CONDITIONS IN VIENNA
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] - SIR,—May I call the attention of your readers to the subject of British relief work-in Austria, in connexion with which I have just visited Vienna for the Save the Children Fund ? To meet the emergency two main agencies are at work. The Dollfuss-Initzer Fund is doing work of which Mme. Dollfuss showed me an example in the soup kitchen at Semmering, One of the poorest quarters. Here, as at many _other places, food and parcels arc distributed. A long queue of destitute- looking women were waiting their turn. It was pointed out that the vast majority of the recipients were suffering from distress not in any way caused by the recent disturbances—
a fact which confirmed the view that victims of .the fighting are often afraid to resort to unsympathetic quarters for help.
This fact illustrated the necessity for the other main agency of relief, that of the Society of Friends, which has received official recognition. It has already ascertained that some seven thousand families require assistance, apart from the unaseertained number of those dismissed from their jobs.
I accompanied one of the workers to the homes of recipients in some of the battered blocks of dwellings, the courts of which were crowded that afternoon with visitors surveying the shell- holeS and bullet marks, so that this famous municipal enter- prise became, in its bombarded condition, something of as popular resort. A typical case in the worker's round of visits was that of a woman with a sick child. The husband, when the firing began, thought that his wife was in another block,
• went out to find her and was shot dead by a stray bullet: : This, and similar cases, have, up to now, been aided by the Quakers with small sums of money,' but it is intended that relief shall in the main be by parcels of food, or orders for food purchase, with financial aid for payment of rents.
The Save the Children Fund, which works for children abroad as well as at home, practises another method which it has used in Vienna ever since the War. It arranges for the " adoption " of an individual child, chosen from among orphans or those in peculiar need, by one of its subscribet's, English or other. For £5 or so a child is in this way assisted week by week for a year.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the value of gifts to this fund, which is dividing its resources between the Quaker relief, Mme. Dollfuss's Fund, and its own adoption system.
It would be easy to make a harrowing picture of the con- - ditions of mental misery and economic distress which are the lot of thousands of families. • What is not so easy is to disso- ciate the problem of relief from the whole question of political conditions, of the policy of force' pursued by organizations other than the armed forces of the State, and of the underlying responsibility attaching to the policy which reduced Austria to an uneconomic unit. But the real urgency is to deal with the situation as it is. It cannot be denied that, however we appcirtion praise or blame, a vast number of persons, of whom perhaps the majority are children, are suffering in a manner which has no reference to guilt, and which calls urgently for our sympathy.—I am, Sir, &c., •
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