Cooper, Ethel – July 1915
4.7.15
My dear Emmie,
Sandor has been taken for service, and is much worried about it – so am I. He said that 400 Austrian subjects were there – as he looked around the room he would have classed them as unfit. There were weak hearts, lungs, flat feet, sunken chests, asthma – every unsoldierly complaint you can think of, and everyone was taken except two, who were blind! …
… there has also come a letter… from Mr Bullock, saying that his last cheque exhausts all the money he can send – I have had £50 from him and … one is not allowed to send more than £50 to any one person living in an enemy’s country. If that is the case, then as soon as I get to my last £5, I must go to England, and I just hate the feeling of deserting the few people who depend on me here…
11.7.15
My dear Emmie,
…I confess that I want to see the war through here, so as to have a complete picture of how one country has gone through it… Here there is a dogged resignation and an absolutely blind and unquestioning confidence in the Government….
The wives of the tram men were trained 9 months ago, and are running the trams – the wives and daughters of the street sweepers are sweeping the streets – the women are bringing in the harvest – it is unusually early this year, because of the drought. Strikes are unthinkable, public meetings are prohibited. To the outward eye, except for the doubled price of living, everything goes on as smoothly as if a quarter of the population has not been called away from its daily life and work.
18.7.15
My dear Emmie,
… Frau Jaeger goes to Switzerland on the 2nd of August, and she is going to take my letters, and sew them into the lining of her coat. She is rather plump, exceedingly well dressed, and with a very commanding manner, and I have great faith in her getting them through. She feels very confident of it, and says she defies any official to search her thoroughly enough to find them. I hope that she won’t get into trouble, and my year’s letters get torn up – but it is worth risking.
25.7.15
My dear Emmie,
… Franio’s cousin, … a born and bred Pole, who lately became a German subject so as to be able to take a University appointment, has been called out… I feel very sorry for [him and his wife], for he will simply let himself be shot rather than be sent with German troops against Poland. But one hears so many tragic stories now that one almost takes it for granted, when one is told of people here who have two sons on the German front, and three brothers in the regiments standing opposite them on the Russian or French side.
