Thursday, July 10.

Sat. evening I had Dinner with H. at the Regina & then I went to Kienböck’s home. She was there too, but disappeared soon to leave us to a long talk. He would like me to stay & yesterday at Prack’s home said again that he would do what he could to get me any position I wanted. But I don’t care. He says that the lack of talent is frightful; everybody says so & it seems to be far worse than anything one can imagine. It is true of the ministries, industry & the sciences. Often there is only one person who knows anything at all about a given field & on a level that was formerly not satisfactory. One should set up training courses. – He is opposed to Rizzi’s currency reform. K’s ideas strike me as much better, because gradual & not so drastic. Krauland is for R.; K. says that he is taking on too many duties & is becoming arrogant; the old story. K. thinks that Russia is much weaker than US thinks, that a great ultimatum is one day indicated, but does not know enough about the fundamental implications of atomic energy & the needs for setting up a world organization. He sees the main russ. weakness in their lack of engeneering skill, trained personell etc. He says that if the observations made here by all austrian industrialists are at all relevant, the conditions in R. must be awful & that incompetence must be in most fields. The telephones etc. taken here, were already ruined beyond repair before they left Austria, because they did not even pack them properly etc. (similar stories heard a long time ago from Germany). This may all be true, but efficiency may still exist in other fields. It is hard to know what one should think. He says that the Austrian experts to Moscow came back with the impression of unbelievable poverty & drabness (so also told by Sir Henry Mack about the British members).