ABLAZE WITH LUXURY.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15119, 4 January 1922, Page 3

ABLAZE WITH LUXURY.

VIENNA REVELS AMID MISERY.

ITS CRUMBLING PALACES.

The financial and economical problems presented to the inquirer in Austria are much more grave and complex than in Germany. One’s first impression is that the country, having been stripped o’f most of her resources for the benefit of the new States carved out of the Old Austrian Empire, cannot possibly continue to live, and one is still more positively persuaded that the end is in view of Vienna.

Conceive the position, says a writer in the Daily Mail. Here is a country of four million people maintaining an ornamental city of mansions—a poor little land of mountains and forests supporting a capital-of pallaces and splendour unsurpassed in the record of the world’s mightiest empires! Vienna to-day is like a crown of rich and glittering gems on the''head of a peasant. Its aft and luxury are the jewels of a fallen grandeur. Unless it should take a fresh lease of life as the -chief city of a Danubian Confederation, as the culture and financial centre for the young States which have sprung up out of the ramshackle Austrian Empire’s ruin, this proud and stately metropolis obviously must fall ink* desuetude and decay, grass will grow between the stones of its renowned Ring and sumptuous Karnter Strasse, and moss on the walls of its crumbling palaces. GAIETY IN THE.CAFES."

' At this time Vienna presents to the visitor an astonishing anomaly.. Its museums, art* galleries, colleges, medical scools and /imperial residences, its magnificent Opera House, its Volksoper, its fourteen theatres, its numerous concert halls and variety its luxurious shops, hotels and far-famed cafes and restaurants; its ceaseless stream of motor-cars and carriages, are in view of the country’s financial condition, and of the sensational reports vWhieh have been circulated in England of the city’s destitution and misery, a source of constant astonishment.

Well-dressed and light-hearted loungers seem blindly careless of the .tremendous ehangeywhich has come over their country. Opera House, theatres, cafes, restaurants and hotels are crowded, and it, is a notable fact that the higher the prices of hotels and restaurants the more crowded they are.

The staggering fall of the country’s currency serves as"a- pleasant subject of chatter and jest, but the merry revellers do not seem to mind it a bit. It does not silence their agreeable prattle nor restrict their orders for wine and cigars. I am assured, and I can well belie\ r e, that in the homes of the professional and official classes, and in the hovels of the poorer masses, the startling rise in the price of commodities does, not appear quite so amusing. But these privacies do not obtrude themselves upon the visitor’s view. A PROFESSOR’S PLIGHT. I have been told of a university student, Avho ekes out her scanty means byiAvorking in'an office during her spare hours that her professor at the university has an annual salary of 50,000 kronen, equal at today’ rate of exchange to less than £5! In prosperous days he bad saved, by his wife’s economy, a little fortune of 40,000 kronen, which avUs to have been devoted to the education of their two boys. This little fortune, which meant nearly £2OOO before the war, iaoav represents a A’alue of less than £4! The professor is wearing a suit of pre-war clothes which has tAviee been turned. What will happen when the holes in the treadbare suit can no longer be darned by the careful Avife is inconceivable. To realise AA’hat it meant I have just called at a tailor’s, and asked what it Avould cost to make me a suit like the one lam wearing.- The reply was, “Ninety thousand kronen.” The sum represents the professor’s salary for nearly two years’ Avork. When he must have a new shirt his wife makes it out of the bed sheets.