who spend four or five
hours of the day sitting in the cafes of Budapest. The poor parts of
the city present a different spectacle. Here there are great numbers
of crooked-legged spindly children, war-products evidently. The slums
are nothing like so bad as those of London or Chicago--only the
children are less boisterous, less vital, and seem to have been
underfed all their lives. The new babies look much better than the
children of four or five. Food is more abundant now, and a great deal
of relief work is done at the schools. But it is doubtful if any
philanthropic efforts can restore the war-children. Budapest has a bad
streak left in her town-population by the war, and it is visible.
Cotton goods are very expensive, and many of the poor children seem
inadequately dressed. The price of cotton is dependent upon much
speculation and bad business between the American cotton plantation and
the obscure worker in Hungary. It is a curious anomaly that Americans
should burn cotton-bales in the Southern States to keep up the price,
and that the American Red Cross on the other hand should in Europe
distribute free garments to those who cannot pay the world-price thus
attained.

The exchange is very low, five crowns to a penny, three hundred to a
dollar. For a thousand crowns a week you can live--you can live in one
room and keep body and soul together. For two thousand crowns a week
you can live at a second-class hotel with board and lodging. An
ordinary dinner with a glass of beer costs a hundred crowns. You can
also get a seat at the back of the stalls in a theatre for that amount.
There is a luxury-tax of ten per cent on all you buy at cafes and
restaurants, on perfumery, and like objects. This, no doubt, brings in
a large amount to the national exchequer if it is efficiently
collected. The wages and salaries of all trades and professions are in
a continual hurdle-race, vaulting cost of living and the rate of
exchange. There are thousands of _nouveaux riches_, and there are
thousands of ex-rich and gentry in decay. One feels that Hungary,
however, is a rich country even as she stands to-day, and that the
people have sterling qualities which make for the recuperation of the
new State. There is still a love of work in the country, and that is
comparatively a rare virtue in modern Europe. The working class, as in
Germany, feels that it lost the war and cannot expect extra fine
conditions. The Hungarian w