Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/324
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received April 10.]
Sirs: I have the honor to report with reference to my telegram No. 25223 that I have just had an interesting and confidential conversation with Mr. Schober, the chief of police here. Mr. Schober has long been regarded as one of the strongest men in Vienna and no small part of the credit for the excellent order that has prevailed in this city until now has been ascribed to him. From all I can make out this credit is thoroughly deserved.
[Page 286]I found him, like almost everyone else I have seen, in a depressed state of mind. He told me that the greatest menace to public security here was the growing indiscipline and arbitrariness of the Volkswehr who number about 17,000 in Vienna and some 30,000 more in the rest of German Austria. Some of them are honest, well-meaning socialists or labourers unable to find work, but a considerable proportion are men who do not want to work and a number of them have actually criminal records. They are continually guilty of excessive and illegal acts, such as freeing arrested people from the police, entering private houses to search for food and taking it when they find it there, and other things of the sort. This is true throughout the country. For instance a couple of days ago they issued a proclamation threatened with punishment anyone who criticised the Volkswehr or spread evil report of them, and the local authorities were powerless to take action in the matter. They have become a pretorian guard, responsible to no one, undisciplined, idle and increasingly disorderly and oppressive.
The government while disapproving their action and secretly desirous of getting rid of them is too weak to control them efficiently and can only keep them in line by persuasion. Mr. Schober declares that a month ago he would have undertaken to disarm the 17,000 Volkswehr in this city with his 5,000 police and gendarmes. Now he doubts whether he could do it and a month hence he may be powerless. Even his own men in whom he has until recently been able to have complete trust are showing signs of demoralization. They are beginning to fear that the power in the end will be on the side of the Volkswehr and that they had better not antagonize them.
I questioned Mr. Schober as to what he thought could be done to help the situation. He said that anything like a threat on the part of the Allies that unless the Volkswehr were dissolved food supplies might be cut off from the country would be dangerous and likely to provoke an outbreak. He thought, however, that official Allied advice that they should be dissolved might possibly strengthen the hands of the government. Like so many other people here he would be glad of some sort of foreign intervention though in as disguised a form as possible. I asked him what he could suggest short of that to help the situation. He replied, and this he repeated several times during the conversation, an increased supply of food, also of coal and raw materials so that industry might get going again. If Austria could have these, perhaps somehow or other things might be tided along until the summertime when the situation might improve of itself. Mr. Schober said also that the presence of a considerable guard with the food trains, especially of American soldiers, if they could be somewhat in evidence, would have a reassuring effect on the population. He said that the mere marching through the streets of an English company which in [Page 287] January escorted the first food train brought here had had for a time an extraordinarily tranquilizing influence on people.
I may add that my personal opinion is that Mr. Schober is entirely right in his recommendations.
I have [etc.]
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