To see the Vienna war purveyor at his best it was necessary to wait until midnight and visit the haunts he frequented, such as the Femina, Trocadero, Chapeau Rouge, Café Capua, and Carlton cabarets. Vienna's _demi-monde_ never knew such spenders. The memory of certain harebrained American tourists faded into nothingness. Champagne flowed in rivers, and the hothouses were unable to meet the demand for flowers--at last one shortage. The gipsy fiddlers took nothing less than five crowns, and the waiters called it a poor evening when the tips fell below what formerly they had been satisfied with in a month.
All of this came from the pockets of the public, and when these pockets began to show the bottom the government obligingly increased the currency by the products of the press. More money was needed by everybody. The morrow was hardly given a thought, and the sanest moment most people had was when they concluded that these were times in which it was well to let the evils of the day be sufficient thereof. One never knew when the Russians might spill over the Tartra and the Carpathians, in which case it would be all over. The light-heartedness which is so characteristic of the Austrians reached degrees that made the serious observer wonder. _Après nous le déluge_, was the motto of the times. So long as there was food enough, champagne to be had, and women to share these, the Russians could have the rest.
I speculated how long this could go on. The military situation could be handled by the Germans, and would be taken in hand by them sooner or later. That much I learned in Berlin. But the Germans were powerless in the Austro-Hungarian economic departments. Though the Dual Monarchy had been self-contained entirely in food matters before the war, it seemed certain that the squandering of resources that was going on could in the end have but one result--shortage in everything.
Despite that, Austrian government officials were highly optimistic. Starve out Austria and Hungary! Why, that was out of the question entirely--_ausgeschlossen_! At some statistical bureau on the Schwarzenbergstrasse I was given figures that were to show the impossibility of the Entente's design to reduce the country by hunger. These figures were imposing, I will admit, and after I had studied them I had the impression that famine was indeed a long way off. It seemed that the Stürgkh régime knew what it was doing, after all, as I had been told at the government offices. Everything would be well, even if the war should be long.