Today I visited one of the strategic points where the battle against hunger is being fought. It was a former barracks, now a soup-kitchen of the American Relief Administration, situated in the poorest district of Vienna, where meals are daily prepared for 8000 children. There are 340,000 undernourished children in Vienna—a total of 96 per cent, out of the entire child-population. But these, whom I visited, were all hand-picked and medically certified as being sufficiently near to extinction to be admitted. Funds are too low to feed any save those who are within measurable distance of dying.

The sight was a disgrace to civilization. The snow, which the bankrupt Government has no money to clear away, had turned to slush. One's well-shod feet were perishing. The road which approached the desolate banquet-hall, was an oozy quagmire of icy mud. Within the building at wooden tables sat an army of stunted pigmies, raggedly clad and famished to a greenish pallor. They were the kind of pigmies to whom Christ would have referred, had He been with me, as “These, my little ones.” They ranged in age all the way from the merest toddlers to the beginnings of adolescence. No one would have guessed the adolescent part of it, for there wasn't a child in the gathering who looked older than ten. They didn't talk. They didn't laugh. They were terribly intent, for each had a roll and a pannikin of cocoa over which it crouched with an animal eagerness. And the stench from the starveling bodies was nauseating.

The people who attended to their needs were Austrians. There are less than forty American officials in the whole of Europe to superintend the workings of the Relief Administration. The food had been provided one-third by American philanthropy, the other two-thirds by Austrians—which is an answer to those thrifty economists who are so afraid of pauperising Europe. This is the fixed rule of the American Relief Administration's activities, that it contributes one-third of the expense and does the organising, while the country assisted provides the other two-thirds and the personnel of the workers. When the country is able to function for itself, as is the case with Czecho-Slovakia, the machinery remains but the Administration withdraws. Another useful fact to remember is that one American dollar, at the current rate of exchange, keeps one of these little skeletons alive for a month. And yet another fact is that the whole of each dollar donated is expended on food and nothing is deducted for organisation.

As I stood in that dingy hall and watched the overwhelming tragedy of spoliated childhood, my memory went back three years. The last time I had witnessed a misery so heart-breaking had been at Evian, where the trains entered France from Switzerland, repatriating the little French captives who had existed for three years behind the German lines. It had seemed to me then that those corpselike, unsmiling victims of human hate had represented the foulest vehemence of the crime of war. Yet here today in Vienna, two years after our much prayed for peace, I have been confronted by the same crime against childhood, being enacted with a yet greater shamelessness, for the war is ended, four-fifths of the world has an excess of food and there is no longer any excuse of military necessity. Today our only possible excuse is hard-heartedness and besotted selfishness.

Here today, to all intents and purposes, are the same little slaves of famine and ill-usage that were to be seen passing through Evian three years ago, the only difference is that their nationality has changed. Those were French and these are Austrians. “Poetic justice! Retribution!” someone may say. To such a man I would reply that the war was not waged against children. The children of whatsoever nations we fought never ceased to be our friends.

And these children whom I saw today, most of them were not born when the war started. They had no voice in our animosities. They did not ask to he brought into such a world. Many of them since their first breath, have never known what it was to be warm and not to be hungry. To them joy is a word utterly meaningless. They have always been too weak to laugh or play. Two years after our madness has ended they are still paying the price of the adult world's folly. We have returned home to our comfortable firesides, but their tender bodies still shudder in the trenches which an unwisdom, which was partly ours, dug for them.

I entered a shed where little feet were being measured for the Christmas gift of boots which had arrived from America. What feet! How deformed with cold, and swollen and blue! They lad never been anything else since their owners could remember. There was nothing childish about them, except that they were small. Some were wholly naked; some were wrapped in rags; some were thrust into the recovered derelicts of splendid adults like myself. My feet were like stones with trudging through the melting snow, but I could look forward to a time when mine would be warm. What about theirs, the feet of little children whose pain was never ended—small feet that should have learned to dance?

On a bench sat a tiny boy, wizened and jaded as an old man. He was being fitted. A little ragged girl who was no relation, but was acting mother to him, told me his age. He was nine, but he was not as big as seven. No, he wasn't being fed by the Americans—not yet. He wasn't famished enough; there were other children who were worse. There wasn't enough food to feed you unless you were very bad. Perhaps he would be bad enough soon after Christmas.

I didn't dare to tell her that after Christmas, unless the conscience of the happier world is aroused, there won't be any funds to feed her little friend, no matter how bad he becomes.

After he had been fitted, I watched her ease the broken apologies for boots back on to the swollen flesh. She was very tender. She knew how much it hurt, for her own feet were no better. She had auburn hair, which hung in ringlets, and kind gray eyes. She took his hand and helped him off the bench. Away they trudged through the bitter cold and slush, dreaming of Christmas when for once their feet will be protected. My eyes followed them. My eyes followed them so much that that afternoon I did a round of the homes from which these children come. I wanted to find out about the parents—whether this condition of affairs is their fault, due to uncurable shiftlessness. I procured my list from the Society of Friends, who are doing a fine work in house to house visitation. From the homes which I visited, I select two examples which vividly illustrate the child need not only of Vienna, but of the whole of Central Europe.

The first home belonged to a man named Klier. He had a wife and three children, the youngest of which was two and a half and the oldest fourteen. Before the war he had been a silversmith and comfortably settled. Today in Austria there is no work for silversmiths and will not be for many years to come. He had served in the army on the Italian front—he still wore his uniform—had been captured and had been a prisoner. During his absence, his wife had had to commence selling the furniture piece by piece to keep the home going. On his return he could not get employment. By the time I saw him every solitary possession which he had had, had gone except two single beds and a pile of rags for coverings. One of those beds he rented to a lodger, the other his wife, self and children slept in by turns through the night, trying to keep themselves warm. Despite this abject poverty, the floor was speckless and had been recently scrubbed. A little gray-faced tot in a solitary garment—a crimson velvet frock donated by the Red Cross—stood stoically by, while her father talked to me. He had at last got a job on a paper, he said, which would bring him in 1600 crowns a month. 1600 crowns are a little over two dollars in American money, out of which he had to pay his rent and lighting. How was it to be done? He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly and spread his hands abroad. And again I asked a question—did he hope that things would be better in the future? He made no reply, but grabbed the child's hand more protectingly and stared forlornly at the blank wall.

The second home belonged to a man named Lutowsky.

He had been a repairer of street-pavements; pavements are taking care of themselves at present. His household consisted of a grandmother, aged 71, a wife in consumption, due to starvation, and five consumptive children. In painting the picture which I have to paint, I feel ashamed at having pried on such a depth of sorrow. The home consisted of two rooms. In the first the grandmother was washing clothes. She explained that she earned thirty crowns a day for it—less than five cents in American money; but that after a day's work she was always laid up for a week from exhaustion. Before the war she had been in receipt of a pension of twenty-four crowns a month, which would be about five dollars. Since the fall in money values her pension had been raised to fifty crowns, which at present rates of exchange represented less than eight cents a month. How did she exist on it?

In the inner room I found the rest of the family—the son, his wife and the five children. The youngest child was over two years of age and was still at the breast—there was nothing else on which to feed it. The mother was scarcely clad above the waist. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head and burnt with the fever of famine. About her neck a horrid rag was knotted, for her throat was puffed with tubercular glands. She spoke in a hoarse voice, panting with the effort. Her man stood stonily beside her and made no comment. They had five children, yes. They were nearly naked, as we could see. They were all consumptive and always starved. It hadn't been like this always. Probably they would die soon—she supposed that would be better. Had they any money? Yes, there was her man's unemployment payment, which amounted to a cent and a half a day, American money. The world didn't want them. She coughed. The children commenced to sob, but the man still stared at us stolidly. There was no furniture in the room, save again one bed with a few rags flung over. it. The last of a candle guttered in a socket; when that went out, they would be utterly in the dark. By its light, as I turned to go, I noticed that yet another unwanted baby was expected. They had once been self-respecting and happy. And this home was typical of the several million homes in which the five million children of Europe are starving.

In the outer room, as I departed, the old Grannie was again busy at her washing, earning those coveted thirty crowns which would exhaust her. Over her head a motto was pinned against the wall—the only decoration remaining from a former affluence. I asked my interpreter how it read and he translated, “May the Christmas-man bring you good luck from near and far.”