The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Blockade' by Anna Eisenmenger Part 7

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

36 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.

Pound of Heineken, please. That could be the sound of someone winning a away for a Champions League trip for two. What's that now? Well, order a pint of Heinegan and you get entered into a draw for a Champions League trip for not one, but two people. 100 pubs and a guaranteed winner in each one. If you win, my passport is well in date.

Okay. Check Heinegan's Instagram for participating pubs. Tees and C's apply. Doesn't actually expire until like 2040 or some. Get the facts. Be Drinkaware. Visit Drinkaware. Pst, did you know?

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It's a Black Friday secret. Keep it to yourself. 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

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See it, buy it, get it tomorrow Or you know, fight Brenda I want to welcome everyone back to part 7 of my reading of Blockade by Anna Eisenmanger. So I set up a page on my website. It is freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash movies. And that's where I share the links to Thomas and my movie reviews that are available on Gumroad. The latest is the 1987 Catherine Bigelow Classic Near Dark.

And the first one we did was Martin's, Corsese's 1970s classic, 76 taxi driver. So go check those out. All right. Let's get into the reading. Hopefully my nose doesn't stuff up like it's been doing lately while I do this. March 15, 1919, still no peace. Five months after the armistice, we housewives are suffering more acutely than in the

worst war years. The peace negotiations in which only the representatives are the, the victorious powers and of the newly founded states of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia take part, are constantly adjourned and protracted. In the Entente camp, and more and more voices proclaim that the murderous blockade is at length to be discounted, discontinued. France, who apparently predominates in all these discussions again and again, puts forward objections and demands more conferences. Meanwhile, thousands of invalids, women, children, and infants are perishing of hunger and cold.

They are no longer any swaddling bands in which to wrap the newly born. People use paper, if they have any, or old scraps of material. Meat is no longer obtainable through the regulation channels, only dried cod, of which the Viennese have a horror despite their hunger. The Entente have too little meat themselves to be able to spare us any, and American frozen meat is too expensive by the time it has crossed the ocean and reached Vienna. I have joined in an appeal from the women of Vienna for the abolition of the meat centers. The only results of the government control of meat seems to be that the meat has become quite obtainable.

The farmers are clearly opposed to government control, and the whole population suffers from this fact. I believe that meat will be easier to obtain if the sale of our meager supplies of it is unrestricted. Perhaps I and many other housewives are wrong, but nothing could be worse than the conditions under government control. So away with the censors. The following is an announcement of the food centers, which I gave word for word. As meat and other foodstuffs are not present available in the 90th week, only pickled cabbage at the reduced price of 30 heller per kilo can be supplied to the most destitute. The government dining rooms, public war kitchens, and welfare institutions will be allotted 20 decograms about 7 ounces per head.

Thus, the government now has nothing but pickled cabbage to distribute on its food cards. We only exist, thanks to charitable gifts from abroad and the American food parcels in particular, have saved the lives of many of us Viennese. Today, I read in the newspaper, the president of the Salzburg provincial government has been arrested for illicit trading in the government property entrusted to him. such as foodstuffs, leather, clothes, etc. These are the enemies in our own camp, but how few of them are detected. I've received a letter from my sister in Berlin, from which I quote a few passages.

Berlin is at a state of uproar. Civil war is raging in all parts of the city so that I can no longer venture out of doors. The general strike in civil war in Berlin are not German, but French. The war indemnity which the victors seated around the green table have decided to impose upon Germany is fixed with the intention of loading the coming generation too with an overwhelming burden of debt. When a nation like the German nation today

has lost faith in its own salvation, when it has swallowed its pride and the hope and being able to appease its hunger after the armistice, when all hopes of a better future have been dispersed by an inhuman peace without regards to promises, then that nation does away with order. and tries to achieve by force what can really be achieved by systematic, which can really only be achieved by systematic planning. If the Entente hatches further disaster instead of restoring normal conditions by a reasonable peace, that not only Germany but all the European countries will be threatened with incalculable internal dangers. Munich has, indeed, with the aid of General Hoffman, rid itself of its Bolshevish,

adventurers. We are still struggling against the Spartacists who exploit the despair of masses for the purpose of their political machinations. I believe the bulk of the German people have too much sound sense to rush into such adventures, but they could hardly be blamed if they did succumb to the allurements of the Bolsheviks. This is what my sister writes. Meanwhile, not only the crown lands, but all the parishes outside Vienna have issued decrees for bidding people from other parts to enter the territories. Now if I journey to Luxembourg, I am a smuggler and liable to arrest. The Volksver is now the supreme authority in connection with the supervision of food distribution.

Through the Volksver, one can obtain transport permits for rucksacks, which are otherwise forbidden for everyday transport. Naturally, a bourgeois cannot get a permit. But as business is done in these permits, too, I have secured one through Shawnee. As long as my stock of cigars holds out, I shall have Shaanese help, but I am filled with horror and alarm when I see how this precious possession is melting away. We hear that Germany, though she herself is suffering acute distress, has voluntarily cut down her flour ration in order to be able to help us starving Viennese. The Entente, as the instigation of the French, forbids the union of Germany with Austria, which was decreed at Weimar. Moreover, the Germans are suffering more and more violence and oppression in the territories occupied by the enemy. Pind of Heineken, please.

That could be the sound of someone winning a UEFA Champions League trip for two. What's that now? Well, order a pint of Heinegan and you get entered into a draw for a Champions League trip for not one, but two people. 100 pubs and a guaranteed winner in each one. If you win, my passport is well in date. Okay. against Instagram for participating pubs. Teas and C's apply.

Doesn't actually expire until like 2040 or some. Get the facts, be drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.e. 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.i. 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.

Pst, did you know? Those Black Friday deals everyone's talking about? They're right here at Beacon South Quarter. That designer's sofa you've been wanting? It's in Seoul, Boe Concept and Rocheburoix. The Dream Kitchen, check out at Cube Kitchens. Beacon South Quarter Dublin, where the smart shoppers go. Two hours free parking, just off the M50, exit 30.

It's a Black Friday secret. Keep it to yourself. Yet they will ask the question. Why did people side with a national socialist? Why did Germany hate the checks? Why did the French? What did the French ever do? March 23rd, 1919.

Departure of the Emperor and the Imperial Family for Switzerland. Final raising of the blockade, Ernie and Edith. we hear that the emperor and the imperial family are to leave Schloss Eckertzah, where they are now residing and go to Switzerland. The government declares that it can no longer guarantee the personal safety of the emperor. Renner, the chancellor, and the other members of the socialist government insisted that the emperor should leave the country because he has refused to abdicate and only temporarily surrender the conduct of government affairs. The English Colonel Struitt and a few English soldiers are to accompany the emperor and his family when they leave Austria. Poor young emperor.

Every well-disposed Austrian sympathizes with him in this sorrowful moment when he has to leave his country against his will and journey towards so agonizingly uncertain of fate. Yesterday, the Antaunt powers decreed in Paris that the hunger blockade of German Austria was to be raised. Everyone in Austria breathed a sigh of relief. It is the first ray of light for years, but our joy is greatly marred by the fact that the blockade of Germany is to be continued. Our imports and exports are wholly dependent on the goodwill of our new neighbors, who will pay little or no heed to the raising of the blockade. If Germany, the one neighbor who is inspired with any goodwill towards us,

is still blockaded, the raising of the blockade will be a very illusory, blessing. Perhaps, however, the Entente have realized that our position has become quite intolerable and that this is the beginning of effectual and lasting help. In any case, it is now a matter of waiting and hoping for improvement. We have good news of Lisebeth and Wolf and Volfi, but Lysbeth, in view of her confinement at the end of April, we'll have to come home in three weeks' time at latest. With Kathy's help, I have made some long clothes and undergarments for the child out of old linen sheets and other bedclothes. In my housekeeping, I have now learned to treasure and make use of every scrap of linen or cotton or wool. It is amazing how inventive

necessity has made us, and how objects which at normal times would have been heedlessly thrown away, have now suddenly risen in value and are once more turned to use. Ernie is busy composing, and Edith copies out the notes for him. As the weather is now mild and pleasant, they both often sit on the veranda, which does not look very slightly, which does not look very sightly with its piles of wood and coal, but still answers its purpose. Sometimes Edith takes Ernie into the adjacent Schwarzenberg Park, where Ernie can recognize the spring by the scent of the thawing earth. Edith also leads him at his request through the streets of the city and describes him

everything she sees, and Ernie, whose nerves of smell and hearing have been become incredibly keen since his blindness often astonishes her by descriptions based exclusively on these two senses. Ernie's sense to smell was always exceptionally acute. At the popular guessing game, we were often amused at the way in which he guessed people directly by smelling them out, as he said. You ought to have been a sporting dog. My husband often said to him when he came home and smelled a visitor who had just left. He knew smokers by the sense of their particular tobacco. His sympathies and antipathies were very much influenced by this hyper-sensitiveness of his nerves of smell. He did not say, I don't like this person or that, but I don't like the smell of him. When he still had the use of his beautiful blue eyes, I often heard him say when he made the acquaintance of a pretty girl.

What a pity that she looks so charming and smells the reverse. At the front, he endured tortures at first as a result of this hypersensibility, until he confided his trouble to a young army doctor who affected a temporary cure by means of hypnotism. The effect of the hypnotism soon wore off, however. Any strong toilet scent was apt to give him a violent sick headache, and so he avoided the company of women who used scent. In the 20 years of his young and now shattered life, he had had little unethical. opportunity for intimate relations with young girls or women. He had always been exceptionally mature and serene for his years. He did not seem to ask much from the life around him, but his inward life

was all the more intense. It was in his beloved music that he lived to be to the full and expressed all his emotions. Though man endures his suffering and silence, a God taught me to say what I endure, these words which Goethe put into the mouth of his tasso might well be applied to Ernie. His music expresses the joy and agonies of his young life and the sad and somber tone pictures of his composition dedicated to those who fell in the world war, faithfully reflect his present mood.

March 30th, Hamster, Schleich and Handler, Scheiber. No improvement in conditions. Shani, our house, House Porter's son, has become a soldier's counselor and is clearly very conscious of his new dignity. Rudy tells me that we must keep on good terms with him, or he may involve us in all kinds of unpleasantness, for we live in a state whose legislative and governmental institutions have not yet been stabilized and may change any day. Our soldiers' counselor had always been very gracious to me so far, thanks be to God. The socialist government of the New Austrian Republic has done a

way with the aristocracy, a measure calculated to raise the market value of the former aristocracy. On the other hand, the new lawmakers have created new dignities in the new republic. Soldiers, counselors, labor counselors, work counselors, pupils counselors, students counselors, civil servants counselors. When you see counselor think brainwasher, that's exactly what they're there to do. In our present state of helplessness, these new counselors excite me an ironic amusement. In Austria, we live on hopes, expectations, and promises. The war years were times of wanton luxury in comparison with this hopeless spring. When I wake in the morning

after a short sleep, I begin to rack my brains what I shall put on the table for dinner. Fat, butter, sugar, flour, and all the indispensable ingredients of the small ordinary dishes are almost completely lacking. The small quantities which I can obtained by barter or at an exorbitant cost are used up almost immediately in spite of the utmost economy. The presence of food from abroad are drops in the ocean of Vienna's famine. Yesterday, 800,000 tins of condensed milk were distributed by the English mission. I too received a tin and was very glad and grateful, although one of these tins is only equivalent to about two pints of milk. I am always grateful when I can obtain any scarce article of food without effort on my

own part. The growing lack of consideration for one's fellow men, which inevitably accompanies to growing food shortage, impresses me very painfully. I can understand, however, that the instinct of self-preservation in people whose very existence is threatened should overrule all the moral laws. I can understand that robbery, theft, and pillage should become daily occurrences which fill those who still possess something with terror and alarm. It has become more and more frequent for better, and more warmly clad people to be robbed of their clothes in the street, and for the fortunate possessors of good shoes and stockings to be stripped of them, and obliged to go home barefoot.

The proverb, hunger is the best sauce, has ceased to be true for us in Vienna, else our eternal-picked cabbage would be the best sauce in the world. If the Entente had sharp ears, the rumbling of hundreds of thousands of Austrian stomachs might make them a little nervous. The raising of the blockade has not in any way, improve the food situation in Vienna, since Germany is still blockaded. We live now as before, by the favor of the Italians, who allow the presence of food for us to pass through Trist,

and also the generosity of the Swiss, although the latter from all accounts, have none too much for themselves. The Bolshevik rule in Hungary has apparently frightened the Entente somewhat and given them food for thought. The Austrians are promised sufficient food supplies, so long as they maintain order in the country. This is evidently a warning to our communists not to copy Hungary's example.

I can hardly believe that the Austrian communists would be so stupid, since they must know that in present-day Austria, the well-to-do have become non-existent, and that if they were to venture such an experiment, they themselves would be in danger of starving with the rest. In any case, the feeding of the members of my little household has already become an extremely difficult matter. Jealousy and envy flourish in this environment, and if one had procured such harmless,

and if one has procured some harmless article of food, one is careful to conceal the fact from one's fellow men. Hunger reigns, inexorably, and selects its dumb and uncomplaining victims above all from the middle classes. Hamsterer, Schleichandler, and Scheiber. These terms now have a contemptuous and abusive significance. The term hamster, food hoarder, is derived from the greedy little rodent, the hamster, which stores its winter supply of corn underground and often does serious damage to the cornfields. During the past war years in the present agonizing blockade, I do not believe that there is a single housewife in Austria, who has not hoarded, or at any rate, would not have been thankful to hoard.

The food hoarders include every housewife who, in the times when it was very difficult to run even the most modest household, owing to the scarcity of the principal foodstuffs, such as sugar, fat, flour, eggs, and milk, endeavored by collecting stocks to these necessary articles to win at least a short respite from the overwhelming cares of shopping. The continual rises in price made hoarding almost a duty for a house. wife, yet hoarding became more difficult to every week. No housewife who takes the blessings of unhampered shopping at fixed prices as a matter of course should forget that war in whatever form and in whatever place it may occur can destroy these blessings at one blow. The constantly increased food scarcity as well as the centralization of all the essential foodstuffs by the government,

which have made it almost impossible for housewives to hoard, have merely resulted in the development of the unlawful profession of Schleichendler, smuggler. I would venture to assert that these smugglers have saved the lives of many Viennese who would otherwise have succumbed to the hunger blockade. The Austrian state is not in a position to supply its citizens with the necessary foodstuffs. Since the armistice, the government food centers have proved utterly unequal to their task. Our new neighbor states have attacked us by closing their frontiers, against us. The generous American, English, Dutch, and Swedish relief missions are able to alleviate

the distress in certain cases, but they cannot satisfy the food requirements of the population as a whole. Where the 8 million souls can find within the Austrian frontiers, who have no land which they can call their own, to find the food with which to escape death from starvation. I often ask myself this question, but I, too, belong to these millions who fight daily for their food, for a bit of food that is often so modest that a beggar in time of peace would have refused it with indignation. And up to now, I have only been able to make shift with the aid of food hoarding and smugglers. At the present time, when, despite the raising of the blockade, we Austrians are starved and frozen by jealous neighbors. The authorities ought not to prosecute but to encourage our smugglers.

with the best will in the world, I cannot regard as enemies of the community, these people who surreptitiously, at the risk of their own lives, cross what are now foreign frontiers, in order to bring the Vienese a few pounds of meat, fat, or flour. Today my smuggler brought me

six pounds of white flour and two pounds of butter, for which I paid him 100 cronin. I know that is an enormous price, but neither white flour nor butter are to be had in Vienna. The smuggler who calls on me once a while, week in order to inquire whether he shall bring me something with a cab driver in Vienna before the war, was a cab driver in Vienna before the war, one of those typical Vietnamese cab drivers who, with a rather brutal but always apt and ready wit, ruled the streets of Vienna from their box seat.

My smuggler would naturally much prefer to be driving his cab rather than perpetually risking health and liberty in his present unlawful calling. But the profession of cab driver is extinct today. How could a cabman exist under existing conditions, feed his good fast horses? At present, my cab driver assures me it is hardly possible to feed a wretched hack for a one-horse carriage in Vienna, let alone two really good horses. In Vienna, people are glad if they can get a few oats to munch themselves, he remarked, and he is right, for groats and oatmeal are now eaten with relish, and we are delighted if we can get them.

when I objected to the high price he described to me what difficulties and dangers he encountered in crossing the Hungarian frontier he had to wait for two days and two nights before he could get across unobserved by the frontier guard and the return was far more difficult still

for then one had to spend one's money and got a load on one's back they had fired after him when he was already in Austria and he and he had a wife and child's children to feed. I asked him how he was able to pay in Hungary with Austrian money. He told me that the people

were glad to take our restamped Austrian-Kronin and Hungary, for they came to Austria to buy all sorts of things. Furniture fittings, pianos, carpets, which are to be had very cheaply in Vienna at the present day, are being bought up wholesale and taken abroad, just to be able to eat. People who had nothing but their well-furtished house sell one thing after another. The cabman smuggler sighed as he pocketed his money and I gave him a cigar into the bargain. A wretched business is smuggling, but one must work if one wants to eat. I think that only strong, hearty, and determined people can be smugglers, for often they are obliged to be on their feet for days at a time, and they must also be intimately acquainted with the foreign frontiers.

but it seems to me a great mistake that these people are persecuted and harassed even in their own country. It frequently happens that the smuggler, after he has successfully terminated his expeditions to the enemy country, is caught and robbed by R. Volksvedmen. What the smuggler has imported at high sacrifice is taken from him without compensation. No wonder if, in consequence of this risk in his own country, his prices are exorbitantly high. The third profession, which has risen as a result of the war, is that of the Shiver, or prophets here. Looks like Scheister to me. This profession is closely connected with that of the chain trader.

On these people, no law could inflict too severe penalty. They are the real enemies of the people, the out-and-out parasites. But strange to say, they are able to pursue their dubious calling because of beneath the very, eyes of the authorities. They smuggle Austrian goods abroad and bring us raw materials or food stuffs of doubtful quality. Their intermediate profit is enormous, as is proved by the number of new rich which have engaged in such transactions. I hear that in England the government control of foodstuffs has been suspended as the supplies from the colonies are sufficient. Happy England. She has colonies, seas, ships, and sufficient supplies of foodstuffs.

The women of England have appealed for a raising of the German hunger blockade so that supplies may be sent to the starving nations of Europe by way of the German ports. How welcome and encouraging is this proof of humanity for which I thank the women of England from my heart. Just create their own mess with the... You're going to have these profiteers, everything. April 6, 1919. No improvement in the food situation. Good news from Liesbethynville. Fulfi, Edith's foreign currency.

Our bread rations have been cut down by one half from today. We hear that the European representatives and the Entente are discussing how to help us. I find myself picturing an assembly of doctors holding consultations concerning a patient who is seriously ill without being able to come to any agreement. Meanwhile, the patient without medical assistance may more or less gently breathe his last. the one helpful and energetic person who, however, is not taking any share of the Entente councils, is Mr. Hoover. A train with American salt bacon, tin foods, and frozen meat has just arrived in Vienna. Edith, who is working with the American mission, is also full of praise for Hoover and his fellow workers. As she helps with the distribution of the American food, she can easily see that we get our share.

True, the bacon is so salty, is so salty, that it has to be soaked for hours before there can be any question of using it, but we are very glad to have bacon at all. The other foreign missions, for instance, the Swiss, Dutch and Swedish, have, in view of the inadequate means of transport and their food supplies, initiated a big scheme for saving the Austrian children. Thousands of specifically necessitous and undernourished children are to be placed with private family, in Holland, Switzerland, and Sweden, so that they may be properly fed and get back their strength.

The scheme originated in the countries which were neutral during the World War, and have been especially welcomed by the Viennese. The headquarters of the Dutch Relief Missions are in the Algarthor Palais, which up to the Revolution was the residence of the Dowager Empress, the Archduchess Maria Josepha. As I wanted to obtain particulars of this scheme for helping the children, I went to the Augarten. The crowd outside the Dutch office was so large that the entry of the mothers and their children had to be regulated by the police. I had to stand for an hour in a crowd of quarreling mothers and crying children before I could get into the house at all.

Certainly the ground floor apartments of the Augarten Palais had never before housed such guests, who seemed quite out of place in the white and gold paneled. rooms, with their parquet floors and crystal lusters. Badly dressed women of the lower class predominated, standing by the windows in the garden was a little knot of women with their children who obviously belonged to the middle class. Winter, the deputy Bergermeister, had asked the foreign missions to make no distinction between middle class families and proletarian families in the administration of their relief since the middle class, even if they did not complain, were suffering acutely.

The air in the waiting room was so foul that these middle-class mothers preferred to wait in the open air until their turn came. Inside, the soap shortage from which we had all been suffering, and the fact that people were wearing clothes which were never changed were conspicuously evident. As I only wanted to obtain some information for Wolfie's sake, I found my way through the noisy, ill-smelling crowd. I admired the patience and devotion of the Dutch and Viennese, ladies who endured these surroundings for hours on end and were always ready to give information and to make arrangements for the transport of the children. Two doctors examined the children to see if they were fit to be taken into private houses for this, of course, was not possible if they were suffering from organic or infectious diseases. Often scenes ensued that were

agonizing both to the benefactors and the applicants when one of the children had to be rejected. often too threats and curses were heaped upon these untiring organizers of relief for every mother had come here with a great hope of sending her hungry child to a place where it could eat its fill A very kind Dutch lady explained to me the nature of the whole scheme and I realized that it was very much of a lottery whether the child in question drew a first prize or a blank in respect to the family in whose charge it was placed for in Holland is elsewhere there are good people and bad. On the way home, I pondered whether I should expose Wolfie to the dangers of an environment which might be morally injurious to him, or whether it would be better to tide over the bad times here.

After all, peace must be concluded someday, and the bloodless food and currency warfare can come to an end. We have good news of Lysbeth and Volfi. Volfi has got his strength back splendidly, and Lysbeth, too, The latter has gained in weight considerably so that it seems as if her malady will soon be cured. On April 15th, my cousin will bring them back to Vienna, as we expect Lisbeth's confinement to take place at the end of the month. My cousin and his wife have succeeded in making good a part of the damage done by the pillagers. Buckling has become very much attracted to Volfe.

The little fellow's charming disposition and eagerness to help others have made him beloved. by all there as here. Lysbeth writes to me that Buckling and his wife would like Volfi to stay with them for good, but Lysbeth and Rudy and I will not hear of this. Meanwhile, Rudy has entered upon his duties at the bank where he has proved himself an excellent and valuable worker. Of Carl, we hear nothing. I am afraid that he has really drawn all the consequences of his political views and is now contending against a bourgeoisie in whom he sees the greatest enemy of communism. Edith receives $2 a day for her work with the American Relief Mission. She is generally occupied only up to 2 o'clock in the afternoon and spends her free time with us when it is not claimed by her father.

She gives her father $1 a day and is proud and happy to be able to help him, as he cannot live on his depreciated pre-war pension of $400,000 in a month. The day laborer now receives $25,000 for an eight-hour working day. That is to say, he receives double the pension paid to a colonel by the state. The second dollar Edith brings to me and asks me to take care of it for her. She is a gold currency lady, says Ernie ceasingly, and must be treated with special respect and veneration. Gold currencies and gold currency people play an interesting and important role among us in Austria. Americans, English, Italians, and others are respected and admired here in Vienna,

not because they overcame us with guns and tanks, but because their pocketbooks are full of gold currency notes. With one of those pretty pieces of paper, they can buy a whole pile of our ill-fated notes, our ill-fated cronin, and because they repeatedly get the better of our poor crone in this new hidden warfare, they are admired and courted. They are the real conquerors of Vienna,

and we are far less able to defy a few. offend ourselves against the gold currency and against their tanks and guns. In exchange for a few pretty foreign banknotes to Viennese, as though hypnotized, sell to the gold currency people their last valuables. I understand practically nothing of world economy and its structure. I am also prone to regard anything that I cannot understand with profound mistrust. In the old days, I never troubled my head about rates of exchanges. Rates of exchange. Now twice a day, we are all forced to await the quotation of the Zurich Borse with tense expectation. On these quotations depend the wheel and woe of all us Austrians.

If there is a slight upward tendency, we all breathe a sigh of relief, which, while a fall in the Zurich quotation of the corona, fills us with profound depression. Every fresh drop in its value is followed by a wave, a fresh wave of rising prices. I have often wondered how it is that zero quotations can exercise such a fatal influence on our Austrian prices, and I have only been able to find one answer. The confidence of Austrian citizens and the current administration of the state is shaken to its foundations. The state, which is perpetually printing fresh banknotes, deceives us with the face value, which is supposed to represent the actual worth of a banknote.

The 100-cronin note of today only resembles to 100-cronin-note. issued from the same press one or two years ago in respect of paper and inscription. In reality, there are worlds apart. In the old days, when I wanted to spend a hundred cronin on purchases, I knew before I left home what goods I could obtain for these hundred cronin. Now it is impossible for a housewife to say beforehand whether she can buy anything for all her hundred cronin. And what she can procure for this amount depends on the most varied contingencies.

A housewife who has had no experience of the horrors of currency, depreciation, has no idea what a blessing stable money is, how glorious it is to be able to buy with a note in one's purse the articles one had intended to buy at the price one it intended to pay. All these things which others take as a matter of course are unattainable dreams to us, poor Austrian housewives. And I asked myself why our government cannot put a stop to this depreciation of the Corona, which, to put it frankly, is nothing else than legalized plundering of a corpse. The people with undepreciated currencies who are courted and estolled by the poor hungry

Austrians are allowed to do just as they like. At the present time, they are the masters of Vienna. The authorities do not incur their displeasure. No one warns and advises the middle class not to take part with things like carpets, pictures, and furniture whose intrinsic value is unimpaired for the sake of a few scraps of foreign paper. The Vienese, who has handed a large bundle of Cronin, still thinks that he has grown richer without taking into account the enormous rise of price resulting from the Zurich quotations, which come as a fresh surprise to him every day. The examples which foreigners are furnishing us today should make us all realize that at the present time, the correct economic policy would be not to sell but to buy.

But I hope from my heart that this agonizing state of uncertainty and privation will soon terminate in a peace front with blessings for all of us. I think I'm going to stop right there. Still feeling a little from allergies and things. So, yep, if you want to support the show, you go to freemanbeonthewall.com forward slash support. links to, well, my website right there, subscribe star, substack, gumroad, Patreon.

If you support me, you get the episodes early and ad-free, and there are some other bonuses there. So over $5 a month is interest in this telegram group, which is great. So that's it. Thank you. Be back in a couple days with Part 8. Take care.

Bye.