This year Santa Claus made a mistake about Vienna; he forgot to come or else he had grown tired of paying visits to a people who are so unhappy. In Vienna they speak of 1920 as the sixth year of the war—they mean the war against hunger. They can afford no more Christmases till the Peace with Hunger has been settled. Some of us who had seen the toys taken from the children being auctioned for bread at the Dorotheum, suspected that this would be the case—Santa Claus would be too busy in England and America to find time to visit the stockings of Vienna; so we conspired to commit the fraud of impersonation. We each stumped up a certain sum with which to purchase flour, bacon, cocoa, rice, sugar and tinned milk. We obtained the addresses from the Society of Friends of twenty-five of the most desperate families. The American Relief Administration lent us a car. As soon as night had fallen we set off on our rounds; we were warned that if we started too late, we should find all the homes in darkness; the means of illumination are expensive. People go to bed as soon as it becomes dark and save the money that candles would have cost. We were a curiously constituted party—an amalgam of the new friendship which can alone bring happiness to the world. Our chauffeur, as delighted at the undertaking as anyone, was a German. Our pillar of strength was Dr. John, an Austrian, who had been lamed in the front-line as a combatant by one of the Allies' shells. The rest of us were British and Americans. Three years ago we were all soldiers, thirsting for each other's blood; and here, on this Christmas Eve of 1920, we were crowded together in the same automobile, bound on the one errand. It was wonderful. We thought our way back to that No Man's Land of animosity; it was amazing that we should have hated so much.