An Austrian sister who had been working in the hospital confirmed the story. “Is it true that people were starving here?” I asked her. “Indeed it is true,” she told me, “the soldiers had almost nothing and the civilians were little better off. As for us in the hospitals--well, we really suffered for want of food.” “But how about the officers?” I asked. She looked at me sharply out of the corner of her eyes, for she evidently did not care to criticize her own people, but she seemed to recall something and her face suddenly hardened as she snapped out: “The officers starve? Well, hardly. They lived like dukes always.” More she would not say, but the evidence of these two was amply confirmed by the sight of the sleek well-groomed specimens of the “dukes” that promenade the streets. While the soldiers were in a desperate plight for meat, the officers seemed to have retained their own thoroughbred riding horses until the last day. I suppose that riding was a necessity to them to keep in good health. The day before the surrender they gave these up, and 2,000 beautiful horses were killed, not for meat for the starving soldiers be it noted, but that they might not fall into the hands of the Russians. Perhaps I can best illustrate what happened by quoting the words of a Russian officer who was among the first to enter the town. “Everywhere,” he told me, “one saw the bodies of freshly-killed saddle horses, some of them animals that must have been worth many thousand roubles. Around the bodies were groups of Hungarian soldiers tearing at them with knives; with hands and faces dripping with blood, they were gorging themselves on the raw meat. I have never seen in all my experience of war a more horrible and pitiable spectacle than these soldiers, half crazed with hunger, tearing the carcasses like famished wolves.” My friend paused and a shadow crossed his kindly face. “Yes,” he said, “it was horrible. Even my Cossack orderly wept--and he--well, he has seen much of war and is not over delicate.”