AUSTRIA: Recruiting Night

Once a year Austrian recruiting offices open, vacancies in the Austrian Army are filled. Under the Treaty of St. Germain each recruit must enlist for twelve long years.

Last week sympathetic Viennese reporters wrote human interest stories about “Recruiting Night.” They told how “fine young men, driven literally by starvation,” stood shivering in line the whole night long in front of Rossauer Barracks, ready to offer themselves the moment recruiting began.

Indignant Viennese newspapers stressed what seemed to them the piteous fact that the hunger-driven Austrian recruits will receive for the next twelve years only a minute wage, plus bed & board. The Treaty of St. Germain, they added bitterly, deprived Austria of all seaports and consequently of her Navy, reduced her Army to 30,000 men (including officers) and limited her “heavier armaments” to 450 machine guns, 60 trench mortars and 90 field guns & howitzers. Each Austrian soldier is permitted to have a gun, but the nation’s stock of bullets is limited to 500

rounds per rifle.