It Might Have Happened To You

o 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 i

abiding of citizens. What famine can accomplish in the manufac

ets gleamed brilliantly in white and steel-gray patches. About the Ring, which encirles the old royal palace, cro

consequence that the supply of gaols could not cope with the demand of the criminals. All the gaols were overcrowded. This one was. Cells which had been built to hold one prisoner, now contained four; those built to hold nine contained as many as thirty. Of course the sanitary accommodations were insufficient. He did not want us to believe that what we were about to see was typical of Austrian efficiency. We should discover that only one prisoner out of four had a bed; that their personal linen was changed only once a month and that the cells were verminous. We should also discover that the greater part of the prisoners had not been brought to tr

ers. They were among the very few of the prisoners who were segregated. They sat on the edge of cots in their grated cells, dismally weeping, wondering no doubt what was happening to the children they had left. Mary, refused admittance to the inn at Bethlehem, has stood in men's minds as the acm

ast. They were plain for everyone to behold as he had only a shirt that was torn. Round his neck was tatooed the Iron Cross and below it, in a long line, all th

ked about fourteen, to ask him why he was there. He had been arrested for housebreaking because he was hungry. He wasn't fourteen; he was nearly twenty. When I glanced back to the prisoner with the wounded mouth, I found myself face to face with a replica of Hindenburg. The bandage which he had been wearing had been hastily rem

vil; nine-tenths of these people would have remained good but for that. The atmosphere was so putrid that one's t

appened after nightfall. It was in the darkness the warder informed us that vermin were most voracious—they crept out. But other things besides vermin creep out in the hours of darkness—evil thoughts, bred of idleness, taking shape in evil acts. Of all this the boys and girls of fourteen and over are witnesses and at last partakers. The sin which has put them in gaol is not theirs, but society's—their hung

e's mind to an insanity of anger at the smug complacency of the more fortunate world which cont

, beginning with the war, they have known nothing but cold and privation. They were taught by necessity to pilfer—which is scarcely a suffici

ble. Probably she, too, had her excuses. On the other side of the cell, smiling with wistful expectancy, stood a pretty child. She had black curling hair, a complexion of most delicate rose and coyly-lidded Irish eyes. She leant against the wall, small-boned and frail, confidently surveying us. She was nearly fifteen. This was her second term. She had already served a previous sentence of eighteen m