It Might Have Happened to You: A Contemporary Portrait of Central and Eastern EuropeDawson, Coningsby
History
It Might Have Happened to You: A Contemporary Portrait of Central and Eastern Europe
Dawson, Coningsby
Children -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel
We glanced round the unfurnished room. It was cold as the street outside, but scrubbed and speckless. There was no doubt that she was good, but one was puzzled to discover why she was so persuaded that God had been good to her. Then she let the secret out—or at least part of it. God was daily feeding three of her seven children at the American Relief Station. She seemed to have the idea that God had a lot in common with the Stars and Stripes. As we turned to go, my eye caught an embroidered motto on the wall, which read, “My kitchen is clean and my food well-cooked; otherwise I would not be here.” So she, too, like the Government official's wife, had her upholding pride. Poverty had failed to down her.
After this we lost our way for a time in a district where more knifings happen than in any other in Vienna. At last we found ourselves in a dank, unlighted room where people rose from the floor like shadows. It was tenanted in all by four adults and five children. One of the children was seriously ill. They hadn't been to see a doctor and didn't know what was the matter with her. She was a pretty, fair little girl and her body was shaken with fever. No, they had no food. That was nothing new. One of the men was a gardener; before gardens grew green it would be easy to die. The other man had been four years a prisoner in Siberia. He had walked most the way back to Vienna. The walking hadn't improved his health. He wondered why he had been so anxious to get back. He was rotting here; he could have rotted with equal ease out there. In the darkness they flapped their rags and coughed. When we produced our food, the men showed no enthusiasm. It was the women, hideously angular, who stooped over our hands and blessed us in the name of their children. We had done them no service with our Christmas presents; we had only prolonged their agony by a few days' respite. They made us feel that. Individuals could do nothing. It was nations who must act and act quickly if victims of this order were not to perish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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