Dorothy Thompson

Ogden Standard-Examiner/January 2, 1921

Wastefulness of Foreign Missions Is Scandal Among People

Officials are the curse of Vienna. The pensioners of the army, the remnant of the old bureaucracy and the members of the new add to the great population of those who consume but do not produce, and help impoverish a country already so poor that it is inconceivable that it can fall further. And to all these Viennese officials are added the new officials of the interallied commission and of the various foreign missions, generals, lieutenants, military officers, civil officials who occupy all the leading hotels, fill the theaters, and are to be seen wining and dining at the best restaurants and cafes, their tables loaded with exquisitely prepared meats, delicate white bread; and the Viennese cakes and confections, while devised from materials furnished by speculators at unbelievable prices, are still the most delicious to be had in Europe.

The fate of the Austrian officials is the fate of the country. They are not among those who wine and dine. Their pensions or their salaries buy them black bread and bare lodgings, if they do that much, and though they add nothing to the prosperity of the country still they furnish no contrast to the life around them.

Luncheon An Event

But the officers of the foreign infusions are a world scandal.

We were sitting at luncheon in parliament on the opening day of the session. The luncheon was a great event. There was soup and boiled beef, and potatoes and a sweet. The member who sat on my right, Emmy Freundlich, the food controller of Austria, a woman universally acknowledged to be the ablest women in Austrian public life today, confessed that this was the first meat she had had in two months. She did not eat the “kuchen” that was served for dessert, but put it in her pocket to take home.

On my right sat the outgoing minister of war, Fr. Julius Deutsch. He had just returned the previous day from a conference with Giolitti, the prime minister of Italy, in regard to the foreign missions in Vienna, and he gave me the following figures and facts:

Salary Comparisons

“The military commission appointed to Austria to control the fulfillment of the peace treaty is, of course, paid by Austria. It is composed by an exceedingly large number of officers and soldiers.  A simple sergeant receives from 30,000 to 50,000 kronen a month. That is, by way of comparison, seven times the salary of a member of the Austrian parliament. A lieutenant of a foreign mission receives six times the salary of the Austrian minister of war. A general receives about a quarter of a million kronen a month, which is more than the entire Austrian government, including the president, is paid.

“The salaries of the foreign officers in Vienna today cost Austrians as much as the total sum of her government expenditures.”

Some of these officials have no conceivable purpose. At the time that the interallied commission to watch over Austrian affairs was appointed Austria still had a navy. Now she has no navy, but the naval section of the commission still continues.