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[[27?]]
little Verna kept up a continual wail "Mutter, ich habe Hunger!" She says every mother in Austria listened to that cry--all but the wives of officers. She said she had seen soldiers, themselves weak from poor food, sent back to Vienna with heavy sacks of provisions, army officers' provisions, for the officers families. I asked why the soldiers did not themselves eat these provisions. They were always under guard, five or six laden soldier and a guard with a gun. The same old story (like our drafted men) many cowed by one. (Why men will face death when they are told to but will not face it to free themselves and their comrades is a perpetual riddle to me.) She had seen an officer's wife throw away han a little tainted when other people would have been only too glad to get it. She told me that as the soldiers came home at the sudden break down at the end of the war, many officers were shot. She seemed to think that needed explanation and excuse and told how soldiers were executed for the smallest things--you could not really blame them, when they had suffered so much. I said I only blamed them for not having done it long before. The common soldiers can put an end to war just that way whenever they will. She fully agreed. When the first regiments marched out of Vienna her brother insisted on taking her over to see them. Everyone was hurrahing ("huzzah" she calls it), but she was heartbroken. A young soldier shook her by the arm and cried "Warum schrien Sie night Huzzah?" She said "Du armes Kind, du weis niche wass ist Krieg." This regiment was sent to the Russian front, and every single man was killed. (I recalled how the Russians had carried all before them in those first days of the war.) The news-papers said that the Deutscher Kaiser said that when the leaves fell the war would be over. Some of the people were shouting this. She called out "When the crown falls the war will be over." Someone shook her and her brother told her to hush--that was all! What