Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/426

 The Cost of the

��A chain of double eagles extending for- ty-four thousand miles is the cost of the war to date

\\/ walk-

1 n g ^•

along the f|

Ringstrasse in ^

\'ienna one day a f e w years ago, I found myself in the neighborhood of the Ho f burg, the Impe- rial and Royal palace. It was one of the days when visitors were ad- mitted to the "Treasury of the Imperial House of Austria," so I turned through the gate and having witnessed the impressive cer- emony of the changing of the guard, paid my krone and marched in. Purchasing an official catalogue of the treasures, I looked at the display of royal insignia, crowns and swords, the sacred relics such as a nail from the true cross and a tooth reputed once to have rested in the jaw of John the Baptist, and the dia- monds, emeralds, pearls and rubies in- cluded in the list. Of all that I saw, I was most impressed with a sentence in the introduction to the aforementioned catalogue. It read that in 1876 it had

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���It costs over twelve thousand dollars to kill a man in this war

��Great War

��$12,100.68— The Cost of Killing a Man in War

By Herbert Francis

��been "decreed that in the fu- ture the Haps- burg - Lorraine private treasure should only in- clude those ob- jects which were held lo be essential as demonstrating the power and wealth of the reigning family." This might do very well for the con- sumption of the ignorant peasant of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but I imag- ined what would be said of the taste of a democratic American family which should thus blatantly announce in open- ing its gallery of art objects and relics to the public that the collection had been made with the purpose of "demonstrat- ing the power and wealth of the family.'' Later I visited the royal palace in Ber- lin. My chief recollections are of the plaster imitations of curtains with which a number of apartments were bedecked, the great felt slippers with which every visitor was equipped in order to protect the polished wood floors, and the theat- rical manner in which the Kaiser's gold plate was displayed in the throne room. The golden vessels reposed on a metal framework so designed as to give oppor- tunity for the close examination of each piece. The whole was enclosed in a glass cabinet with mirrors at the back. As the ^■isitors entered the room an attendant would open a small door in the wainscot- ing and throw an electric switch, light- ing up the interior of the glass case with invisible globes. By means of these foot- lights it was possible to see clearly both the front and the back of the golden dish- es. ^^'ith truly Teutonic efficiency, the at-

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