on New
Year's Day," and so I perceived it to be "sucking pig."

Some provisions have gone up in price; flour is doubled in value and
the government has had to fix a maximum legal price. Meat and game are
cheaper than usual, perhaps because many people are killing and
selling their animals to save the grain which would otherwise have to
be used to feed them.

The utter ignorance of the people concerning everything that is
happening outside of Vienna and Budapest is amazing. The government
has somehow convinced the people that everything in the war is going
wonderfully well, and this in the face of the unsuppressible facts
that there are at present no Austrians in Serbia and that the Russians
hold all Galicia and have been through the Carpathians.

* * * * *

_Saturday, January 2d._ The German comic paper Simplicissimus recently
made a cartoon comment on the Austro-Hungarian army and the whole
issue was suppressed by the censor in Austria and Hungary. The drawing
showed a group of three Austrians, a general, an officer, and a
private. The soldier had a lion's head, the officer an ass's head, and
the general had no head at all.

Austria and Germany have not as yet produced one "great man." The
Allies have two--Joffre and Kitchener and possibly a third in
Delcasse.

The Austrian Emperor is a little man, slightly stooped, rather
shriveled-up and possessed of a pair of keen, shrewd eyes. He is an
able follower of the Emperor Ferdinand who once replied to the
statement that a certain one of his subjects was a patriot by saying:
"I don't care if he's patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic
for me?" Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin
in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of
failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is
forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has
relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable
case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the
battle of Sadowa.

* * * * *

_Sunday, January 3d._ I have managed to get in a good deal of reading
on boats, trains, and at odd moments since I left Paris, and it has
enlarged my comprehension of this war. I have carefully studied every
book on the war and subjects related to it. I have read several times
each the books of Bernhardi, Nietzsche, and Steed's "Hapsb