Italy, he is quite certain, will decide to join Germany before long. Is she not the motherland of Machiavelli, and Machiavelli, we all know, was decidedly against any form of neutrality. Neutrals, said the lecturer, will be hated by the beaten nations at the end of the war and despised by the victors. Therefore Italy will join the German side, and the old ideal of the German Empire (as wrote Bernhardi) will again come to life in a federation of Germany, Austria, and Italy. I wonder if, in a few months' time, this delightful Mr. Blüthner will be of the same opinion? CHAPTER VI VIENNA During my first visit to Berlin travel by railway was almost impossible, so slow, crowded, and irregular was the service at that time. Now it has been completely restored, and, if anything, probably better than it ever was, thanks to the small number of passengers. Even dining and sleeping cars are obtainable on the principal lines. In the train which took me from Berlin to Vienna the civilian passengers were no more than half a dozen; all the other passengers were officers and soldiers, mostly wounded Austrians returning to their motherland. Some were very seriously injured and groaned continuously; others had horrible wounds badly bandaged; some were disfigured; some had had limbs amputated. They begged from the other passengers a few coppers to buy fruits or cigars, but hardly anybody took any notice of them. They were nearly all cavalrymen, and, as is usual in Austrian regiments, were of different nationalities. This explains the lack of fellowship among them--the lack of a sentiment which generally so much sustains soldiers of other nations. At a frontier station we were able to buy some Austrian papers. They gave us a sort of foretaste of life in Vienna. There was very little news, but talk about wonderful victories in Galicia and Serbia (official), followed by a long white space where a comment had been cut out by the Censor. Two hours before publication a complete proof of every Austrian paper must be presented to the Censor. Anything not considered fit for publication is cut away; consequently the paper is often much ornamented with blank spaces. The big station at Vienna presents a really astonishing sight. Wounded soldiers and refugees are everywhere. Outside the station it is the same--and it is the same in the large central streets, in the parks, in the churches. Vienna is the first great town completely transformed by the war that I have seen. On the broad footways at the sides of the streets there are two unending processions of tired, famished-looking refugees. Most of them are from Galicia, but there are thousands also from other provinces of the Empire. The authorities do not know where to place them; they do not know what to do. They make the refugees walk with all that they still possess on their shoulders. Often a sack and an old chair or some other piece of furniture will be carried about for days and days.