DISTRESS IN EUROPE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16703, 11 December 1919, Page 10

DISTRESS IN EUROPE.

v CANNIBALISM IN VIHNNA.

(By Cahl»—Pnn Aaeociatien—Oepyrigfci) (Australian and N.Z. Ctbl* Association.) ROME, Dccemiber 8.

The Vatican has learned from Vienna tluit the starving citizens are eating human flesh. Tlt was recently announced that tho distress in Vienna was intensified, by winter severities of tho worst kind. Doming after a prolonged war and poverty, it finds the people verging on physical collapse. The Austrian Ambassador at Berlin, who had returned from Vienna, described the desperate crowds who, longing for ft little warmth, wero rushing tho parks and carrying off the wooden and devastating the wonderful Wiener Wald in the presence of the helpless authorities. The bread and flour rations wero only 21b a week, and wero ill distributed. Coal was exhausted, and onlv very slender milk supplies were available for infants. The Ambassador predicted that if the situation was not relieved the people would soon break into the big houses and carry off anything that would burn. Then Bolshevism would reign. Herr Renncr (tho Austrian Chancellor) stated: "A winter of horror arrived. Some of tho principal industrial areas are without tread. The world is witnessing tho death of .a nation, and help is a question of hours."!