REVOLT IN VIENNA

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 252, 21 July 1934, Page 19

REVOLT IN VIENNA

Mrs. Mitchison’s Diary Of Troubled Days “Naomi Mitchison’s Vienna Diary”

(London: Gollancz). When Mrs. Mitchison left England for Austria on February 24, a few days after the Socialists’ heavy defeat in the civil war, she became a very different person from the historian, scientist and woman of letters through which she has gained her fame. She left above -everything else a Socialist with a free-lance misison to do her bit in the cause of “international solidarity” prescribed by her faith, and accordingly she joined the hunted Viennese Social Democrats. Her intention was to distribute what relief money she could gather, and also to use ordinary journalism to tell what she saw, and to write this diary, which amounts to the same thing. In the train on her way through Europe she wrote: — I do not know for certain how I can help? I can write things down clearly and truthfully, and I will do so. I promise now that this diary wil contain nothing but the tnith. It will not.be the whole truth, partly because no man or woman can ever know that, and partly because I shall probably be unable to say certain things, so as not to endanger other people. I will do nothing which my conscience as a lover of mankind and as a practical woman forbids me to do.

' No reader may gainsay that she kept her promise well. Some with the most sensitive noses ready to sneeze at the subtle smell of propaganda, will defend their preconceived opinions of a Socialist journalist with the comment that, after all, the Government’s atrocities against the workers and their families were undisputed, even by the London “Times.”. Actually, however, little allowance ,1s made for the author’s political point of view, the diary Is sufficiently free of propaganda as to be historically of certain value. It is written in a style that Mrs. Mitchison has seldom used before in a book: prosaically and seldom with any attempt at producing greater effect than is given by the facts she uses. The most important comment made is her view on the condemnation by many outside Austria of thdi Social Democrats’ leaders. - Certain things about the immediate past are clear. The Social Democrats were not betrayed by their leaders, although no doubt occasions have been misjudged, The whole thing was precipitated by tne Linz affair, and the general strike, even, was hardly organised. But the usual Communist Party allegations are ill-founded and In bad taste. The Social Democratic Party was extremely wide: all wings had collaborated; it was as united a front as anvone could ask for. .Whether a different policy should have ■ been adopted fifteen years ago is mainly of academic interest now.

Things had been much more nearly touch and go during -the fighting than was supposed in England, Mrs. Mitchison states. The Social Democrats had been more fully armed than was realised, but humanitarian motives stopped them from using all their arms. “But humanitarian motives did not stop the Government from shelling them,” she writes. Whatever Dr. Dolfuss’s justification for this, the diary’s description of the persecution against the workers in the clean-up following the civil war. is a fearful indictment of the Government and the Heimwehr. Mrs.’ Mitchison, has been quoted as writing, that the Social Democrat Party “was extremely wide.” The past tense is more significant than it may appear. The party, builder of post-war Red Vienna, became soon totally non-existent. Some of the first leaders died on the gallows. Members remained, but in all Instances, in individual- fear of their safety. Tens of thousands were in prison, and no one knew when they were to be tried or what influence Dr. Dolfuss might be able to exercise on the general integrity of the judiciary; for all the news to the contrary, at least many thousands nfust still be awaiting trial. Some even joined the Austrian Nazis, with five schillings a .week for their families the inducement; either that or “for revenge.” A,large proportion of the sufferers were the wives left destitute with their families in wrecked Gemeinde Hauser, the huge tenement houses which have constituted most of the overseas fame of post-war Vienna. Organised relief work was still partisan or hampered by .fear or otherwise prejudiced. ' When Mrs. Mitchison was writing the diary, the Heimwehr purge was operating stropgly. It. is a long, pain ful story. Heimwehr looting and brutality are mentioned on almost every page. The sight of men and youths broken in” spirit, and often temporarily maimed by beating, became common. Mrs. Mitchison visited their homes. The following comment seems a good example:— The man . . . had boon beaten going down the stairs. and beaten In, a police court He had been beaten on the head with rifle butts. It was the same for others A man who had given his room for the wounded Schutzbnndlers had been beaten in the street. One man was now in ho-.pltal with blood-poisoning. He gave details. I don’t see how these beatings will ever get out of the peopieis minds, especially the women’s. They will have established themselves there as a permanent national or class complex.

Mrs. Mitchison left Vienna on her re turn on March 23. The last entry in the diary was on April 10. In it Mrs. Mitchison asked for relief money, and .wrote: “It is all going on still.”