If anybody is heard talking pessimistically about the war he is denounced to the authorities. A case is made against him, and the imprudent chatterer is almost certain to be condemned. I know of a man who got two months' imprisonment for having said that he did not believe the newspapers.
Besides the hospitals fixed up in numerous picture-galleries, theatres, university buildings and private houses, the Prater's constructions given up to depôts, magazines, and aeroplane sheds, and the complicated system arranged for the collection of money and comforts for the troops, all of which have altered considerably the general appearance of the city, the thing which astonished me most was the activity of a society which bears the harmonious name of "K. u. K. Oesterreich-Ungarischer-National-Sprachen-Gebrauchs-Verein," the nearest translation of which I can think of is "Society for the exclusive use of the national language in the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Vienna is certainly one of the towns outside France which shows a strong French character, and the language, as well as the life of the whole city, bears evident marks of it. Well, this society wants to rid the Viennese slang of French words, as well as of all words not in the German dictionary. The first effects of this movement have been to make numerous hotels, cafés, and cabarets change names, and the publication of pamphlets, distributed freely all over the town, in which are full lists of the _taboo_ words, as well as of the numerous French and English Christian names which are quite usual in Vienna, and which, it is requested, should now be given up.
However, the great majority of Viennese people laugh at this mania; the Chauvinistic spirit is not very much developed in Vienna, and the hatred of England, which is Berlin's strongest feeling, is hardly noticeable here.
We have become so used to regarding Switzerland as an all-the-year-round playground, and the Swiss as a race of hotel-keepers, waiters, and guides, that many people were quite surprised to learn, when Switzerland mobilised, that she could put an army of 250,000 in the field.
Switzerland, which has been for centuries the battlefield of European nations, has understood that even her perpetual neutrality, guaranteed by the Powers, could not save her from the danger of an invasion if she did not boast a fairly strong army, and in 1874 she organised a proper military service.