educated woman. So, yeah, there's no problem there. This isn't, this wasn't rewritten in ballpoint pen 50 years later. Okay, so yeah, there's that. But as you can see, you can see where this is going, that they're expected. now the blockade of food, which would have been imposed upon them by their own, by their own government to be lifted, yet there's a revolutionary spirit in the air. And what we know about revolutionaries is they will look upon someone like her, even with Carl's leanings. Let me end it there. Went a good, oh, 54 minutes. Yeah, I knew this is going to be a long one. All right, well, I hope you're enjoying this, I think this is really eye-opening about what happened immediately after. Immediately after the central powers were forced to give up and the allies or even the Italians are taken a victory or taken a victory lap by killing people even after the armistice has been

announced. There were ads in this. You can, if you want to support the show and get the One of the biggest benefits of that is getting the episodes early and ad-free. You go to freeam Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. If you support me right there through the website, do it on substack, subscribe star, gumroad, or Patreon. You get the episodes early and ad-free. All right. Until part three, which is November 8, 1918, failure of the meat supply and Carl's communist propaganda. Until the next time. Thank you.