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.” CHAPTER III—A DAY OF REST AND GLADNESS Today being Sunday, a day of rest and gladness when even prisoners do not work, I visited the central gaol of Vienna. Permission is not often granted; in order to obtain it, it was necessary to gain the consent of the President of the Austrian Republic. My object in going was to see for myself to what extent starvation is making criminals out of children and so adding one more grim touch, by destroying characters as well as bodies, to the monstrous sum of Europe's child tragedy. Before the war the Viennese were among the most happy and law-abiding of citizens. What famine can accomplish in the manufacture of criminals was illustrated by what I saw on this visit. It was a sunny day with a sky of intensest blue. The snow and slush of Saturday had frozen over, so that the streets gleamed brilliantly in white and steel-gray patches. About the Ring, which encirles the old royal palace, crowds were promenading in the worn finery of pre-war days. There was almost a breath of hope—an unwonted alertness.